On working almost for free

Someone I did some freelance work for a few years back contacted me to inquire about writing for his current company. The exchange on LinkedIn messaging went like this:

Hi Ariella, Not sure if you remember me from my ___ days but I am looking for a freelancer to help out with blog posts across two products here at ____. I don't remember what your pricing was but I do remember that you made my life a whole lot easier. Can you send me what you were asking?

 I assured him that I did remember him and asked what kind of articles he had in mind. His response:

• product focused
• and a bit of thought leadership
• Just so I can make sure, does $50 for an 800 word article work?

I wrote back:

I'm assuming you dropped a zero there.

Surprisingly enough, he said:

I did not. Our content director informed me that is what we normally pay for an 800 word article. Understood if that is way too cheap. 

That was far below my rate even when I first started freelancing (and he knows it's a tiny fraction of what was paid by his previous company, which is why I had assumed he dropped a zero).  But I am not one to throw away opportunities in a snit. I said my daughter may do it for that rate. After all, she is willing to work for free for college internships. So I'll let her take a crack at it. At least, it will be a learning experience and resume builder for her.

Related posts http://writewaypro.blogspot.com/2016/05/writing-for-free-is-not-deductible.html

 http://writewaypro.blogspot.com/2016/05/an-idiots-guide-for-writers.html
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/college-internships-real-story-ariella-brown-phd-1

AI for customer service

AI is changing our everyday interactions. What once required a human rep can now be handled by a

(Image: panuwat phimpha/Shutterstock)

virtual assistant whose programming allows customer problems to be solved more quickly.

A recent Venturebeat article declared, "AI chatbots are the next big shift in customer service." Those of us of a certain generation expect to wait on a line or on the phone for a person to take care of our customer service issues. But the generation that favors texts to calls has come to have different expectations.

Read more in  Why Machine Learning Can Improve Customer Service

The eyes have it with AI

The camera is already starting to replace the keyboard,” asserts Netra CEO, Richard Lee. The content that will dominate digital information flow will be visual, and for that reason image recognition is becoming a key component of marketing.

His company derives insight from visual data, fostering understanding of how consumers engage with brands through engagement with images. Netra  is a leader in visual intelligence and search that uses machine learning to help marketers make sense of imagery on social media.

Some brands are already using image recognition to connect with and effectively market to their customers. They include Neiman Marcus. The upscale retailer offers its customers the Snap. Find. Shop  app that enables them to use their phones to snap pictures of styles they like and find similar styles carried by the store.  The app is demonstrated here:

The app allows customers to bypass typing in description of the clothing and rely on the image alone to convey what they seek. That kind of search is what we will be seeing more of in future, according to Lee. 

Read more in AI Makes Visual Intelligence Possible

Renewables take to the waves

For major electronics OEMs, transitioning to renewable energy entails not only using it in their own factories but calling on those that supply components to do the same. Apple has done just that. As a result, many of its suppliers are turning to solar and wind power, and some are even reaching out to sea to get it. 

As Bloomberg recently reported, for its own operations, Apple can boast of using tapping into renewables for 96% of its own energy use. That includes not only the corporate offices Lisa Jackson, Apple's vice president in charge of sustainability and government affairs, says, but also “our data centers, our stores, even our distribution centers.” However, as she told Bloomberg Television, the company is resolved to do even better by “moving onto our supply chain.” 

As Apple posted in March, together with its suppliers, the company anticipates that by the end of next year, it “will be generating over 2.5 billion kilowatt hours per year of clean energy.” To put that in perspective, that is tantamount “to taking over 400,000 cars off the road for a year,”  the company said.

Apple’s goal of reaching 100% renewable energy for its production entails getting its suppliers to commit making the necessary changes for their energy sources. Apple now has seven supplier companies committed to renewable energy. Among them is Ibiden. It has the distinction of being the first company in Japan to commit to use only renewable energy in producing components for Apple.

Ibiden is set for renewable energy production that is anticipated to “produce over 12 MW of solar power — more than the energy they need for Apple manufacturing — and support Japan’s nationwide efforts to limit its carbon emissions.” In addition to standard facilities, Ibiden’s energy will come from “one of the largest floating solar photovoltaic systems in the country.” By floating the solar panels, energy can be harvested from the sun without taking up limited land space in Japan.

This trend of moving out to the water to harness renewable energy is also being applied to wind power.

Read more in 

Innovation in Renewable Energy Greens Supply Chain

Mother's Day Marketing

Public domain pic at http://www.publicdomainpictures.net/pictures/170000/velka/muttertag-14609069654cp.jpg

Motherhood may be priceless, but there actually is a price tag associated with Mother's Day. Given that the market for this particular holiday is expected to hit a record-high this year, savvy marketers have already put their brands in the game.

On the second Sunday in May, Americans take time out to show appreciation to their mothers, typically with cards, flowers, dinners out, and other assorted gifts. All that adds up to $23.6 billion, according to NRF's forecast.

In anticipation of this substantial spending occasion, you'd expect to see massive marketing campaigns. But it seems that brands are not doing quite as much as they could. I popped into Target and saw only minimal signs of the imminent holiday represented by a few Mother-themed mugs in the front section, as well as the usual cards.

I shared what I've seen with Mike McMaster, VP of Lead Generation at JumpCrew. He said he noticed the same at a mall he visited over the weekend. With the exception of Macy's, he observed very little Mother's Day marketing.

The stores who fail to address the upcoming holiday in their setups are missing out on “the two Ps in marketing,” McMaster says. That refers to “placement and promotion” with targeted positioning of merchandise that ties into the promotional theme of Mother's Day.

Read more in Mother's Day: Price Tags and Hashtags

AI Transforms Business Data Models

(Image: pixone/iStockphoto)

As big data continues to grow, extracting value from it calls for new tools.

Increasingly, businesses that rely on data to drive decisions are applying AI to surface actionable insight quickly and accurately.

Finding innovative solutions to the problems raised in data analytics, particularly with respect to adapting machine learning to credit scores, is what they've been working on for the past six years at Experian's DataLabs. The EVP and Global Head of the labs, Eric Haller, spoke to All Analytics about the new direction for predictive modeling.

Read more in

AI, Machine Learning Power Transformation

Google browser to block unacceptable ads

pic https://static.pexels.com/photos/48123/google-www-online-search-search-48123.png

How offensive or annoying is that? That's a real question for those in the business of assessing what types of ads viewers might consider beyond the pale: Especially now, when ads that don't make the cut may be blocked before any human sees them.

Ad blocking software is what many people rely on to stop annoying popups and noisy videos that play online when they want to watch or read something. However, those extensions required downloads and sometimes fail. They could prove far more effective if they are integral to the browser. Google has plans to do just that in Chrome, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

The standards Google would apply would be based on the research of the Coalition for Better Ads. Its Initial Better Ads Standards drew on over 25,000 consumer ratings of digital ad experiences in North America and Europe, this past March. 

Marketers who ignore the standards, thinking that it will only affect some of their ads, may suffer unanticipated consequences. According to the Journal, Chrome may keep out “all advertising that appears on sites with offending ads, instead of the individual offending ads themselves." Like the one bad apple, one bad ad can spoil the entire marketing barrel, which is a very high price to pay for poor judgement.

Read more in Google Chrome to Ride Shotgun on Unacceptable Ads

AR gets real and social

“We're making the camera the first augmented reality platform,” declared Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook's F8 developer conference. That's where he showed off some of the AR effects the social media giant is making accessible to anyone on a mobile device. Whether you want to break the boredom of breakfast by setting some virtual sharks to swim around your bowl, see people's faces replaced by emojis, or turn a tabletop into the site of a video game, you'll be able to do it with just your smart phone. You can hear him and see the effect in this Cnet clip:

Read more in

AR Takes Off on Facebook

Analytics for the Anderson Center for Autism

Concerns about retaining the staff prompted the Anderson Center for Autism to seek a tech

pic from http://www.happygreenbee.com/autism-spectrum-disorder-asd-facts-myths/

solution that was compatible with the center's people-first philosophy.

The Anderson Center for Autism is a nonprofit organization based in Staatsburg, N.Y. that operates a school and 100-acre residential campus comprising 20 buildings, as well as 25 adult houses across three counties. The center uses more than 400 desktops and data centers connected by fiber optics. The entire IT infrastructure has been in the cloud since 2012.

The picture for this organization was very different in 2001, when it was suffering from a lack of funding and inefficient processes, as well as high turnover. Then a new CEO took the helm and brought about a major transformation. Over the next decade, the center set up a cloud-based IT infrastructure and predictive analytics, which streamlined processes, cut down paperwork by 95 percent and reduced turnover significantly.

In 2003, Gregg Paulk was hired as the first IT manager for the center and was tasked with building out the infrastructure. He recalls, "We were in the dark ages."

- See more at: http://www.baselinemag.com/cloud-computing/cloud-mobile-and-analytics-help-retain-employees.html#sthash.LGb5pYyb.dpuf

AR for Logistics

According to Digi-Capital’s latest forecast, augmented reality (AR) will constitute an $83 billion market by 2021.  While a good chunk of that may go to popular games in the mode of Pokémon GO, AR also can also serve wholly practical purposes and improve logistics.

Among the items covered in the Tech Trends 2017: The Kinetic Enterprise from Deloitte University Press was a look the benefits of mixed reality (MR) offer industry.  It enables access to “actionable information to any location where work is done—on site, on the shop floor, or in the field,” and that can take logistical operations to a whole new level of efficiency.

DHL’s report Augmented Reality in Logistics details four areas in which the technology can effectively be applied:

• Warehousing operations
• Transportation optimization
• Last-mile delivery
• Enhanced value-added services

Read more in 

Augmented Reality Gets Beyond Games to Help Logistics

Car analytics and AI

(Image: chombosan/Shutterstock)

Today's cars are all about mobility -- not just the kind that transports people and things, but also data mobility. Today's cars are more connected, and they are generating a lot more data that car manufacturers are working to collect, process, and apply to AI developments.

When the average person thinks about the connected car -- whether it is fully automated or packed with sensors that alert the driver to possible dangers -- what comes to mind is the experience for the person in that driver's seat. In fact, the information the driver sees represents only a tiny fraction of all the data collected through the sensor system. The amount of data collected is indeed vast, and car makers are now working on ways to ingest and process it effectively.

Read more in 

Car Makers Drive Hard Towards AI Advances

Marketing to patients out of patience

“Sure, I love waiting to be seen by a doctor who doesn't even bother to learn my name” said no one ever. Long waits in boring waiting rooms is one reason for patient discontent, but so is feeling like their time isn't valued and that no one cares about the lack of customer service for patients.

Any one of us who has had the experience of being in a hospital, or even of caring for a family member who was, can identify with the experiences depicted in these videos.

It doesn't have to be that way. That's the message that North Memorial Health, a healthcare system that operates two hospitals and 25 clinics in the Minneapolis area, is adopting for its new branding campaign created by BrandFire. The approach is to acknowledge that, while healthcare may be broken, it is working to fix it, and to humanize the healthcare experience.

Read more in Treating Patients Like Valued Customers

Supply Chain Recycling Needs More Transparency

With an appreciation of the dangers inherent in unmonitored recycling, HP is committing to greater transparency in the recycling supply chain and calls on other companies to do the same.

Reduce, reuse, recycle. That’s the mantra of sustainability, and some of us commit to it by bringing in our waste for recycling. Unfortunately, what gets dropped off in those receptacles doesn’t always end up being dismantled and reassembled the way we imagined.

Some companies involved are not strictly playing by the rules of recycling in an environmentally responsible way. That’s the finding of the environmental health and justice organization, Basel Action Network (BAN).

As part of its e-Trash Transparency Project, in September BAN published a report called “Scam Recycling: e-Dumping on Asia by US Recyclers.” The organization placed GPS trackers in 205 monitors and printers that contained components identified as “hazardous waste under international law.”

BAN partnered with MIT's Senseable City Labs to produce an online map to show the pathways of the 205 trackers. You can see their routes and how far they traveled here.

Read more in 

HP Supply Chain Leads the Call for Recycling Transparency

AR: Marketing’s Next Big Thing?

“That's really cool!” or “Wow!”  is the type of thing that people tend to say when they see augmented reality. But for marketers, the question is if it's something they should be using. For most, the answer has been “not yet.” But perhaps they should be reconsidering now.

According to one report, only 25% of marketers are interested in using augmented reality, and only 7% say they do use it. That's probably because, despite its impressive effects, it is somewhat limited at present.

But that should change when Apple comes out with an AR empowered device, something it is reportedly working on right now: “Hundreds of engineers are now devoted to the cause, including some on the iPhone camera team who are working on AR-related features for the iPhone."

Though people have achieve AR effects on an iPhone since the 2009 iPhone 3Gs, that was limited to a novelty feature that Yelp snuck in. In this video,  Jennifer Grove demonstrates how she launched Yelp's Monocle, which she characterizes as “kind of the coolest things I've ever seen on my iPhone.” 

Read more in

What Apple's AR Venture Means for Marketers

Seeing stars

As the text below says, this is the second time the writer is contacting me asking me to do him the favor of posting an Amazon review of his book. Notice, he never asks me to read it, and he certainly doesn't offer to send me a copy to make sure I have access to it in order to read it and review it. On the contrary, he says, the favor he requires would take a mere 30 seconds. Now, I'm a fast reader, but not that fast. It would take me at least an hour to read even a very short book, and I believe I have no business reviewing a book I have not read.

Lest you think that I'm misrepresenting the request, I've copied the email in full. In light of this unwitting disclosure, one should add more than the usual number of grains of salt in assessing how accurate the starred reviews are. It's also interesting to see how the author plays into all the persuasive tactics to get someone to feel good about bestowing a favor while in effect playing into a lie.

I could really do with your help Recently I emailed about my attempt to get some reviews for The End of Certainty, on Amazon. The response was incredible and I now have 48 reviews. I really was humbled by the response and can't thank you enough. I do however have one last request. If you weren't able to give me a quick review last time, just pressing the 5 star button would be enough, then please please help out now and do it. Amazon has a rule that it starts promoting books that get at least 50 reviews. As a result I'm tantalizingly close to getting on their list. Just a few more reviews is all I need. Below is the email I sent before, to help jog your memory on all this. The End of Certainty has been doing quite nicely since I published it, and many of the people who've read it have said extremely nice things about it. Over 25,000 people have copies. The success of it has amazed me. However I have a problem and I could really do with your help. It seems the Millennials are all fantastically good at the social media world and as a result they like and review lots of materials. However my audience is people like you. You're older than your average millennial, and as a result don't feel so obliged to get involved in the whole scoring and reviewing stuff. I understand, because frankly, I think the same way. However it's causing me a problem, which I hope you can help me with. To get the Amazon AI  to notice the book, and therefore get it to a wider audience I need to get over 100 reviews. These don't need to be in depth reviews, something as simple as, it was interesting, or simply giving it a star rating is enough. You'd be doing me a huge favor by getting involved. I just need 30 seconds of your time. Because of the odd way Amazon works, US reviews show up in the UK Amazon store, but NOT the other way around. As a result putting the review, or giving it a star rating on the US Amazon Store would make a huge difference to me. Thanks again for your support, it really does help. Please click here to go to the correct page on Amazon