ICTs, Business and Society
Author: AK
Are you looking a source of extra income or perhaps contemplating to leave the world of employment to finally become your own boss? An online business may just be the answer you’re looking for. With the continued rise of eCommerce and the fast-paced development of information and mobile technology, it’s a viable option for many — even the inexperienced and those with limited cash capital. Continue reading “Starting an Online Business: 4 Simple Tips”
This book offers a multidisciplinary resource on digital government, while specifically focusing on its role within the emerging market of India. The Government of India (GoI) is concentrating on transforming India under the Digital India initiative. In order to do so, it has emphasized three core areas: (1) Computing infrastructure as a utility to every citizen; (2) Governance and services on demand; and (3) Digital empowerment of citizens. The chapters in this book address issues surrounding these areas, highlighting concepts such as knowledge societies, urban operations and logistics, issues in managing emergent Information Communication Technologies (ICTs), and also smart analytics for urbanization. The chapters contribute to the theory, practice and policy for a “Digital India.” The book captures lessons, knowledge, experiences (about challenges, drivers, antecedents, etc.) and best practices emerging from implementation of various projects. While the book is dedicated to a “Digital India,” this book can also be valuable resource for public administrators, government officials and researchers in other emerging markets and developing countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America where similar socio-political and economic conditions exist. Continue reading “Digital India – Reflections and Practice | Springer”
Marketers, is there anything else more fulfilling than edging out your competition? We don’t need to go beyond the nods, do we?
Unfortunately, you have to work at being the best marketer. You must understand your market needs, the changes affecting your audience’s purchase patterns, and, you also have to determine the best way of meeting the needs of your market despite the changes? How do you do this? Edging out your competition and staying on top of the game means that you have to analyze trends. The only way to meet the needs of your customers is preparedness, which is crucial to a grade 9 math tutor as well. Continue reading “Top Digital Marketing Trends and Tips for 2018”
Artificial intelligence was officially founded as a discipline in 1956, and in the years since, it has experienced tremendous growth and development—allowing AI systems to do a lot more things in ways we could only just imagine in the past. Let’s take a look at some of the best applications of artificial intelligence in the world today.
Personal Tasks
Among the many applications of artificial intelligence these days, smartphone virtual assistants are definitely at the vanguard, since these are the types of AI people are familiar with the most. Examples of these are voice activated assistants like Siri on the Apple iPhone, Bixby on the Samsung Galaxy S8, and Cortana on Microsoft devices. As you may very well know, these personal assistants can perform tasks and services for the user, facilitating the use of device features that would take much longer to access without AI aid. These include reading emails and messages aloud, scheduling events, looking up and dialing contact details, performing internet searches, and other duties that were traditionally performed by actual personal assistants or secretaries.
In the future, smart personal assistants are likely to become more ubiquitous, especially in homes, where they can act as automation hubs for smart houses. There are already a few such AI technologies operating today, including the likes of Amazon Alexa on the Amazon Echo device, Siri on the Apple HomePod, and the Google Assistant on the Google Home device.
Healthcare
In a world that is slowly transitioning to value-based care—a healthcare delivery model where providers and compensated according to the quality of patient health outcomes—it is important for health payers, providers, and public health agencies to become more sophisticated when it comes to handling data. With the help of artificial intelligence solutions, it become possible for these organizations to sift through and analyze voluminous amounts of data, which they can then use to empower their policies and practices. What are the implications? Consider being able to detect healthcare fraud, reduce resource wastage, develop the best healthcare plans, improve population health, and even cure diseases. In short, health organizations are poised to benefit a lot.
Financial Services
The financial services sector is one of the most data-driven industries in the world, with financial organizations exchanging large amounts internal documents and customer transaction information on a daily basis. Because banks and other financial institutions are also confronted with numerous regulations and compliance standards, they should see to it that that they are not failing on their legal and institutional obligations.
By analyzing data with the proper artificial intelligence tools, financial organizations will be able to understand the risks, comply with regulations, and meet customer needs effectively. They’ll be able to perform specialized tasks, whether it’s building regulatory risk models or predicting and preventing criminal activities like fraud and money laundering.
Transportation and Navigation
Have you ever wondered how map services like Google Maps and Waze calculate the best routes from your location to a certain destination? Or how about the methods by which ridesharing applications like Uber and Lyft determine the price for your ride? If you guessed artificial intelligence and machine learning, then you are correct.
Google Maps, which acquired Waze from the Israeli company Waze Mobile in 2013, efficiently makes use of crowdsourced data from the latter in order to help commuters avoid traffic jams caused by roadwork, accidents, and other disturbances, while also providing estimated times of arrival. Uber, on the other hand, uses machine learning in its proprietary algorithms in order to predict which areas will have increased rider demands at which hours. This way, they are able to implement what they call surge pricing, a strategy in which ride prices are increased at certain locations and at certain hours in order to bring down rider demand while also encouraging more drivers to pick up riders from those locations.
Aviation
Aviation has always been an early adopter of AI technologies, and autopilot systems are one of them. Autopilot is a technology employed to control the flight path of an aircraft without constant intervention by a human agent. Although an autopilot system is not a complete substitute for human operators, it does help them significantly by allowing them to place their attention on other important aspects of aircraft operations, whether it’s monitoring weather conditions or reviewing and configuring instruments.
Surprisingly, autopilot systems have been in existence since the 1912, when the Sperry Corporation developed the first aircraft autopilot technology. Modern aviation AI systems, however, are much more advanced and are powered by computers—from coupled autopilot systems and full authority digital engine control systems to more recent developments such as digital cockpit assistants and next-generation autoflight systems that use machine learning to mimic expert pilots.
Without a shadow of doubt, artificial intelligence and machine learning will become more important in our daily lives as these technologies advance. What sort of challenges do you think AI will solve in the future?
Nations are rapidly transforming by leveraging on information and communication technologies (ICTs). The access to information and knowledge across the web enables new innovations and the creation of smart cities. Organisations and governments at all levels initiate ICT-driven programmes to stimulate innovation and address the needs of the key stakeholders. This results in radical changes in the way nations are organized. Continue reading “CFP for SI on Digital Nations – Smart Cities, Innovation & Sustainability in Information Systems Frontiers”
IIT Delhi announces the call for applications for the Executive Management Programme in Strategic Innovations, Digital Marketing, & Business Analytics, which is planned from 6th January 2018 – 10 June 2018, and Classes to be held on Weekends/National Holidays. This will be an extensive programme of a minimum of 150 contact hours spread over 6 months. Continue reading “Executive Management Programme in Strategic Innovation, Digital Marketing and Business Analytics”
Sneak Peek: The Proceedings of IFIP – I3E 2017 in LNCS, Springer are now coming out soon. We on behalf of the conference committee are thankful to all the members who have contributed their articles here in this edition of IFIP conference. Continue reading “Proceedings of IFIP – I3E 2017 in LNCS, Springer”
Since its inception in the 1970s, computer-aided design or CAD has been an invaluable tool for designers. CAD programs have since helped advance a wide range of industries, from engineering, architecture, and mechanics to video game development, movie animation, and even fashion design. Continue reading “4 Important Advantages of Computer-Aided Design”
By combining your automated error monitoring activities with the rest of your IT team’s efforts, you have the unique opportunity of boosting your app performance much further than you could by focusing solely on manual performance tracking one method and exclude the automated one. Continue reading “How to Use Error Monitoring Tools to Boost App Performance”
Recently SBI slashed interest rates and introduced a two-tier interest system for savings accounts, whereby savings accounts with less than 1 crore deposits will incur just 3.5% (this is a drop from 4%, which is the continued rate for deposits over 1 crore) The reason given behind the change was that, a decline in Inflation must be met with a corresponding decline in the savings rate. Continue reading “Make your Money work in your Interest”
IIT Delhi announces the call for applications for the Executive Management Programme in Strategic Innovations, Digital Marketing, & Business Analytics, which is planned from 6th January 2018 – 10 June 2018, and Classes to be held on Weekends/National Holidays. This will be an extensive programme of a minimum of 150 contact hours spread over 6 months. Continue reading “Executive Management Programme in Strategic Innovations, Digital Marketing, & Business Analytics in IIT Delhi, 2018”
Many online entrepreneurs create websites to reflect the products and services that they sell as well as their mission statements or overall income goals. As such, the website you create for your company will understandably look and function differently than the websites that belong to other businesses.
Continue reading “Customized Services for Your Online Business”
Of all the inventions that truly revolutionised modern life, the Internet surely ranks as one of the top contenders. Combined with automation workflows powered by analytics in the backend, technology has revolutionized the banking experience for all customers, especially those with NRI accounts and FCNR accounts, which are less accessible physically. Banking today is less of a financial business and more of a technology business, and no wonder, the focus of investors is so high in the Fintech industry. Continue reading “The internet has revolutionized digital banking for individuals”
Establishing an online presence with a website for a business is all about one thing—converting an audience into customers. To make that more likely, every aspect of the website should be focused towards that goal, including its very design. Web design is not just about looks, but also how it directs the users’ overall experience with the website. Therefore, to have a website with a good conversion rate, it should have a web design that makes it easy for potential customers to get into whatever you are offering them. Here are some of the things you can do to make that happen. Continue reading “15 Design Hacks to Maximize Conversions”
Psychology Today makes a strong case for the importance of play, stating that having fun is serious business. It goes on by declaring the following:
Just as the child is father to the man, so childhood play fosters the flexibility of thought and deed, the sociability and the empathy our species will require in the trials ahead. Michael Gove, please take note: rote learning won’t turn back the floods. Children and adults need the space to mess around if we are to get out of the mess we are making for ourselves. Continue reading “PSA: It Is Vital That You Take Some Time for Fun”
Launched recently, a few months back, based on RBI guidelines, the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) offers an architecture and a set API standards to facilitate online payments more securely. The central UPI platform is developed and managed by the National Payments Corporation of India, which also manages other digital payment mechanisms like retail clearing platforms such as Immediate Payment Service (IMPS), National Automated Clearing House (NACH) and Cheque Truncation System (CTS). The move towards promoting UPI aims to simplify and provide a single interface across all NPCI systems so that they can facilitate seamless data interchange thereby facilitating superior user experiences across stakeholders like customers, service intermediaries and service providers. Continue reading “The Future of Digital Banking lies on UPI”
To keep federal resources from being abused by certain individuals or entities, the Office of Inspector General (OIG) has created the List of Excluded Individuals/Entities (LEIE). This list contains the names of people and groups that have been excluded from participating in healthcare programs that benefit directly or indirectly from government funds. The exclusion or sanction can be caused by a proven history of committing fraud, abusing medical supplies such as medicine and other medical equipment, and exploiting resources that could have otherwise been used for providing healthcare to patients. Continue reading “AUTOMATED SYSTEM + PEER REVIEW = STRONG SANCTION SCREENING”
Start-ups the world over are slowly and steadily changing the way the industry works. By identifying a problem and addressing it through their products and services, they are making a name and gaining an audience for themselves. Start-ups are also not afraid to take a few unconventional routes and take some bold decisions that others would term risky, and this is helping them gain an edge.
The logistics industry too is seeing its fair share of start-ups emerge. They are leveraging technology to solve a problem and are orchestrating innovation in the truck industry to fast gain a market share. From trying new concepts such as truck platooning to solving base-line problems such as allowing shippers to make freight shipping bookings online, they are doing it all and with flair. Continue reading “Significance of Digital Technology for Logistics Start Ups In 2017”
Background of disruption
Uber has disrupted the cab marketplace. It has changed the way people hail cabs. Technology has been a game-changer across industries, and the transportation industry is no different. Owing to the boom in e-commerce, there has been an urgent demand for better utilization of trucks. Some of the barriers that impede the growth of the logistics industry are the lack of using available trucks optimally and charging arbitrarily. Besides, as tracking routes taken by the trucks are not possible, they have no accountability to their logistics companies. Continue reading “Next Technology Innovation for the Logistics Industry”
Starting and developing a new business, as well as managing and expanding a well established one, is never easy. Now more than ever, businesses of all shapes and sizes are faced with countless risks that transform their work environment in ways that could make or break them with a single drop in the market. Continue reading “Is Source Code Escrow Worth the Cost?”
If you’re planning to get data replication software for your company, it’s not as simple as downloading a program and installing it. Since this is an enterprise-level solution, you will need to thoroughly vet your choice of software and choose the right vendor. To help you get started, here are seven tips: Continue reading “7 Tips to Choosing the Right Data Replication Software”
Until very recently, investing in an IT solution to support business operations meant spending thousands – sometimes even millions – on infrastructure, software, implementation, and other cost elements. Today, transforming into a digitalized business is easier than ever thanks to solutions being offered as services. Continue reading “Understanding the Top 3 Advantages of Software as a Service (SaaS) for Small Businesses”
There is likely no one on earth to whom we would willingly divulge all of our most intimate details. Sure, there are those with whom we would share our financial details with, likely a financial advisor. In the same way, we would hold nothing back from a doctor about our health. We tend to spread our secrets around. Different people know different intimate bits about us. But even our spouse doesn’t know everything. At the least, when we want to buy a gift for our partner, they have no idea what it is. There is always something we are holding back from someone. Continue reading “It’s Personal: How Technology Has Overtaken the Most Personal Aspects of Our Lives”
Of all the inventions that truly revolutionised modern life, the Internet surely ranks among the top 5 when it comes to utility. Its earlier use was restricted only to communication via email and Instant Messenger (IM), but slowly, it began to expand its reach into other areas as well. Continue reading “How technology has played a part in improving personal banking services”
A Gartner study released way back in 2015 stated that companies that “fully invested” in all kinds of personalization outfits by 2018 will outsell companies that haven’t by 20%. Now this is a huge number – irrespective of the fact that there is a large amount of B2B and B2C businesses functioning currently. And with 2018 just around the corner (well, not technically – it is still 8 months away), it is vital to embrace personalization faster than ever. Continue reading “Engage Your Customers At The Right Time With The Right Message: 2017 Personalization Must-Haves”
