sâmbătă, 18 aprilie 2015

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Humanoid Robot Wows Crowd, Reacts to Facial Expressions, Can Engage in Conversation and Make Eye Contact

Posted: 18 Apr 2015 07:06 PM PDT

"Ham" the humanoid robot drew crowds at a Hong Kong electronics event this week. Designed by US firm Hanson Robotics, Ham can recognize and respond to human facial expressions in natural way.

Please consider Aye, robot?
With his lively eyebrows, winkled cheeks and eyes that follow you around the room - this state-of-the-art robotic head is menacingly lifelike.

The head, designed by American robotics designer David Hanson, is able to answer basic questions and can also be used in the simulation of medical scenarios



Ham is currently on exhibit at the Global Sources spring electronics show at AsiaWorld Expo - the largest event of its kind in the world, with more than 4,000 booths displaying the latest gadgets.

The head is created with malleable material called Frubber using soft-bodied mechanical engineering and nanotechnology.

It contains realistic pores that measure just 4 to 40 nanometers across (there are 10million nanometers in one centimetre).

Using specialised software the machine can recognise and respond to a number of human facial expressions in a natural way.



According to Hanson Robotics's website, the humanoids can actually see your face, make eye contact with you, and understand speech to 'engage you in witty dialogue'.

Such reactions are a major feat of engineering, according to chief designer David Hanson, the founder and and president of Hanson Robotics.
Questions on Ham

Do you find this amazing, creepy, amazingly creepy, fascinating, or something else?

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot
Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific.

Productivity, Robots, China, Growth

Posted: 18 Apr 2015 11:36 AM PDT

Congratulations. You are more productive than ever. Just don't expect to be paid more for it. In reality, some machine is doing all that for you.



Japan Times reports Robots Leave Behind Chinese Factory Workers
According to the International Federation of Robotics, an association of academic and business robotics organizations, China bought approximately 56,000 of the 227,000 industrial robots purchased worldwide in 2014 — a 54 percent increase on 2013. And in all likelihood, China is just getting started. Late last month, the government of Guangdong Province, the heart of China's manufacturing behemoth, announced a three-year program to subsidize the purchase of robots at nearly 2,000 of the province's — and thus, the world's — largest manufacturers. Guangzhou, the provincial capital, aims to have 80 percent of its factories automated by 2020.

The government's involvement in this process shouldn't come as a surprise. The Chinese government (nationally, and in Guangdong) has long wanted to shift the country's manufacturing away from low-quality products that are manually assembled and toward higher-value ones — like automobiles, household appliances and higher-end consumer electronics — that require the precision of automation.

And it's no secret that demographics aren't on the side of China's traditional, labor-driven factories. Urbanization, population control policies, and cultural shifts have pushed China's average birth rate below those in more developed countries like the United States. Meanwhile, as a result of growing urban affluence, workforce participation rates are in decline, especially among women. Together, these factors are pushing wages upward, with an average annual increase of 12 percent since 2001. That trend offers plenty of incentive to factory owners and government officials to pursue automation.

Of course, what looks sensible from the perspective of the economic planner's office is more distressing from the factory floor. In March, Caixin, a Chinese business magazine, reported that Midea, a major Chinese manufacturer of air-conditioners and other appliances, plans to cut 6,000 of its 30,000 workers in 2015 to make way for automation. By 2018, it will cut another 4,000. What will happen to those and the millions of other low skill workers who will be displaced by the shift?

When Foxconn, the contract manufacturer for many Apple products, announced in 2011 that it was beginning a three-year program to replace some of its workers with as many as 1 million robots, the company said it was doing so out of a "desire to move workers from more routine tasks to more value-added positions in manufacturing such as R&D." But even if those intentions were sincere, Foxconn never gave any indication that it would have enough higher-skilled positions to employ every displaced iPhone assembler.

Still, it's easy to see how China's millions of low-skill workers might still be left with an uncomfortable sense of impending obsolescence — a sense not unknown to their working class counterparts in more developed economies.

Their best hope is the simple fact that China's economy continues to grow. True, at a projected 7 percent for 2015, the country is not growing as fast as a decade ago. But that should be plenty fast enough for China's shrinking labor force to find other opportunities, and avoid competing — for now — with China's inevitable robot workforce.
Growth Hope Not the Answer

If China's best hope is growth, then China has little hope.

Two to three percent growth is the best China can hope for, on average, over the next decade or so. Growth in robots though, is here to stay.

Chinese growth (global growth too) is headed one way, lower, and at a faster pace than most think. The key problems are debt, demographics, and asset bubbles.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot
Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific.
Publicat de 1 la 23:14 0 comentarii

RIMC 2015 Key Takeaways

RIMC 2015 Key Takeaways

Link to White.net » Blog

RIMC 2015 Key Takeaways

Posted: 16 Apr 2015 05:22 PM PDT

RIMC2015

Today Daniel Bianchini will be live blogging and tweeting from the RIMC conference over in Iceland. To make things easier we have organised the sessions by topic so that you can click on the internal anchor below.

We will be updating throughout the day, although we are one hour behind the UK.

Content & Social

Speaker: Theo Cooper – Untold Agency – Emotional landscapes: the importance of storytelling and content in the travel industry

A lot of lip service is currently being paid to storytelling in marketing but it's time for the marketing world to put its money where its mouth is. Charting a course through a diverse set of reference points including personal experience, ancient history and the latest statistics this is about looking for the emotional heart of storytelling in an increasingly data driven world.

  • Story telling isn’t new, it has always been here, it has just become more of a buzzword.
  • Tell relevant, emotional stories.
  • We have been blind sided by technology – Story telling is catching up.
  • The medium doesn’t replace the message.
  • Stories are how we communicate, it’s not content.
  • A combination of technology and emotion is how you tell a story. It’s not always just about twitter or facebook.
  • “Agencies say they want funny, but they don’t pick up the phne to me..” – Jimmy Carr. If you want a great joke get a comedian, if you want a great story hire a story teller.
  • Build trust by being authoriative, using the best story tellers and resources.
  • Content that works online is those that teach, which is seen across all verticals.
  • Show don’t tell, render it visible and catch the essence of the story.
  • Use your content to create experiences, not just describe.
  • Take your time. Content strategy doesn’t happen overnight.
  • A genuine content strategy looks beyond just the product, but encompasses what works. It takes time, and you need to get buy in from those brands.
  • Don’t try to be too descriptive, and lose the story that you are telling.
  • Brands are not being bold enough to make content strategy work.
  • If the data is telling you the story, then don’t fight it.

Twitter: @untoldagency

Speakers: Meri Sørgaard & Kim Herlung – SMFB Engine – The consumer's decision is always on!

It is all about engaging the right people, for the right reasons, at the right time with relevant content and never loosing eyesight's of the KPI's that you set.
During this session, we want to illustrate that creativity is a force multiplier in a digital world. It is contagious; it communicates and yields fantastic results

  • Provide the right content at the right time, in the right place.
  • You should be “Think[ing] less like an advertiser and more like a publisher”
  • “Every customer is different, every working relations need to be tailor made”
  • Communication, cooperation, dedication and appreciation ensure the client gets what they need from the campaign.
  • “Unique process for every single costomer requires equal interest fomr all sides”
  • Success is not always about a number, but hitting the business objectives

 

Twitter: @smfbengin

Speaker: Emma Lundgren – Unruly – The ten commandments of social video

Want to hit that social sweet spot? Follow the ten commandments of social video! Unruly guides you through the do’s and don’ts of content creation, distribution and helps you navigate through the digital djungle.

Speaker: Takin Kroop – The New Customer Journey

With the emergence of the social networks, businesses are now possible to talk and interact with their target group on a new level. Takin Kroop will take us through how the Facebook has changed the customer journey – and how you can leverage it to make it work for you.

Speaker: Alex Moss – FireCask – Search track The Other Side of Optimisation – Internal Productivity & Efficiency

Whilst some talks at RIMC will focus on SEO strategy itself, any project is hindered without the correct management. My presentation will focus on how to best use online tools in order to manage your client or in-house projects in a more efficient and collaborative manner. As well as this, improving your own businesses’ productivity will produce better quality work within shorter timescales.

  • Everyone in general is on a device all the time. Whether it be a phone, laptop and/or smart watch
  • Always being on means that you build relationships and a community.
  • Use @feedly to control noise pollution, but use RSS Bot and Squirt.io to help you read quicker.
  • For leads, you can use Salesforce or Capsule, but Gmail and Chrome is much easier!
  • Use Mighty Text to send text messages directly from your inbox
  • Use mail track app to track email delivery like What’s App
  • Remember the Milk is a great tool for keeping your to-do list organised.
  • Use Rapportive to get more information about the person you’re emailing  & Boomerang for automation of email.
  • Use Slack to improve internal communication. It is easy to create channels, private groups, and to manage.
  • You could use Excel for Project management but Alex recommends either Trello or Wrike.
  • For transfer large files you should be using We Transfer or Infinit.
  • To manage your code better use Sublime Text, BitBucket and SourceTree from Atlassian

Alex’s slides are below, where all the tools he mentioned are.

Twitter: @alexmoss

Michael added unroll.me as a tool that combines all your newsletters into one and provides a single email at the end of each day.

 

Speaker: Sante Achille – Achille – Structured Data: Using Schema.org Markup To Take your Website to the Next Level

Learn how to markup correctly any website using schema and go far beyond traditional Rich Snippets. See real life examples in a number of fields (travel,
legal, the arts) and how content (not only items) can be marked up and offer to search engines detailed information on structure and shed light on semantic interconnections. Gain strategic insights and key takeaways on how to implement schema markup within an existing design and avoid "breaking it".

  • Entities can interact with other entities, which then means they can become linked. By telling a search engine what these entities are, it can become even more powerful.
  • You should be using microdata to provide the search engines with more of an understanding of what the page is communicating.
  • Use Schema.org to find the right mark-up for your business
  • You can test your implementation using Google’s testing tool https://developers.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool/
  • Make sure you are constantly testing your data types.
  • Use schema-creator.org to have build your mark-up.

Twitter: @sjachille

Speaker: Peter Handley – theMediaFlow – Stay on Top of your Tech SEO

Peter Handley, Director of theMediaFlow, will be letting you into the trade secrets of technical brilliance at RIMC 2015 to help you master the ability to drive traffic and conversions. His talk will give an insight into all the top tools and tips you need from start to finish to keep the technical SEO of your website optimal

  • Technical audits are not the last time you should be checking the technical aspects of your SEO.
  • Use ScreamingFrog when crawling websites.
  • Make sure that page integrity is maintained. If you have broken links, then fix it. If you have internal redirects, then update your links.
  • Check your duplicate content through www. vs non-www, forwards slash vs non-forward slash. Use copyscape.
  • You should be checking GWT regularly and actioning any issues identified.
  • For checking pagespeed use Pingdom, Web Page Test and Google Pagespeed Insights.
  • If you are taking your site down for maintenance then make sure you return a 503 status code.


twitter: @ismepete

Speakers: Tejal Patel & Collette Easton – Microsoft/Linkdex – Consumer Status: Complicated!

Users search using a variety of language. Microsoft Mobile have a comprehensive and sophisticated view of this market through the large scale data analysis that Linkdex provides. This aggregated analysis helps Microsoft Mobile understand the most visible pages, people and publishers; the value of each and how much influence each has over those consumer experiences. This session will explore how.

 

Speaker: Lukasz Zelezny – uSwitch – Making Sense Of Your Analytics

Failures to interpret data can often create missed opportunities when brands become unable to make well-informed, insight driven actions. This session will show you how to develop best practices for data analysis; utilising analytics strategies and tactics that can better equip your brand to meet business objectives and develop effective future strategic actions.

 

  • The fear of bounce rate & effective visits – you cannot control all keywords you rank for, so can’t control bounce – @ismepete
  • Use effective visits as it represents a real quality of traffic and it’s value
  • Use effiect visits because it reflects on page optimisation
  • Undersatnd your business goals and KPIs before you are able report accurately.

 

twitter: @lukaszZelezny

 

Google & Mobile

Speaker: Gary Illyes – Google – Wearables, Mobile, and the Internet as we Know it

“When I ask my phone what are the top attractions in Iceland, it talks back to me and amongst others, it suggests the Golden Circle. Driving around I use Google Maps to navigate which also tells me in real time which roads are inaccessible, and when we are at Gullfoss, looking for information about the waterfall I specifically look for results that lead to pages optimised for my mobile device. The internet is changing, it’s changing fast, and you must be prepared.”

  • “Would you leave your home without your mobile phone” – Only one person said yes!
  • Google have been preaching for 7 years to have a mobile optimised website.
  • On the 21st April, Google will be making the biggest update to their algorithm since Panda and Penguin by updating their stance on Mobile.
  • Any pages that are not mobile friendly on the 21st April will be demoted within the SERPs
  • This is a real-time algorithm update and when a change is made, it will be instant once re-crawled.
  • Google will be creating an FAQs for Mobile, but this is not ready yet.

Twitter: @methode

Search & Display

Speaker: Christopher Engman – Vendemore – What is Account Based Marketing and why is it growing so fast?

Experiences from 100+ Fortune 500 companies in 6 continents How do you combine Account Based Marketing, Marketing Automation and Content Marketing? Which are the top KPIs used to evaluate marketing supporting complex B2B sales?

  • Customer memory is short and unreliable which makes relying on internal selling risky.
  • The customers memory dwindles throughout the sales process.
  • Account based marketing is for those that have long decision proicess – Months to years
  • Account based marketing is for those that have 40 to several hundred stakeholders
  • Account based marketing is for those that have high risk in the decision
  • Companies isolated in media by IP-numbers

 

Speaker: Russell McAthy – BlueGlass – Buzzwords Suck! Attribution, Performance Reporting and Competitor Analysis under the microscope

The world of digital business is changing and the ability to understand how consumers are finding, engaging and purchasing from your brand is difficult.
The digital landscape allows us to track many things – however buzzwords are making things complicated not simpler.
In this session Russell will discuss a few buzzwords that we come across in a digital marketing world and how to action change in your organisation to make data led decisions. Attribution, Performance Reporting and Competitor/Market Analysis will come under the microscope and you will leave with 3 key takeaways to go back to the office with insights not just data.

It would be great to hear your thoughts on the comments above either below or over on twitter @danielbianchini

The post RIMC 2015 Key Takeaways appeared first on White.net.
Publicat de 1 la 05:09 0 comentarii

Seth's Blog : "What have you got?"

"What have you got?"

The wrong answer to this question is often, "what do you need?"

When someone asks what you have to offer, when they ask for a menu or a price list or some indication of what they can choose from, it's tempting to ask what they want, because maybe, just maybe, you'll figure out how to make that for them.

When you act like a short-order cook at a diner, people rarely ask you for something interesting. Instead of trying to figure out what will get us picked, we might figure out if there's a way we can sell people on dreaming about what we have instead.

       

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