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:

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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

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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.

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Car Makers Drive Hard Towards AI Advances