Crash Proof Vehicles

If you want to find the smartest drivers in the world, you need to head for the home of the US car industry. Just outside Detroit, lies the town of Ann Arbor, Michigan. The drivers there are not any more intelligent than other parts of the world, despite it being a famed college town. However, their cars are.

That’s because the roads of Ann Arbor are now home to a fleet of several thousand cars that constantly “talk” to one another. The scheme, known as the Safety Pilot Model Deployment project, offers a potential blueprint for the future of road transport

To be clear, the technology fitted to the vehicles does not turn them intoautonomous, self-driving cars, championed by the likes of Google, but they do represent an important step towards them.

In an article predicting future technological advancements on the matadornetwork, they mentioned that by 2020 We will have Crash-proof cars.  Yes, you heard me right! The car manufacturing company Volvo has PROMISED to put a car into production that runs by using radar, sonar, and driver alert systems.  On average car crashes kill over 30 thousand people in the united states each year.  With this new technology what are we going to do? Where are we going to park? Are we going to have garages still or can we park anywhere we damn well please because we have the peace of mind knowing that no matter what, a car won’t hit us, well in 2020 it may only be a Volvo that won’t, but still, it is interesting to think about.

The car is pictured above and doesn't look like safety is at the forefront of their mind. according to the BBC To be clear, the technology fitted to the vehicles does not turn them intoautonomous, self-driving cars, championed by the likes of Google, but they do represent an important step towards them.

“It’s hard to see how you could have automatic vehicles without them being connected,” says Dr Sweatman. “It’s technically possible, but in terms of a realistic deployment autonomous vehicles will need to be connected.”

Other vehicle interaction systems are in development, and what is learnt in this huge, real world, experiment will help inform the direction they take.

“This is fundamentally aimed at safety, but clearly with a platform like this you can create many other applications,” says Dr Sweatman. “There are many other potential benefits in mobility, environment, emissions, energy efficiency.”

For example, the team envisages a system that monitors the brakes of all of the cars. If the traffic management system detects that all of the cars are braking at the same spot, it could indicate a problem with the road that needs to be fixed by a maintenance crew

Alternatively, if for some reason there was an accident, the system could be used to immediately alert the emergency services, divert other drivers to alternative routes and ensure that the roads are clear for emergency vehicles.

What is a QR Code

A QR Code is a 2D Barcode. QR codes are an encoded barcode image resembling a square-like maze. Unlike a 1-dimensional UPC code, a 2-dimensional barcode stores data in both directions and can be scanned vertically or horizontally to be decoded.

A traditional 1D barcode (UPC/EAN) stores up to 30 numbers, while a 2D barcode (QR) can store up to 7,089 numbers. The additional storage capacity accommodates a variety of data beyond numbers:

• Text
• Hyperlink
• Telephone number (Phone call)
• SMS/MMS message
• Email (Send message)
• Contact entry (vCard or meCard)
• Calendar entry (vCalendar)

Storing a hyperlink presents a myriad of possibilities beyond just loading a web page -- play a video, download a mobile app, check-in on Foursquare, update a Twitter status, "Like" a Facebook page, Text

Different generators have varying features. Choose a generator based on the options for:

• Code Format (i.e. QR, EZcode, Tag, etc.)
• Stored Data (i.e. hyperlink, meCard, SMS, etc.)
• Output (i.e. color, size, download file type, etc.)

RL-shortener and web analytics for 2D barcodes storing URL hyperlinks are a great start. For comprehensive scan tracking, you'll need to use a barcode generator tool that includes tracking analytics. (These tools are not independent.) Some management tools will merely track the number of scans while others provide detailed metrics like demographics, repeat scans, geolocation, and more. Collected analytics depends on the reader app used for scanning, so data results may vary.

Management tools are relatively inexpensive and sometimes free. Paid plans typically have a free trial with fees based on the number of scans.

2D Barcode Management & Tracking Tools:

• Delivr (QR)
• Microsoft Tag (Tag)
• ScanLife (EZcode, QR, DataMatrix, UPC)
• Tappinn (QR, UPC)
• Paperlinks (QR)
• QReateBUZZ (QR)
• BeQRious (QR)
• SPARQCode (QR)
• QReate and Track (QR)

It is important to provide special value for the customer. It takes work to scan a barcode, so users have higher expectations as to what content they will find. Reward the user with discounts, exclusive content, or useful tips relevant to the code's context. Consider scenarios that leverage smartphone features (email, SMS, phone call, video, map, apps, etc.) to save the user time.

For example, including a QR code on a business card that links to a meCard would be a lot easier than the user manually entering the contact record. In contrast, a QR code that links to a website homepage adds limited value.

In order to ensure campaign success, consider consulting with a mobile barcode marketing expert, especially if it's your first time running a mobile barcode campaign. Technology, trends, and tools in this arena are rapidly changing. A few hours of expert consulting can bring your team up to speed, help optimize campaigns for success, and avoid unnecessary embarrassment for poor implementation.

Expertise goes beyond consultants: Talk to your web analytics guru and learn all you can about the mobile users currently accessing your website. Seek out mobile marketing industry statistics regarding popular devices and demographics to appropriately target your audience.

Check out these articles!

Top things to know about QR Codes

QR Codes are dead

Viral Videos

Viral videos are definitely a new sensation in the world of social media. These videos have helped many people become overnight celeberties, for others it has ruined lives and careers.  I have chosen to elaborate on a story that deals with the negative impacts of viral videos.

According to an article on CBS online, A former CFO is now on food stamps after a video he posted on YouTube two and half years ago criticizing Chick-Fil-A went viral and destroyed his career.

Adam Smith, 37, was the CFO of a medical device manufacturer in Arizona, until the summer 2012, when he started protesting against Chick-Fil-A for the fast-food chain's anti-gay stance.

One day, Smith decided to go through the drive-thru at his local Chick-Fil-A, where he ordered a free water and videotaped himself telling the drive-thru attendant how much he despised Chick-Fil-A.

"Chick-Fil-A is a hateful corporation," Smith said, in part, to the drive-thru attendant. "I don't know how you live with yourself and work here. I don't understand it. This is a horrible corporation with horrible values. You deserve better."

Smith then posted the video on his personal YouTube channel, but when he got back to work, he received a major shock.

"I got into work and the receptionist, the first thing, big eyes, 'Adam, what did you do?' ... she said, 'The voicemail is completely full, and it's full of bomb threats,'" Smith said in a later interview.

Smith was fired that same day. He said at the time he was earning $200,000 annually and had over $1 million in stock options.

"It was taken when I lost my employment," he said.

After losing his job, Smith, his wife Amy and their four children also lost their home. They were forced to sell and give away their possessions and move into an RV. A few months later, Smith found a new CFO job in Portland, Oregon.

"I felt like, 'Yeah, I got it. I am back,'" Smith said.

About two weeks later, Smith was fired from that job after his new boss discovered he was the guy from the Chick-Fil-A video.

As we can see from this example viral videos can change your life forever. Sometimes it's better to just keep that video to yourself and those who are close to you.  This man is just one example, and I am sure that there are countless other examples of viral videos gone wrong.

Check out the article
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Check out the video

Arab Spring and Power of Social Media

In Iran's presidential election in June 2009 was the driving force behind the Arab Spring uprisings in 2010.  The power of private citizens was illustrated by their ability to reach out across national and virtual boundaries to challenge the power of the state.  Though some would characterize the silencing of the Iranian street demonstrations as the reinforcement of state power, the documentation of these protests on YouTube and Twitter serves as a model of freedom and independent from both government and traditional media power.

For instance, Twitter and YouTube were founded in 2005 and 2006. Traditional media at that time was focused on TV.  CNN, Fox, MSNBC, were all dominating the market and most people consumed their news from these channels or the newspaper.  The Arab Spring had a significant impact on the internet overcoming TV media stations and continuing to grow as the most used source to obtain news.


 The skepticism with which the impact of social media was viewed prior to the events of 2011 was due to a ‘top-down’ perspective that most analysts adopted while trying to explain the authoritarianism of Arab regimes. The analysis concentrated on the strength of coercive institutions as a major factor underlying the stability of the Arab regimes. This analysis did not sufficiently investigate the changing political and social dynamics of the Arab world and, therefore failed to appreciate the importance that social media could have in political communication and mobilization.

 With both Muslims and Christians experiencing everyday cosmopolitan coexistence in an Egyptian suburb. Social and political dissent in the Arab world, therefore, although unspoken, was, and is, action-oriented. Interests and demands were and are made directly, during everyday life, and not through leaders and groups that are organized and ideologically driven. Thus, under conditions of constraint, and through mundane practices in their day-to-day lives, regular people of the Arab world were and arable to move away from their toleration and acceptance of authoritarian regimes, producing sociopolitical changes to their communities, cities, governments, religions, and selves. 

The result is a ‘street politics’ where Arabs and people of the wider region combine their concerns for national dignity with social justice and democracy. The following examples are indicative:

The Egyptian 2000 - Popular Committee for Solidarity with the Palestinian Intifada in Egypt, which brought together youth, civil society groups and political activists to stage mass rallies in Their Square against Israeli sieges of Palestinian territories. The 2004-2005 

Egyptian Kefalas(‘Enough’) - movement that focused on democracy and human rights, and was able to bridge ideological divides, especially between religious and secular activists, and between leftists and nationalists; it united Nasserites, socialists, liberals and Islamists under the common objective of opposing the oppressive regime of President Mubarak. Based in Cairo, the movement used the internet to gain support for its petition calling for political reforms and used social media technology to organize non-violent demonstrations against the regime. 

The ‘Cedar Revolution,' - a grassroots movement of some 1.5 million Lebanese, demanding democracy, which resulted in the withdrawal of Syrian forces from Lebanon in 2005. The Iranian Green Wave Democracy movement that emerged following the 2009 fraudulent presidential elections. 

These are all examples of ‘social non-movements’, pursuing change in traditional and authoritarian Arab politics from ‘below’ To understand this, however, one has also to be aware of the insecurity, political, social and economic, to which the people of the Arab world are subject to.

When people log into the social media, the thought of creating and starting a revolution is pretty far from their minds. But in the Arab world, the social media has become an important platform for dissent and outlet for political and economic frustration. As noted in the introduction, however, it would be wrong to characterize the uprisings as ‘revolutions’ of the social media. Their ‘leaderless’ character was a genuine bottom-up expression of public will. The political, economic and social oppression of the Arab people, the lack of government transparency and unemployment were the real motivating factors behind demands for reform. People were united under their desire to ensure the fundamental principles of human security, dignity and respect to human rights, their share in a respectful, decent life and prosperity. Nothing could have happened if there were no people willing to be physically present in the streets, ready to put their own life at risk, in order to fulfill their demands and achieve their goals.

The growth and use of social media in the Arab region, however, did play a critical role immobilization and change. For it was the social media, not formal institutions or political parties, that provided the effective tool for activating the public, for allowing the loose networks of activists and protesters to mobilize, communicate and collaborate. They provided an alternate space for reviving a dormant public consciousness into a sentient, dynamic social discourse. In addition, and as noted above, the use of social media did not suddenly appear during the uprisings. The uprisings were just the ‘boiling point’ reached after several years of increasing dissent and efforts to change from below both virtual (through the mushrooming of the blogosphere and digital activism) and real. (through ‘social non-movements’).

arab spring article

arab spring article 2

Search Engine Optimization

Whether its tagging (words, geotagging, metatagging, etc), newsrooms, infographics, etc.

It’s 2015 and by now you’ve been told, again and again, the importance of developing valuable content to increase your visibility when consumers search for your company through websites like Bing, Yahoo, and Google. It’s time to cut through the noise and step up with some advice you can actually use to produce results.

The checklist below is intended for marketers to use with their team to identify specific tasks needed to create valuable content that generates results.

Understand How Users Search

The best way to achieve higher sales is to keep users in the top of mind in each phase of your strategy development process.

By understanding your target audience’s online behaviors, interests, and expectations, marketers can develop stronger content that compels users to interact with and talk about your brand.

• Analyze current data from search, social and other owned assets to find customer trends
•  See what currently appears in search
•  Check competitor content to see related keywords
• Identify what users wants and needs are
• Create a story from data that signifies trends, behaviors, and interests

Optimize For Users

With users in mind, content should be formed around the interests of the audience to offer more value. Targeting your content will draw stronger followings and deliver more quality leads. While achieving high search rankings for keyword targeted content is valuable, speaking to an audience is what drives engagement and conversions.

• Identify how your post will offer value through education or entertainment and create content worth sharing
• Support your ideas with references to validated, external sources to increase credibility and authority
• Build your content around the topics and keyword phrases your audience is searching for to increase exposure
• Keep content “human” in delivery that is easily digestible and appropriate for your target audience
• Explore different content mediums and delivery channels to determine what methods generates the highest engagement
• Keep the limitations and unique features of mobile in mind when crafting content to ensure all users have a consistent and quality experience

 Optimize for Search Engines

High performing content is a balance between users and search engines. Just as your content needs to quickly capture the attention of a user and clearly deliver value, search engines require the same consideration.
Optimize your content and distribution channels to help search engines make connections between your content and the information your audience is searching for.

• Maintain a consistent schedule and focus by creating a content calendar that identifies topics and keywords for each piece of content
• Integrate keywords into content and back-end optimization such as headlines, page titles, URLs, and meta descriptions
• Leverage tools to audit content for SEO such as Yoast for WordPress
• Create unique pages for content to earn authority for individual assets
• Generate quality links from bloggers and trustworthy publications to help search engines connect content with keywords
• Perform periodic audits to discover and fix any broken links
• When applicable, optimize content for local search with unique pages and detailed information for individual locations
• Create an XML sitemap and submit to Google and Bing to assist in indexing pages
• Amplify content with paid media to increase visibility across the web

Measure & Improve

Your data tells a story of the obstacles faced and opportunities created from your brand’s content and distribution, and analyzing this data provides a path to develop stronger campaigns. By understanding how audiences interact with content, marketers can hone their focus to increase visibility, engagement and conversions.

• Pull reports from all owned, earned, and paid channels and identify patterns of engagement and interest
• Leverage tools in analytics platforms to discover what content drives more traffic and action from users
• Define clear goals in Google Analytics to monitor how content influences your conversion funnel and sales cycle
• Monitor Google Webmaster Tools to look for site errors than can inhibit exposure in search
• See how users move across your website and content with click tracking and heat mapping tools such as Crazy Egg
• Use data to understand what content mediums, focus, tone, and distribution channels result in the highest engagement.

• A common misconception regarding social media marketing is that search engine optimization (SEO) plays no role in the practice. 
  

• Google has its eyes on all your online marketing efforts. Whether you update your website or post new content, Google will factor it into your page rank. Social media is not excluded from Google’s jurisdiction. There’s still no clear formula concerning how Google weighs social media in its algorithm, but social media activities like posting on Facebook, pintrest, Twitter, etc. affect your SEO
  
  
  
• Google takes into account how many followers you have and equates it in your company’s authority. According to a recent Forbes article, the more followers, likes, and shares you have on social media, the bigger you’ll be on Google’s radar:
  
• “One factor Google takes into consideration for domain authority is the following you have on your social platforms. As a simple example, if your brand has 10,000 likes on Facebook and 10,000 followers on Twitter, you’ll have a higher authority and higher search rankings than a similar brand with 100 likes and 100 followers. Build you’re following by regularly posting interesting material, and engaging your audience directly by responding to their comments or opening up public discussions.
• So what does all of this say about your social media strategy? Two things, essentially. First of all, you need to build your follower base on Facebook and Twitter. The more followers you have, the more activity and interaction you’ll be able to generate.
  And secondly, you need to post and share content with followers. If your content is truly good, then followers will share it willingly on social media. This increase in shares and likes will have an impact both on your social media marketing efforts and SEO. It’s one of the best possible outcomes for your online marketing efforts.
• Search Engine Land - A Content Marketer's Guide to SEO
• Business to Community - How Social Media Improves Your SEO

 

Management Platforms/Tools

Oracle rivals IBM in the depth and breadth of its data-management offerings. It offers multiple data bases, including market leaders Oracle Databa,se and MySQL, and multiple options for data integration, data-quality management, master-data management, business intelligence, and analytics.

I used Oracle While working at Thermofisher and I really liked the program. It helped to manage our inventory.  Oracle is an incredible system. From one program you can retrieve an order and follow the job whethere it's one or 100 thousand. 

In 2013, Oracle moved toward managing all of its data and big-data technologies with Oracle Enterprise Manager. That includes the Oracle Big Data Appliance, which packages Cloudera's Hadoop distributi. on and the Oracle NoSQL database.  This collection spans low-latency demands from filtering and correlation to data movement and transformation to analysis and real-time decision support.

The one negative thing that I expeirenced was shifting to the program. This is an extremely timely process and took nearly 6 months to completely switch over.  This does not include the continued time and expenses to train employees how to use the program.  They try to make it fairly user friendly and simplify it quite a bit, but everyone that I know who has used the program has made a that resulted in the company having to scrap material.

One area where Oracle has yet to deliver is in-memory performance tied to its flagship Oracle Database. The company announced an Oracle Database 12c In-Memory Option at Oracle Open World in 2013, but there's no beta or firm release data at this writing.  OLTP In-Memory option.Although Cloudera, Hortonworks, IBM, Pivotal, MapR, and others are working on ways to do SQL analysis, in-memory analysis, and even streaming analysis on top of Hadoop, Oracle sees this platform as a source from which to draw data sets for analysis within Oracle Database. In short, Oracle Database, as always, is at the center of this company's attention.

http://www.informationweek.com/big-data/big-data-analytics/16-top-big-data-analytics-platforms/d/d-id/1113609?image_number=14

Objective Marketer – Offers social media marketing and analytics with integrated campaign management (Twitter, Blogs, Facebook, YouTube), multi-channel execution, engagement reports and user management.

www.objectivemarketer.com

http://www.toprankblog.com/2010/09/22-social-media-marketing-management-tools/

Organizational Uses

In an article by Brian Folis in Forbes magazine he explains that, Executives for the most part don’t get social media. But it’s not their fault. After all, many corporate execs don’t even read their own email –  how are they expected to realize the benefits of new platforms if many don’t use them personally? But the bigger roadblock to social media adoption in the enterprise is that the way social is presented inside the organization that doesn’t make the case.

Facebook, Twitter, Pintrest, and the like can contribute to the bottom line of most businesses. The challenge is the ability to link business objectives, social media strategies and the bottom line. Executives need to see how social fits in to the overall vision and goals of the organization in order to lead a top down charge that changes how employees and customers connect and collaborate. There must be a purpose coupled with tangible results.

Based on this article it is safe to say that many older business executives haven't jumped ship on what made their company's so successful today. In order to stay on top of any industry, social media is vital in today's world.  Yes, they may be a distraction if used improperly, but overall they are very effective.

According to Mediapost.com they found statistics showing that 90% of organizations maintain social media profiles, failing to have a social media presence for your organization can put you at a significant disadvantage. However, there is a difference between participation and actually achieving social media success. The following are best practices that can help any organization get better results from their social media engagement. 

- Locate audience
- Determine company objectives
- Decide how to measure success
- Understand social media tools
- Capture and integrate data
- Consider both quantity and quality
- Follow associates and let them follow you!
- Employee participation helps dramatically
- Create acceptable use policies