Category Archives: Digital

A-Z of Digital – B is for Blockchain

27 Tuesday Jun 2017

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LearningFollowing on from my blog post outlining an A-Z of Digital, here is “B is for Blockchain”

What is a Blockchain. Well there are lots of articles on Blockchains that explain them, so rather than repeat, I will reference a some colleagues blog posts.

A blockchain– originally block chain – is a distributed database that is used to maintain a continuously growing list of records, called blocks. Each block contains a timestamp and a link to a previous block. A blockchain is typically managed by a peer-to-peer network collectively adhering to a protocol for validating new blocks. By design, blockchains are inherently resistant to modification of the data. Once recorded, the data in any given block cannot be altered retroactively without the alteration of all subsequent blocks and the collusion of the network. Functionally, a blockchain can serve as “an open, distributed ledger that can record transactions between two parties efficiently and in a verifiable and permanent way. The ledger itself can also be programmed to trigger transactions automatically.”

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockchain

One common train of thought that can occur when talking about Blockchains is to also think about Bitcoins. Often associated due to Bitcoins using Blockchains for their transactions, there are other uses for Blockchains.  A colleague Neil Fagan covers this point in his blog on Bitcoins and Blockchains

Blockchains are secure by design (another colleague Faisal Siddiqi discusses this in his blog post Blockchains and Birthdays). The ledger method makes their use ideal in many industry sectors including, Healthcare, Banking, Insurance and Legal where transactions can be time stamped, verified automatically, encrypted and trusted. This helps reduce the amount of fraud with transactions being proved. Some of these verticals are covered in a number of posts by colleagues listed below with some excerpts from their blogs:

Exploring Blockchain in Banking

Blockchain or, more precisely, Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) is currently one of the hot topics in the banking industry.

Its main focus is on clearing and settlement, where DLT can reduce reconcile efforts, address liquidity needs and accelerate processing. Several reports and studies suggest benefits and substantial savings – in particular, when DLT is applied in financial market infrastructures spanning multiple jurisdictions. But there are also a number of open points, not least in the legal and regulatory realms.

On the blockchain, nobody knows you’re a fridge

A compelling scenario could be an insurance policy blockchain smart contract with multiple transactions throughout its lifecycle. An initial purchase transaction would trigger an automatic deposit of monetary assets into the contract. A second transaction might add documentation proving ownership and value of real world property being insured. Subsequently, a loss notice event from an external claims system might trigger a Claim transaction which would execute autonomous Verification and Payout smart contracts. The policyholder would not need to file a claim, and the insurer would not have to administer it. This would reduce the potential for fraud, decrease administration costs and simplify the claims process.

Decentralization – The Napster-Metallica connection

In addition to the elegant technology behind distributed blockchain applications, there is a solid business proposition to be made. With Bitcoin having successfully demonstrated the decentralization of money, it becomes feasible to consider that all kinds of other transactions can also be decentralized on blockchains with similar benefits. Decentralized applications are being developed on blockchains for tracking the provenance of diamonds, simplifying interoperability of electronic health records, adding IoT smarts to the power grid and disrupting a range of industries with these other fascinating use cases.

Blockchain: Trusting the Genie in the Lamp

In some cultures, a handshake is as good as a contract. In some situations, emotional intelligence plays a role in shaping how a person responds to another person, and the trust level you build. In the blockchain world, this interaction will be unnecessary; a person will simply trust another through the use of a software program.

Additional Reading:

A to Z of Digital

19 Monday Jun 2017

Posted by in Automation, Cobotics, Digital, Innovation, IoT, Machine Learning, Open Source, Programming, Robotics, Security, Social Media, Tools, Wearable Tech

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ABCBeing Digital, Journey to Digital, Digital, 21st Century Humans, are phrases that are common place in many conversations around business and technology. But what does it mean to be “Digital”.  This is a wide subject to cover in a single blog post, so here is an A-Z of Digital to help.

I will break these down in further blog posts going into each subject in more detail.

A – Automation

The manual tasks of today should be the automated tasks of tomorrow, achieved using tools that interface with systems using API’s and commands that join them together to carry out tasks. From turning your heating on using an application to automatically carrying out a set of repetitive tasks to allow other more complex tasks to be undertaken.

B- Blockchain

A blockchain is a distributed database that is used to maintain a continuously growing list of records, called blocks. Each block contains a timestamp and a link to a previous block. A blockchain is typically managed by a peer-to-peer network collectively adhering to a protocol for validating new blocks. By design, blockchains are inherently resistant to modification of the data. (Wikipedia).

C – Cobots

Cobots are Robots that are adapted and programmed to work and interact with humans in various tasks and levels of activity. Imagine you’re working buddy is a cobot that can perform tasks hand in hand with you, take over if you need to do something else, increase its speed of completing the tasks, then sense your return and slow to the speed your working at.

D – Digital

“Digital” is an umbrella word that covers many different topics. There are many definitions available, but for me this is about how we unlock the capabilities available today and use them to better our lives and society. From a business view this is about growth and transforming through processes and technology. Being Digital is not necessarily about having the latest gadgets, but more around how you are using them and what you do.

E – Evolution

Evolution covers the advancements and new technologies that are being discovered and created every day.  There are lots of new ideas and products coming out of sites such as crowdfunding and crowdsourcing sites, some work however some do fail. These sites are worth tracking to see what developments are coming around the corner.

F – Fitness Trackers

Fitness trackers are probably one of the most common wearable that is available today and have been around for a number of years.  Trackers have developed to include a wide range of functionality including heart rate, blood pressure, location, altitude making the data useful to the health and medical industries to understand how we lead our lives.

G – Geolocation

Geolocation ties into a lot of the items in this list and provides a basis for providing location and tracking capabilities for devices and applications. It is also used to locate and pinpoint where users are. Some services cannot be consumed these days without agreeing to having this information shared with a site. The most common type of application in wide use is a Sat Nav.

H – Hybrid

Hybrid is used as a term to describe a mix of public and private services, such as a Hybrid Cloud where services can be mixed between traditional on premise/data centre services and cloud services, providing some control or orchestration layer across both to allow users to consume based on policy or requirements.

I – IoT

IoT (Internet of Things) is where physical things are connected by the internet using embedded sensors, software, networks and electronics. This allows the items to be managed, controlled and reported on. There are many reports estimating the number of IoT devices likely to be connected in the future, these are between 20 and 50 Billion devices by the year 2020.

J – Jacking

Jacking is a term used when you plug into something. Body Jacking is a growing area where the body is being used from generating power through movement to implanting chips to interact with the environment such as open a door or unlock a computer. This also covers Bioables which collect data on your body such as glucose levels using sensors that penetrate into the under the skin.

K – Knowledge

Understanding what is going on in your streams, market places and industries is a big task. Lots of information coming in on a daily basis – drinking from the fire hose, not able to consume it all. Creating your Personal Knowledge Management System will help navigate the sea of information and pick out what is key to your situation and what can be dropped.

L – Legal

With the increasing about of things interacting with our daily lives, the area of Legal and Security play a big part. There are a number of important questions to ask – Where is your data being stored and who actually owns it. Is your data secure and have you implemented all the right controls? What does Legistlation such as GDPR mean to you?

M – Machine Learning

Machine Learning (ML) allows a computer to learn and act without being explicitly programmed with that knowledge. An example of Machine Learning Algorithm is a web search engine that brings up a number of results based on your search criteria and shows which could be most relevant to what you are looking for.

N –  Networks

Networks and connectivity form the backbone of the systems in use today. Using a number of different types of network from Cellular (3G, 4G) to traditional networking and futures of 5G and Neural Networks speeding up how we create, consume and process data.

O – Organisation

Infrastructure as Code looks at making hardware being able to controlled at a code level, allowing Microservices and the ability to consume capability quickly. The next stage is the Organisation as Code. A great example of an Organsation as Code is Uber, building services and the supporting organisation in the cloud that allows it to be consumed anywhere and the drivers to login and become part of that organistation for the period that they are employed.

P – Programming

Everyone should learn to code. Learning to code (Programme) in a language like Scratch, Python, Java, C, etc. The ability to code will allow someone to understand how they can automate a task using tools and API’s.

Q – Quantum Computing

A computer which makes use of the quantum states of subatomic particles to store information (Dictionary). Quantum Computers are being developed with the ability to compute data at an exponential rate allowing for quick computing of complex data.

R – Robots

The vision of Robots has been around in early Science Fiction and are very much a reality today. From an automated manufacturing plant to a robot to help you shop and carry out tasks. The field of robotics is advancing bring in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to boost their capabilities and means to learn, self-think and complete tasks.

S – Social

Being social is not just around how you use the tools and what you tweet, but also what you don’t say and being Social Media savvy on your communications. There is a large number of social tools available with some well-known such as Twitter, Facebook and Linked in to those not so. It is also about how you organise your life with these tools and use them for productivity and security.

T – Twenty First Century Digital

The term 21st Century Digital applies to the current century and how you are using Digital to better your organisation and yourself. The LEF (Leading Edge Forum) has information that covers these two topics as the 21st Century Organisation and 21st Century Human.

U – Usability

The usability and user experience of devices is key.  Understandoing and being able to interact with devices is important. If a someone can’t use the application or device they may start looking for an alternative that they can use.

V – Visionables

Visionables moves the wearables market to technologies that help enhance our experiences through what we see. This covers things like Smart Glasses, Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and Mixed Reality.

W – Wearables

The field of wearables is expanding with more ways to attach sensors and record data about our daily lives. This typically covers anything that you can wear or attach to your body and in the main interfaces with a mobile to be the central data point, although many devices operate separately and can transmit data themselves.

X – Xperience

Xperience covers how we use these technologies and advancements to shape our lives and the effects that they have on them. How we have moved from the days of the first computer to today’s wearable and interactive society.

Y – Yottabyte

Yottabyte is a term used to define an amount of storage.  The prefix yotta indicates multiplication by the eighth power of 1000 or 1024 (Wikipedia). The amount of storage used today is seeing huge daily growth with systems currently using petabytes of data. The trends will increase the amount of storage needed to hold data.

Z – Zabeta

Zabeta is a noun meaning Tarrif or Tax. As we move to a more automated society there is a view point that automation and robots should be Taxed.

This is my current A to Z and some of the entries may be different in your version. Do you agree with the list? Whats in your “A to Z of Digital”?

 

How much trust should we give apps with device permissions

13 Tuesday Jun 2017

Posted by in Digital, Security, Tools

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spyware-2319403_640Have you every gone to the app store and just installed something on there because it looks good and something you want to look at, or purchased a product and then installed the app without thinking or checking it out first? Lots of people do, but do they really know what is going on under the covers?

How often do you install an application onto your personal device without checking the permissions that it requires or know what the app has access to and what its doing?

These are relevant questions that we should be asking ourselves as we become more connected and joined together sharing our personal data. This is a subject that I have written about before on app permissions and is still relevant today.

I have recently been asked to look at a fitness braclet that someone had who wanted to install the app. What struck me about this app that basically allows you to control a basic fitness tracker was the permissions to allow access to the Camera and Microphone, when there is clearly no reason within the product or app to have them. Is this a lazy programmer who hasnt set the right permissions on the app or is there something else going on.

Invite

One of the great things I like about mobile devices now is the ability to actually turn these off myself.

So do I want my coffee app to know where I am all the time, maybe not, but I do know that it may need access to the storage to download the latest offers and store those discount vouchers.

Of course stopping a permission may cause application issues, however the important thing is that a user can say no.

So when was the last time you checked the apps installed on your device and their permissions?

Voice Assistants and The Letterbox Problem

16 Sunday Apr 2017

Posted by in Digital, IoT, Productivity, Security, Tools

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microphone-338481_960_720There are lots of voice activated tools and services now available from software on your PC and in your car to physical hardware you can place around your home. These devices are becoming everyday occurrences, “Alexa, whats the weather”, “Siri, recipe for  Chocolate Cake” (too many to list).

The two main ways to control them is via a button press then speaking such as my car to get it into a listening state, or they are always in a listening state awaiting a set of specific interaction commands, such as the applications name. There is at least a turn of listening mode.

However with all these devices and software, there is a distinct lack of security around voice recognition and lack of interaction security. For instance a recent incident where a TV show caused a number of Dolls Houses to be purchased.

We are busy connecting these devices to all sorts of home automation to make it easier to do things, but how many stop to think of what I term as: “The Letterbox Problem”. This is where you have automated your home to a level that includes things like your lights, powered items and your house alarm. As you walk into your house you can say voice commands to turn on lights, put the kettle on and turn off the alarm. The Letterbox Problem happens when someone has the ability to literally shout through your letterbox and activate or deactivate items in your house. To a would be thief, turning lights on and off will check to see if anyone is at home first before going for the alarm.

There is a security challenge here is to ensure that a level of voice recognition and security controls are in place. Voice recognition by itself is not good enough as I’m sure you’ve heard an impressionist mimic a celebrity on a TV or Radio show.

I would like to see a form of two factor authentication on a voice system so it can be sure its me before it carries out the task. Voice may be one of these, but something else like a token code or app on the phone may be a solution.

There a number of basic steps you can take at the moment to help protect yourself such as:

  • Think about the systems you are connecting the voice device to. Can it compromise your security if anyone else uses it.
  • Use the mute button on devices or turn of listening mode when not in use.
  • Keep the devices updated with the latest patches and firmware.
  • Use good password security practices on any sensitive systems you use (ie Bank Accounts, Paypal etc).
  • Use strong passwords on any associated accounts to the voice assistants, (ie Amazon, Google, Apple etc).
  • If your system allows it, clear out its cache and old activities on regular basis so they can’t be replayed against you.
  • Don’t have a system listening when the TV or Radio is on, especially when your out of the room. You may end up with a new dolls house.

 

Rise of the Cobot

17 Friday Mar 2017

Posted by in Cobotics, Digital, Robotics

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CobotRobotics have been around for many years, with the idea of robots helping humans being depicted in Science Fiction in early books, comics and films.  Robots have been evolving with design and use as we have been working with them to carry out various tasks.

So what is a cobot? Wikipedia defines Cobots as:

A cobot or co-robot (from collaborative robot) is a robot intended to physically interact with humans in a shared workspace. This is in contrast with other robots, designed to operate autonomously or with limited guidance, which is what most industrial robots were up until the decade of the 2010s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobot

Robots have often been seen as a replacement for humans in many roles, however cobots are not, instead working with and interacting with humans in various tasks and levels. Cobots have been around for the past few years, mainly in industrial workplaces such as manufacturing , automotive and supply chains. Their evolution is now bringing cobots into many other workplaces and use cases.

The Automotive industry is probably the best example of using robots that then move to cobots in the workplace, working with humans in assembling cars. The future of the automated car is turning the vehicle into a cobot and will probably be one of the cobots people with interact with the most in the future.

Advancements in cobots are coming from the universities and private companies developing new ways of interacting and enhancing tasks/jobs such as:

  • Automotive
  • Manufacturing
  • Healthcare
  • Prosthetics
  • Workplace

Imagine your working buddy is a cobot that can perform tasks hand in hand with you, take over if you need to do something else, increase its speed of completing the tasks, then sense your return and slow to the speed your working at.

The increase of cobots in the workplace does have an impact on legalities in the workplace and many questions still remain unanswered. There are discussions on robot/cobot rights and should they pay taxes (the companies that use them).

There is a growing place for cobots within the workplace and we will be working with them more and more as new cobots and ways of working are produced, however  it may be a while until we get to a fully AI/Cobotic Workplace.

 

References / Further Reading

Classification of “Cobotic Systems” for “Industrial Applications”

Meet the cobots: humans and robots together on the factory floor

High Performance Cobotics

Man and machine: The new collaborative workplace of the future

The robots are coming: legalities in the workplace

http://www.hrmagazine.co.uk/hr-most-influential/profile/the-robots-are-coming-legalities-in-the-workplace

Boston Dymanics Robots

 

Digital Tools- Voice Activated Assistants

20 Friday Jan 2017

Posted by in Digital, Innovation, Productivity, Tools

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blogger-336371_640Does the Voice Activated Assistant have a place in the business?   Yes it does. There are lots of voice activated assistants available to help us with our daily tasks. Some are built into mobile devices and some are purchased as specific items. The key is that they all respond to commands and can interact with other devices in our lives.

These devices are already within most business today, but may not being used to their full potential.

“<Insert Name of Assistant> turn on the lights” – providing that the assistant has been linked to the lighting system it will turn on the lights as requested.

Voice programs and activation have been around for along time, but have only recently become more mainstream with the advancements in the speech algorithms and technology to recognise the various dimensions and variants of the human voice. Also the ability to respond in a human voice. Brings back memories of playing around with Dr Spaitso (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Sbaitso) or watching the film War Games and wanting a talking computer “Would you like to play a game….”.

The biggest market at the moment is the consumer market with devices such as the Amazon Echo being used to connect a myriad of devices and services to build a connected home. There are a number of other assistants out there on devices that can do the same, such as Siri, Cortana, AVIC, and Google Now on the market. There are lots of others available as well.

There are also lots of projects and wishes to have an AI Assistant similar to J.A.R.V.I.S from Marvel’s Iron Man. Such a project is being carried out by Mark Zuckerberg. https://www.facebook.com/notes/mark-zuckerberg/building-jarvis/10154361492931634/

For some having devices around that are constantly listening can be a security issue, however in the main having a voice activated assistants are becoming more common place in every day lives.

“Google says 20 percent of mobile queries are voice searches” http://searchengineland.com/google-reveals-20-percent-queries-voice-queries-249917. This figure will be higher including all the assistants.

This trend is already seeing businesses building web based services to be voice friendly and allow access to data by looking at the type of natural questions someone may ask. Typically a voice search will take longer than a typed search as there is an additional processing step around the voice translation to search, however this is speeding up with the advancements in the programming and algorithms used.

Another example of a business application for voice assistants is where an operator is working with their hands and needs to get a part delivered or get answers to a question about the task they are doing.

In an office the assistant could be used to raise a ticket on the help desk AI, which in turn will try to solve the issue before raising a ticket for a human operator to assist.

Voice has been around for a long time and the future will see it mature to be a more personalised assistant with the ability to interact by recognising the user and have the ability to be called different names, removing the current standard activation names. Linking voice, business systems, data science, AI and machine learning will see a future of being able to ask natural language voice questions to the device about the business/data and obtain a natural language response from the system.