Digital Collaboration Division Newsletter

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The Digital Collaboration Division releases a biweekly newsletter containing updates, success stories, new features, bug fixes and featured statistics for the GCTools and the OADW.

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Archives 2018

May 25, 2018 / 25 mai 2018

Open source | Logiciel libre

A Bitter Guide To Open Source
May 24, 2018 – Medium

Ken Wheeler, the Director of Open Source at Formidable, provides guidance on how to create open source projects. He starts with why you should write open source, then, his experience with OSS, how to get started, API design, how to get ready to release the project, what happens after release and the marketing aspects, and then finally, maintenance.More

Github's Top Open Datasets For Machine Learning
May 22, 2018 – CSM Wire

Mansi Singhal CEO of qplum provides his insight into the best data repositories for machine learning that are open to the public and free.

These sources for top public domain datasets include:
1. Archive.org
2. Archive-it
3. CMU JASA
4. CMU StatLab
5. Data.World

And many more...

Zuul 2: A new open source cloud gateway from Netflix
May 23, 2018 – Jaxenter

Netflix open sourced their cloud gateways called Zuul 2. Able to handle the requests from Netflix users, Zuul 2 offers server support for inbound HTTP/2 connections, tracking for proxy attempts and status, adaptive retry logic, origin concurrency protection and mutual TLS.

Other open sourced tools by Netflix:
1. Conductor: a microservices orchestration engine
2. Vizceral: a traffic intuition tool
3. Lemur: a certificate management framework
4. Hystrix: a cloud performance library

For more on Zuul 2…

Digital workplace | Espace de travail numérique

How to Digitally Transform Into an Intelligent Workplace
May 23, 2018 – CSM Wire

IDC forecasts global spending on cognitive and AI systems will grow to $19.1 billion this year, and grow to $52.2 billion by the end of 2021. With an intelligent workplace, anyone in your organization can use AI to build digital assistants like chatbots that they can train and delegate tasks to. The benefits of an intelligent workplace are improved employee morale, increased worker productivity, enhanced data security, as well as reduced operational costs. The best part is smart tools like LiveTiles Bots allow you to do this with no coding required. More

What GDPR means for businesses outside Europe
May 22, 2018 - QUARTZ

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that come into effect on the 25th of May, 2018, replaces the 1995 Data Protection Directive. What it means for businesses is that any personal data that is sourced from citizens currently residing in the EU must comply with the GDPR. Therefore, businesses that retain such data and/or behavioral information, even if it doesn’t leave the EU will still be subject to GDPR regulations. Customer data, including that of people who fall under the protection of GDPR, is often shared within companies via channels like email, and increasingly on business messengers like Microsoft Teams, Atlassian’s Stride, Slack, and others. If the documents shared contain personal data, those platforms must also comply with GDPR or face serious penalties. More

Application Development | Développement d'applications

Slack lance des boutons d’action pour transformer des messages en tâches
23 mai, 2018 – Blog du modérateur

Slack propose aux développeurs de l’écosystème d’aller plus loin dans l’intégration de leurs produits grâce à une nouvelle fonctionnalité : les boutons d’action. L’intégration des boutons d’action comprend pour l’instant Asana, Jira, Pocket, Hubspot et Zendesk. Les utilisateurs pourront donc utiliser encore plus de services tiers sur Slack sans avoir à retenir des commandes du type /giphy.Suite

Microservices, APIs and Innovation: The Power of APIs
May 23, 2018 – The New Stack

The ability to provide core API guidelines for teams can spur innovation at all levels of an IT division. This article covers what companies around the world are saying about the role APIs can play in empowering teams and enabling organizations to quickly craft timely, stable and cost-effective solutions for a wide range of distribution channels including browser, mobile and desktop.More.

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May 18, 2018 / 18 mai 2018

Social Networking | Réseautage social

Facebook annonce « Clear History » : une nouvelle fonctionnalité pour supprimer toutes les informations stockées
2 mai, 2018 – Blog du modérateur

Une nouvelle fonctionnalité appeler « Clear History » va permettre de savoir quels sites et applications ont accès à vos données et envoient des informations à Facebook. Vous pourrez supprimer ces informations utilisées par Facebook et empêcher la possibilité de les stocker à l’avenir. Ces informations remontent à Facebook via les boutons J’aime et les pixels de conversion. Cette fonctionnalité est en cours de développement et sera lancée dans quelques mois.Suite

Mark Zuckerberg will meet with European Parliament members to clarify user data issues
May 16, 2018 – Venture Beat

Mark Zuckerberg will meet with representatives of the European Parliament to meet the leaders of the political groups and the Rapporteur of the Committee for Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs to “clarify issues related to the use of personal data”. General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will likely be on the agenda for the meeting, as the new data privacy regulations are set to go into effect on May 25. More

Face à ses usagers mécontents, Snapchat revient sur la refonte de l'application
11 mai, 2018 – La Presse

Une pétition demandant à Snapchat de revenir sur les modifications fait à la fin de 2017 a réuni 1,2 million de signatures, au dernier pointage vendredi le 4 mai. Suite au mécontentement de leur publique, Snapchat va faire de nouveau apparaître les messages des «amis» dans l'ordre chronologique inverse et revient à une présentation des «stories» des «amis» à la droite de l'écran. Les contenus provenant de sources institutionnelles seront toujours présentés séparément, mais dans une fenêtre distincte.Suite

Machine Learning and AI | Apprentissage machine et I.A.

8 Considerations When Branding Your Chatbot
May 13, 2018 – CSM Wire

According to Bynder’s 2018 State of Branding Report, 40% of marketing decision-makers said they planned to invest in voice assistants this year.

Here are 8 key considerations for branding your Chatbot:

1. Set Realistic Expectations
2. Make Your Chatbot Consistent With Brand
3. Your Chatbot Persona Should Represent Your Demographic
4. Represent the Diversity of Your Customers
5. Ensure the Data is Available to Deliver on Expectations
6. Understand All Conversational Tones, Engagement Channels
7. Ensure Emotional Relevance
8. Consider Designers, Constant Testing
For more on these key considerations...

An AI speed test shows clever coders can still beat tech giants like Google and Intel
May 7, 2018 – The Verge

Fittingly enough for the field of artificial intelligence, it turns out brains can still beat brawn. The proof comes from the DAWNBench challenge, an athletics meet for AI engineers where teams and individuals from universities, government departments, and industry competed to design the best algorithms using metrics that were chosen to reflect the real-world demands of AI. Entrepreneur and data scientist Jeremy Howard explains that in order to create an algorithm for solving CIFAR-10, training an AI to identify items in a picture database, Fast.AI turned to a relatively unknown technique known as “super convergence” that slowly increases the flow of data used to train an algorithm.More

Google AI Expert: Machine Learning Is No Better Than Alchemy
May 7, 2018 - LiveScience

Ali Rahimi, a prominent researcher of machine learning and artificial intelligence who works on AI for Google said he thinks his field has made amazing progress, but suggested there's something rotten in the way it's developed. In machine learning, a computer "learns" via a process of trial and error. The problem in a talk presented at an A.I. conference is that researchers who work in the field not only don't understand exactly how their algorithms learn, but they don't understand how the techniques they're using to build those algorithms work either. Rahimi argued in his 2017 blog that AI has become too important in society to be developed in such a slapdash fashion.More

Google’s ML Kit offers easy machine learning APIs for Android and iOS
May 8, 2018 – Ars Thechnica

Google is launching a new SDK for machine learning for its Firebase developer platform called "ML Kit." The new SDK offers ready-to-use APIs for some of the most common computer-vision use cases, allowing developers that aren't machine learning experts to still add some ML magic to their apps. This isn't just an Android SDK; it works on iOS apps as well. The APIs support text recognition, face detection, bar code scanning, image labeling, and landmark recognition. There are two versions of each API: a cloud-based version offers higher accuracy in exchange for using some data, and an on-device version works even if you don't have Internet.More

How Google aims to simplify your life with AI
May 9, 2018 - CBC

Google put the spotlight on its artificial intelligence at its annual developer’s conference announcing new consumer features aimed at simplifying the user’s life. Highlights unveiled at Google I/O include changes to Google Maps using AR, Google Duplex being able to call businesses to make reservations and more from Gmail, photos, Google assistant, Lens, News and Android P.More

A Platform Strategy Won’t Work Unless You’re Good at Machine Learning
May 14, 2018 – Harvard Business Review

There are lots of things that can make a platform succeed or fail but an increasingly central aspect of a successful platform strategy is machine learning. Moving to an online model is a big improvement, enabling rapid and incredibly low-cost scaling. This is valuable for a network that wants to attract millions of users, but this sort of scale brings problems of its own. Large-scale platforms are too complex, and the use cases too varied for simple algorithms to manage them. Within this jumble of connections, misuse and manipulation can be easily hidden. The best platforms do more than create a space for connection. They recognize the value of their own data, gather it continuously, and leverage machine learning to improve the customer experience. More

Design and Development | Design et développement

Why Continuous Improvement is Key to Continuous Delivery
May 10, 2018 - Wercker

Continuous improvement means there is a deliberate effort to improve, however maintained focus on improvement can be hard to carry out. There is a way to be highly tactical about it and it comes from being 100% focused on what your delivery chain is and is not. Your pipeline should be treated like any application: there is a backlog, and your whole job is to add features and fix things. Organizations need to be prepared to invest in dedicated team members responsible for development of the pipeline, and maintaining it in “production.” A results-oriented and application focus is a tactical way to make sure you are DevOps today, and into the future.more

The Sense of Community You Nurture Will Outlive Your Platform
May 14, 2018 – FEVERBEE

Chasing after your audience from one platform to the next is an expensive, wasteful, approach to community building. A far better approach is to invest those same resources in building a strong sense of community.

Beneficial investments might include:

1. Provide funding to leaders.
2. Bring the community to customers.
3. Design rituals.
4. Develop a unique identity.
5. Have a newspaper.
6. Host and promote events.
7. Gather and identify useful feedback through any channel.
8. Setting clear goals and targets for members.
For more on these investments....

Tech Strategies Digital Experience Leaders Use to Support Innovation
May 14, 2018 – CSM Wire

E-Spirit, a digital experience platform (DXP) vendor, conducted a State of the DX Ecosystem survey of more than 200 marketing and IT professionals in global companies across the U.S.

They found that digital experience leaders employed tech strategies anchored in the following concepts to support omnichannel scalability and innovation:

1. An open architecture using microservices
2. Omnichannel marketing and Content as a Service
3. AI-Driven Personalization
4. Cloud/SaaS
For more on these stategies...

Open source | Code source libre

5 Kubernetes Monitoring to-dos
May 1, 2018 – The New Stack

Since container orchestration is critical to deploying, scaling, and managing containerized applications, DevOps needs to ensure the monitoring of the container application and infrastructure.

Here are 5 best practices to monitor the containerized environment:

1. Centralize logs and metrics.
2. Account for ephemeral containers.
3. Simplify, simplify, simplify.
4. Monitor each layer explicitly.
5. Ensure data consistency across your layers.
For more on these best practices...

May 4, 2018 / 4 mai 2018

Machine Learning and AI | Apprentissage machine et I.A.

Facebook bets big on Artificial Intelligence, announces new framework for developers
May 3, 2018 – The Economic Times

Facebook has announced the next version of its open-source AI framework for developers: PyTorch 1.0. The technology is already being used to perform nearly 6 billion text translations a day, and the AI research and engineering teams at Facebook have trained an image recognition system that has scored a record–high 85.4% accuracy on the ImageNet benchmark. Facebook said: "With [PyTorch 1.0], developers can take advantage of computer vision advances like “DensePose”, which can put a full polygonal mesh overlay on people as they move through a scene, something that will help make AR camera applications more compelling". more

Machine Learning in 3A? Absolutely!
May 2, 2018 – SnapTravel

Starting from data collection and feature engineering, all the way to model building and tuning, a Computer Science (3A) student with no prior Machine Learning experience Shang Gao was able to greatly increased the accuracy and relevancy of SnapTravel’s NLP-powered chatbot, leading to a 20%+ increase in the number of fully-automated conversations.

Shang Gao breaks down the process for how he was able to do so with these steps:

1. data collection/data labelling
2. feature engineering
3. training of the machine learning model
4. model evaluation
For more on this process...

3 Common Reasons Artificial Intelligence Projects Fail
May 4, 2018 – CSM Wire

These are the common reasons why Artificial Intelligence fails:

1. Misaligned Expectations
2. Incomplete Datasets
3. Algorithms That Are Wrong
For more on these reasons...

Harnessing Artificial Intelligence in the Workplace
May 2, 2018 – InsideSources

What competencies will employees need to succeed in an AI future?
According to Genpact survey respondents, here is the breakdown:

50% believe that “the ability to change” is most important,
Followed by “critical thinking and problem solving skills” at 44%,
“The ability to think creatively” at 42%,
“The ability to communicate and collaborate” at 40%,
“Technical skills (e.g., coding, statistics and applied math” at 39%.

While AI will likely have a significant effect on certain occupations, including eliminating many, it will also create new opportunities for enhancing service and product quality and establishing new occupations. Yet for effective harnessing of the full potential of AI in the workplace, it will require a collaborative “open mindedness” on the part of employees, companies and educational institutions to recognize, learn and adapt. more

Agile | Agile

A look at growing Agile trends
April 24, 2018 – CIO

Michael Dougherty, National project manager at Magenic, provides an alternative view of the trends that are overlooked or understated in the VersionOne’s “State of Agile” report:

1. Agile is easy to learn, but hard to master; that will not change
2. Deliver valuable products as the customer sees it
3. The product owner as the linchpin
4. Scaling Agile has become the norm
5. DevOps must be adopted to stay competitive
6. There should be one System of Record to rule them all
For more on these trends...

Solving The Leadership Puzzle: Enhancing Agile Adoption
May 2, 2018 – Forbes

How to Fix The 'Tug Of War' between the leadership expectations and the agile team? True leaders are willing to learn and adapt their styles by building consensus. Different Kinds of Leadership can benefit an agile development team like, for example, servant leadership, which was introduced by Robert Greenleaf in his book that enumerates a leaderless situation where the leader is just a servant helping, assisting and facilitating team members to learn, excel and evolve. Tony Hsieh, the CEO of online shop Zappos, started the concept of holocracy in his company instead of adopting a bureaucracy. At Zappos, everyone is equal and there is little hierarchical structure.more

Hyper Agile: Speedy innovation is a must for survival
May 2, 2018 – Information Age

Essentially, the ability to anticipate change and quickly correct your course is separating the winners from the losers and since digital disruption is occurring at every level, bold strategies are required. Integrated Cloud Group firmly believes that agile is now dead. Instead, it has given way to “Hyper Agile”, able to speed up the development life with the creation of a user-friendly interface called DNA UI which empowers small teams to conversely build very large software applications. Business intelligence can be injected directly into the app, allowing for a rapid innovation cycle as mature products get speedily replaced by newer technologies.more

New features | Nouveautés

Nouveautés Instagram : chat vidéo, partage de story amélioré, effets de caméra, protection contre le cyberharcèlement…
2 mai, 2018 – Blog du modérateur

Instagram a dévoilé plusieurs nouveautés dans ca dernière mis à jours incluant un bouton « partager » sur des applications tierces afin de permettre l’éditions et l’envoie des Stories d’un seul geste. De nouveaux effets de camera utilisant la technologie de la réalité augmentée sera aussi un ajout intéressant ainsi qu’un nouveau design pour le fil Explore. Disponible sur Instagram Direct dans quelques semaines, l’utilisateur pourra appuyer simplement sur l’icône de la nouvelle caméra en haut d’un fil direct. Il pourra ensuite discuter en tête-à-tête ou avec un petit groupe, sans limite de temps.

Instagram annonce qu’il filtrera les commentaires injurieux ou haineux de manière plus efficace sur sa plateforme. suite

April 27, 2018 / 27 avril 2018

Open source | Code source libre

Get started with Pidgin: An open source replacement for Skype
April 26, 2018 – Opensource

Pidgin is a free and open source application that is a replacement for Skype for Business. The only feature this software does not provide that Skype does, is screen sharing, but it can work with an Office 365 backend provided users also install a SIPE plugin (found in nearly every Linux distribution’s repository). Detailed instructions on installation, configuration, as well as how to add contacts, are included in this article.more

Agile | Agile

7 Guiding Principles to Succeed in the Agile Era
April 24, 2018 – LinkedIn

René Sterrenburg, digital architect at KPN, shares the 7 practical steps to shaping an agile mindset:

1. Rethink dependencies
2. Less is more
3. Be fact driven
4. Later is better
5. Failure is -the- option
6. Mind the team
7. Look ahead, but not too far

More on these steps here...

Digital Workplace | Espace de travail numérique

10 Digital Workplace Strategy Questions to Answer in 2018
Staffbase

Here are ten questions to ask when devising a digital workplace strategy that’s right for your organization:

1. Why Is the Digital Workplace So Important to the Employee Experience?
2. What's Driving the Change in Digital Workplace Communication?
3. What Are the Main Use Cases for the Digital Workplace?
4. What Are the Main Target Groups for the Digital Workplace?
5. How Do I Match Specific Use Case Needs to My Target Groups?
And more here... .

AI | I.A.

Achieving Intranet Search Effectiveness in the Age of AI
April 23, 2018 – CSM Wire

In the past few years, big data analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence have evolved rapidly, allowing enterprises to better use their intranet data to produce search results that are more insightful and valuable. Using “weak” AI for strong enterprise knowledge and collaboration, semantic search, natural language processing and knowledge graphs, we will see AI technologies bridging the gap between the user and intranet data. If planned and implemented correctly, tools like question-answering systems, chatbots, cognitive or intelligent search systems, and AI will help improve the user experience within the enterprise, solve information retrieval problems, lower costs and increase revenue. more

Smartphones - Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
April 22, 2018 - GSM Arena

This piece focuses on photography to easily illustrate the complexities of machine learning and AI found within today’s smartphones.

The topics covered are as follows:

• What is the difference between Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning?
• Dedicated Artificial Intelligence chipsets
• Developers
• Privacy
more on these topics...

Cloud | Infonuagique

The Cloud and Content Management: A Snapshot and a Look Ahead
April 26, 2018 – CSM Wire

Forbes reports that a recent study by LogicMonitor found 83% of enterprise workloads will be in the cloud by 2020. Cloud data warehouse workloads, in 2018, are fast replacing on-premises ones and artificial intelligence is already real in the cloud. Taking a look into the future, it is clear that AI and machine learning are gaining more traction, the cloud will accelerate content management, change our workforces, and that road maps will become more important than ever. more }}

April 13, 2018 / 13 avril 2018

Social Networking | Réseautage social

Facebook lance un programme de primes pour la chasse à l’abus de données perso
11 avril, 2018 - ZD Net

Le programme de récompense pour la découverte et le signalement de toute utilisation abusive de données personnelles par une application est maintenant officiel sur Facebook. Nommé « data abuse bounty » et calqué sur le modèle des systèmes de primes rétribuant la découverte d’un bug ou d’une faille de sécurité, le programme aidera le réseau social à traquer les infractions à ses conditions d’utilisation avec des récompenses pouvant aller jusqu’à 40000$ selon l’importance et l’impact de la découverte.Suite

Everything you've ever posted publicly on Facebook has probably been harvested. So what?
April 7, 2018 – CBC

Sarah Roberts, an assistant professor of information studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, who also studies social media, says the most obvious reason someone would want to scrape public Facebook profiles for personal information is for marketing and demographic reasons. "It's a treasure trove," she explains. The information may not mean much on an individual level but becomes more useful when combined with other sources of data in much the same way Facebook itself builds advertising profiles of its users by combining its own data with third party sources. more

China has started ranking citizens with a creepy 'social credit' system — here's what you can do wrong, and the embarrassing, demeaning ways they can punish you
April 8, 2018 - Business Insider

The “social credit system” is a vast ranking system that is meant to monitor the behaviors of the population and rank everyone based on their “social credit”. First announced in 2014, the program should be fully operational in 2020 and will be mandatory. Some of the infractions include bad driving, smoking in non-smoking zones, buying too many video games, and posting fake news online. In turn, the “punishments” can vary from banning you from flying or taking the train, throttling your internet speeds, banning you (or your children) from the best schools, etc.more

Digital Workplace | Espace de travail numérique

Six Reasons Employees are Avoiding the Use of Your Intranet
April 12, 2018 - CSM Wire

According to experts, these are the 6 reasons why intranets fail:

Poor UI That Isn't Intuitive
Failure to Get Employee Input and Feedback
Lack of Executive Support, Governance
Lack of Budget
Content Overload
Lack of Education and Promotion
more on these reasons...

What Sets Effective Intranets Apart?
April 9, 2018 - CSM Wire

What does it take to make an intranet truly effective? First, the base of a good intranet needs to be established; The features of a good intranet include internal news, a pleasing user experience, a search tool, social networking, etc. But what sets a good intranet apart from an effective intranet is governance that works, “power users” who have an interest and responsibility in building for their teams, a culture of sharing trust in, and acceptance of, online self-service and finally, effective search tools and high-quality content.more

WebAuthn, la nouvelle norme Web qui va permettre de se connecter aux différents services sans mot de passe
12 avril, 2018 - Blog du modérateur

Une nouvelle norme Web pourrait simplifier le processus en permettant de se connecter aux différents services sans mot de passe : Web Authentication (Web Authn). WebAuthn est une API qui fonctionne comme une clé. Elle peut être intégrée directement aux navigateurs et à l’infrastructure d’une plateforme et permet de s’authentifier sur le Web en toute sécurité, en évitant la saisie d’identifiants et en utilisant la reconnaissance faciale, une empreinte digitale, un code PIN ou une clé USB de sécurité U2F.suite

Agile | Agile

How Software Can Aid Testing in Agile Environments
April 5, 2018 - CSM Wire

Agile promises faster and more frequent development but a variety of problems specifically related to testing can occur that end up slowing down the development process like mismatched environments, bad or incomplete test data and miscommunication between testers and developers. There are ways to mitigate these potential problems with existing technology, the most obvious is by using test data management and generation software as well as Infrastructure as Code automation tools and, of course, collaboration software.more

Agile, Kanban & Scrum, Oh My: Which Product Management Method Is Right For You?
April 9, 2018 - CSM Wire

A 2016 Deloitte survey found that 67% of high-technology and IT companies were using some form of agile product development, while just 9% were using traditional waterfall approaches and 24% were using a hybrid of the two. Scrum is a framework devised by the nonprofit Scrum Alliance for implementing agile methodologies and it is used by 58% of the companies that embrace agile practices. The other 42% of agile implementations are divided up between, most notably, Extreme programming (XP), Kanban and lean development.more

AI | I.A.

3 Principles of Successful AI-Powered Digital Platforms
April 11, 2018 - CSM Wire

It’s difficult to determine the future direction of digital platforms and AI. However, there are some trends we can learn from, including the importance of simple interfaces, quality data and established AI tools.

Software builders can commit to embracing these three principles in leading the direction of their software initiatives:

1. Making Training Unnecessary
2. Prioritizing Data
3. Don’t Reinvent the Wheel: Use AI Tools Already on the Market
more on these principles...

Three out of four believe that AI applications are the next mega trend
March 29, 2018 - Business Insider

IDC predicts that global spending on cognitive and AI systems is forecast to reach $57.6 billion in 2021. In a follow-up to its 2017 survey on the future of marketing and content, Foster City, Calif-based organic search and content platform BrightEdge has released new findings from a survey of Fortune 500 marketers that indicates that the top 3 responses to its questions about the next big trend are all AI applications (Consumer personalization at 28.66%, artificial intelligence at 25.more

AI Algorithm with 'Social Skills' Cooperates Better Than Humans
March 22, 2018 - The New Stack

An international team of researchers has created an algorithm equipped with an artificial set of “social skills” that allows machines to collaborate with both other kinds of machines, as well as humans. The most remarkable takeaway in their interaction experimentation is that machines can potentially cooperate much better with each other than humans ever could, and there may be a lesson there. Computer science professor Jacob Crandall of Brigham Young University noted that “In society, relationships break down all the time, [and] People that were friends for years all of a sudden become enemies. Because the machine is often actually better at reaching these compromises than we are, it can potentially teach us how to do this better.” more

How AI Can Help You Better Know and Serve Your Customers
April 8, 2018 - CSM Wire

What many organizations are currently struggling with is how to achieve that virtuous cycle of engagement with their current digital experience (DX) software. Is AI the answer? Organizations need to take the time to define the problem or problems they want to solve using AI and to help business create a better customer interaction with AI, the article covers how to Adopt a Change in Mindset, how to use AI as an Augmenter, how to use the Digital Experience (DX) as a 'Black Box', The Rise of Intelligent Platforms and the Power to Transform Digital Experiences that AI has. more

Google Empathy Lab founder: AI will upend storytelling and human-machine interaction
March 16, 2018 – Business Insider

The 2018 Tech Trends report released at South by Southwest (SXSW) predicts that by 2021 more than half of all computing in developed nations will be performed with voice. To deal with this massive shift in computing, AI assistants will have to become more harmonious with people and intelligent about emotion, Google Empathy Lab founder and principal Danielle Krettek said. She shared the stage at SXSW with director Oscar Sharp and Ross Goodwin, creators of Benjamin, an AI model trained with scripts from thousands of movies that in 2016 was used to create Sunspring, a movie script written by an algorithm.more

April 6, 2018 / 6 avril 2018

Social Networking | Réseautage social

Can Social Media Be Saved?
March 28, 2018 – The New York Times

The original dream of social media, producing healthy discussions, unlocking new forms of creativity, connecting people to others with similar interests, shouldn’t be discarded because of the failures of the current market leaders.
Here are the 3 ways suggested to rescue social media from the market-based pressures that got it here:
1. Give power to the people
2. Create a social federation
3. Put expiration dates on social graphs
Read more suggestions…

Memo to Facebook: A Platform Isn't a Community
March 28, 2018 – CSM Wire

When we treat platforms as though they are communities, we are left with one question: How do we keep everyone safe? Such notions are impossible for Facebook at this scale, at least in today’s world. The first step forward is to acknowledge the differences between platforms and communities and decide which path to take forward. It's time the platform creators let go of some of their power and create a new model, breaking apart these giant platforms into smaller, self-governing bodies so they may actually have some hope of forming lasting communities. more

Facebook says more than 600,000 Canadians may have had data shared with Cambridge Analytica
April 4, 2018 – CBC

It was revealed last month that an academic researcher named Aleksandr Kogan had collected information from more than 50 million Facebook users in 2014 using a personality quiz app, and then shared that information with Cambridge Analytica. That number has since been revised and Facebook says more than 600,000 Canadians may have had data shared with Cambridge Analytica and this number is a fraction (0.7%) of the 87 million people now believed to be affected globally. more

Facebook change ses CGU pour la première fois en 3 ans
5 avril, 2018 – Blog du modérateur

Facebook continue d’essuyer les plâtres de la polémique Cambridge Analytica. La plateforme a ainsi modifié ses conditions générales d’utilisations (CGU), et notamment son encart sur les données personnelles pour rendre leur lecture plus accessible. Afin de mieux préciser quelles données Facebook collecte et comment il les utilise sur Instagram, Messenger et ses d’autres produits, le réseau social a revisité quelques parties de ses conditions d’utilisations. suite

Snapchat lance des appels de groupe jusqu’à 16 utilisateurs
3 avril, 2018 – Blog du modérateur

Dans les prochaines semaines, Snapchat seras en cours de déploiement pour la nouvelle fonctionnalité appeler «Group Video Chat» qui permettra à 16 utilisateurs de faire une conférence vidéo. Il y aura aussi, au cas où la conversation dépasse le nombre maximal d’utilisateur, une possibilité de participé à un chat vocal collectif ou 32 personnes peuvent communiquer entre-deux en même temps.
Le réseau social incorpore également une fonctionnalité permettant d’identifier ses amis dans les « snaps » ajoutés dans la « story » de l’utilisateur. suite

Digital Workplace | Espace de travail numérique

How to Avoid 6 Common Digital Workplace Communications Problems
April 4, 2018 – CSM Wire

Here are 6 tips to avoid common digital workplace communications problems:
1. Use Social Networks
2. Encourage Meetings
3. Explain Why Systems Help Employees
4. Use Digital Platforms
5. Provide Digital Platform Training
6. Implement Single Tool Sets
more on these tips...

The Road to Better Marketing Is Paved with Agility
March 23, 2018 – CSM Wire

Cameron van Orman, senior vice president of Product and Solutions Marketing at CA Technologies, shares his business experience in applying agile development to a large, global marketing organization:
• Agile Starts with Big Room Planning
• Meet Strategic Needs with both Persistent and Initiative-Based Teams
• Leaders Must Pivot From Directing to Coaching
• Agile Runs on Clear Ownership and Strong Communication
• Two Metrics That Count: productivity of team and impact of agile marketing
Cameron van Orman writes: “Agile marketing has proven to be a better way. We are faster to market, have more business impact and our team members are more engaged, and happier, in their jobs. No wonder agile companies outperform their competitors.” more

5 Common Reasons Collaboration Tools Fail
March 27, 2018 – CSM Wire

Here is a list of 5 reasons why your organization may not be getting the most out of its collaboration tools and strategy.
1. Lack of a Central Collaboration Tool Strategy
2. No Feedback From Employees
3. Undefined or Weakly Defined KPIs
4. Lack of User Training
5. Forced Collaboration on Employees
more

5 Things You Should Know About the Cloud, But Were Afraid to Ask
March 28, 2018 – CSM Wire

What follows are five fundamental observations about the cloud today (in no particular order) from Jim Brull, an Oracle enterprise cloud applications growth strategist and leader.
1. The Cloud Is Actually Expensive
2. You Don’t Need to Be Exclusive
3. The Cloud Doesn't Negate Everything That Existed Before, but It Definitely Changes the Game
4. The Cloud Is More than Storage
5. The Cloud Is Adding Data Centers to the List of Endangered Species
more

Open source | Code source libre

Without Open Source, There Would Be No DevOps Methodology
April 4, 2018 – IT Pro Today
Functionally speaking, there is no inherent link between DevOps and open source but, at a conceptual level, open source and DevOps have a lot in common. In fact, DevOps as we know it would not exist if not for the work of open source developers in pioneering ideas like rapid software releases, resistance to vendor lock-in and the embrace of failure as a path to innovation. more

Red Hat looks beyond Linux
March 31, 2018 – Techcrunch

The Red Hat Linux distribution is turning 25 years old this week. What started as one of the earliest Linux distributions is now the most successful open-source company, and its success was a catalyst for others to follow its model. Jim Whitehurst, Red Hat president and CEO says: “We’ve gone from being commoditizers to being innovators. The tech we are driving is now driving net new innovation. We are now not going in to talk about saving money but to help drive innovation inside a company.” With OpenShift and OpenStack, Red Hat believes that it has covered both the future of application development and the infrastructure on which those applications will run. more

Data and Development | Données et développement

Indexation mobile-first de Google : c’est parti !
27 mars, 2018 – Blog du modérateur

Google annonce, dans un communiqué, le déploiement généralisé de l’indexation « mobile-first ».
Google avise ses utilisateurs que : « nous continuerons à n’avoir qu’un seul index pour déterminer les résultats de recherche. Nous n’avons pas un index mobile-first différent de notre index principal. Historiquement, la version desktop était utilisée pour l’indexation ; désormais, le contenu de la version mobile sera de plus en plus souvent utilisé pour l’indexation ». suite

7 Search Engine Optimization Tools Every Content Publisher Should Know
March 28, 2018 – CSM Wire

Beyond publishing insightful content, writers, editors and administrators need to ensure the content going live meets the search engine optimization (SEO) standards set by the likes of Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo in order to rank high and rake in traffic.
To help make things smoother, here are 7 tools you can use:
1. Google Keyword Planner
2. Ahrefs
3. SEO Spider by Screaming Frog
4. SEMRush
5. Moz Pro
6. Spyfu
7. RavenTools
more on SEO

Data Is a Big Deal, So Treat It That Way
March 28, 2018 – CSM Wire

Data is the foundation for all that organizations do in business and how they interact with their customers. Conducting a systematic data assessment gives an organization insight into where it stands in managing its information effectively. It is the first step in creating a road map to consolidate content from various systems, apply consistent metadata and maximize workflow, security and ROI.
Data needs governance and if we understand that data is something that has value to the organization, then it is clear that controls should be placed on access to that data. Now more than ever is the time for responsible data management and good governance.more

Security | Sécurité

RGPD : une étude révèle l’indice de confiance des utilisateurs pour le traitement de leurs données personnelles
4 avril, 2018 – Blog du modérateur

Le Boston Consulting Group (BCG) a publié une étude concernant la confiance des utilisateurs pour le traitement de leurs données personnelles par des entreprises tierces. Quelle que soit la génération, une grande majorité des utilisateurs européens et des États-Unis prennent plus de précautions quant au partage des données en ligne. L’étude du BCG révèle également qu’il existe une forte inadéquation sur la question des protections des données, entre ce qui va intéresser les consommateurs selon les entreprises et ce qu’ils veulent réellement. suite

Microsoft to add ransomware protection tools, advanced Outlook.com encryption for consumers
April 5, 2018 – ZDNet

Microsoft announced that OneDrive for Business Files Restore would be coming to Office 365 Commercial users. On April 5, Microsoft officials said this feature also will be coming to OneDrive for Office 365 Home and Personal subscribers. Files Restore enables users to restore their entire OneDrive cloud storage to a previous point in time within the last 30 days. In addition, Microsoft is making new OneDrive password protection links available for shared OneDrive files and folders which can help prevent forwarding of shared links. more

March 23, 2018 / 23 mars 2018

Social Networking | Réseautage social

How Facebook’s Data Sharing Went From Feature to Bug
New York Times – March 19, 2018

In 2007, Facebook became an open platform for developers to build apps and program on top of. Today, more than a decade later, the consequences of Facebook’s laissez-faire approach are becoming clear. Over the weekend, The New York Times reported that Cambridge Analytica, a British consulting firm, improperly acquired the private data of about roughly 50 million Facebook users, and used it to target voters on behalf of the Trump campaign during the 2016 presidential election. This was a result of Facebook's permissive data policies. more

Machine Learning and AI | Apprentissage machine et intelligence artificielle

The Machine Learning Reproducibility Crisis
Pete Warden’s Blog – March 19, 2018

We're still in the dark ages when it comes to tracking changes and rebuilding machine learning models from scratch. Researchers have had issues reproducing published models for their own papers: A problem when they want to compare their models to preceding ones. Machine learning models must be reproducible, easily tweakable and well-documented. more

Artificial intelligence key to do 'more with less' in securing enterprise cloud services
ZDNet – March 21, 2018

Security professionals in the enterprise are facing an uphill battle to maintain control of corporate networks. It is estimated the cyberattacks and online threats will cost businesses up to $6 trillion annually by 2021, up from $3 trillion in 2015. However AI, machine learning and predictive analytics may help reduce the financial cost and burden on cybersecurity professionals pressed for time and often operating with limited staff and budgets. These new technologies could augment security teams, freeing them up from manual tasks to focus on more difficult challenges.more

Web Development | Développement Web

Using Ethics In Web Design
Smashing Magazine – March 22, 2018

As the creators of designed experiences used by people all over the world, it is our responsibility to think carefully about how our decisions impact the person on the other end of the conversation. As the connected age emerges into adulthood, we are coming to terms with the consequences of decisions made in garages and coffee shops and dorm rooms years ago; solutions built to keep us engaged are distorting our understanding of reality. Four questions can help serve as an ethical framework for design decisions: 1. What world are you building for your visitors? What capabilities are you granting or enabling? 2. What kind of person do you become by doing this, and is that the kind of person you aspire to be? 3. Would you want every other person in your position to make the same decision you just made? Are you upholding your duties of care? 4. Does this improve the lives of everyone affected? more

5 Tips for Creating Better Marketing Content
CMSWire – March 19, 2018

When you’re creating content for your website, you want people to read and engage with your content. Ultimately, we as content creators want readers to convert in some way and perhaps become a returning visitor or even a customer. But with today's crowded and noisy marketplace, this job becomes tougher each year. Here are some tips from content producers on building content for their websites. 1. Give Organic Search Love 2. Understand your Users and Help Solve their Problems 3. Create Content with Unique Goals in Mind 4. Consider User Generated Content 5. Create Engaging Content [more]

Measure Customer Use of Things, Not Customer Satisfaction With Things
CMSWire – March 19, 2018

Customers are satisfied are just as likely to leave as those who say they are unsatisfied. Over the years, we’ve seen customer satisfaction data from a range of organizations in multiple industries and countries. The numbers are all very high, but they bear practically no resemblance to task performance on the sites and apps. What people say and what they do can be very different things. You must decide what is vital to manage and then measure that. In a digital economy, the most vital thing to manage is use. more

Keep it Simple for Gold Medal Business Processes
CMSWire – March 16, 2018

All successful individuals seem to have one trait in common. Whether we’re talking about an athlete preparing to compete in the Olympic downhill or a business executive taking charge of her team in the midst of a crisis, these individuals are able to control and effectively channel their natural human reaction to pressure by focusing on what they need to accomplish in the moment. Unfortunately, business teams – like sports teams – sometimes tie themselves in knots with unnecessary levels of process complexity. more

Open source and open data | Logiciels libres et données ouvertes

Instagram Supercharges Cassandra with a Pluggable RocksDB Storage Engine
The New Stack – March 5, 2018
To boost the performance of a mission-critical instance of Cassandra—a Java-based distributed open source database—Instagram engineers replaced its storage engine with a faster C++-based one from another database, RocksDB. A storage engine can be seen as the heart of the database. It is responsible for formatting the data so it can be placed on disk, as well as reading the data from disk later. The company has released as open source the Rocksandra code base and benchmark framework as open source. more

La schizophrénie numérique : RGPD ou open data ?
ZDNet - 18 mars 2018

Concernant l'utilisation des données nous en sommes à l'enfance, l'adolescence diraient certains. Nous sommes en plein apprentissage de comment maîtriser ce potentiel des échanges de données sachant que les volumes de données disponibles augmentent de façon exponentielle et que demain l'intelligence artificielle nous promet des apprentissages automatiques, à condition d'avoir posé les fondamentaux. En effet, dans les écoles européennes d'apprentissage du partage de la donnée, c'est le Règlement général sur la protection des données (RGPD) qui propose une réponse aux Géants du Web (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon), en créant les règles et en nommant la cible à protéger : les données personnelles. Des règles imposées à tous. Chaque organisation doit donc se responsabiliser, analyser les données personnelles qu'elle veut utiliser, et mettre en œuvre tous les mécanismes pour les protéger. Les données personnelles ne sont certes pas dans le périmètre des données ouvertes, mais leur territoire s'agrandit à tous les jours à cause des croisements rendus possibles par des technologies de plus en plus sophistiquées. [suite]

GDPR Compliance Requires Looking at the Big Customer Data Picture
CMSWire – March 16, 2018

The European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) states that individuals should have the right to access their personal data so that they are aware of and can verify the lawfulness of its processing. Companies must respond to requests within one month, leaving them little time to perform a task that they may not be equipped to handle. For large multinational companies that have many siloes in multiple jurisdictions, responding to these requests can be challenging. However the challenge presents an opportunity for companies to take a client-centric approach to GDPR compliance. Here are a few steps to help organizations implement client-centric GDPR compliance: 1. Shift to a client-first mindset 2. Consolidate data disposal 3. Evaluate the data map through the cl more

March 16, 2018 / 16 mars 2018

Development / Développement

How to Overcome 4 Common Microservices Challenges
March 14, 2018 – CSM Wire

The 4 common Microservices challenges covered, both technical and non-technical, are as follows:

1. Cultural and Organizational Change
2. Managing Microservices
3. Diagnostics and Monitoring of Microservices
4. Implementation Time and Resources for Microservices

For more details, please click [here]

Google teste une page de résultats où les résultats naturels sont masqués par défaut
14 mars, 2018 – Blog du modérateur

Pour certaines requêtes, Google expérimente une « page de résultats » d’un nouveau genre où seule la réponse à la question posée est affichée et où tous les résultats naturels (les liens vers les pages web) sont masqués par défaut. On peut observer ce phénomène pour des requêtes simples à comprendre pour Google, celles pour lesquelles le moteur de recherche est en mesure de donner directement l’information à l’utilisateur. L’expérimentation semble aujourd’hui réservée aux requêtes très claires, mais Google pourrait décider de l’étendre à d’autres requêtes plus fines, en prenant davantage en compte le contexte et l’ensemble des données dont il dispose. [suite].

Digital Workplace / Lieu de travail numérique

6 Technologies Needed to Power the Modern Workplace
March 15, 2018 – CSM Wire

The research, contained in the report [From Workplace Chaos to Zen: How App Overload Is Reshaping the Digital Workplace], shows that for communications alone, workers currently using an average of four apps, with 20 percent of workers using six or more. More than 70 percent of workers say their communications volume is a challenge to getting work done. So what are organizations actually using and what do they need for a fully functional digital workplace apart from the obvious word processing, spreadsheet or presentation tools?

Here are 6 Technologies Needed to Power the Modern Workplace:

1. Collaboration Culture
2. Mobile
3. Controlling Integrated systems
4. Digital Asset Management
5. Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
6. Delegation

To read more on these technologies, please click [here]

The Intelligent Workplace Couldn't Come at a Better Time
March 14, 2018 – CSM Wire

Artificial intelligence and machine learning, while not new, are accelerating digital transformations in businesses across every industry, but those technologies are still in their infancy when it comes to direct applications in the workplace. In the coming years, several key technologies will dramatically shape what an intelligent digital workplace will look like. These technologies include enterprise search engines, bots, call, meeting and translation software, virtual assistants as well as virtual reality and augmented reality.[more]

Matt Varney: How to Quell Your Employees' Digital Workplace Fears
March 13, 2018 – CSM Wire

Varney has been intranet administrator for the Kentucky Community and Technical College System (KCTCS) and its 8,500 employees for over eight years and helped initiate the intranet at the collection of quasi-independent colleges. Prior to that, he worked with internal document management systems and the public web at KCTCS. This article is his advice to win over new digital workplace users and his hopes for digital workplace advances. [more]

AI / I.A.

7 Ways Artificial Intelligence is Reinventing Human Resources
March 12, 2018 – CSM Wire

Organizational leaders and human resources executives have faith that merging artificial intelligence into HR functions like onboarding and administration of benefits can and will improve the overall employee experience.

Here are the 7 ways Artificial Intelligence is Reinventing Human Resources:

1. Personalized Employee Experiences
2. Cognitive-Supporting Decision-Making
3. Automation of ‘Repetitive, Low-Value Add Tasks’
4. AI Recruiters
5. Smarter People Analytics
6. Removing Biases
7. Identifying Employees on the Way Out

For more information, please click [here]

3 Reasons Your Marketing Team Might Not Be Ready for AI
March 13, 2018 – CSM Wire

It takes more than just implementing an AI-based application to have a successful marketing deployment. There are many marketing departments that are simply not ready for an AI application no matter how much they want one, or could even benefit from one. A marketing department that doesn’t handle the data that it already has will need to understand what they have before adding AI to the mix. An AI-ready marketing department will also have subject matter expertise, product expertise and domain expertise. Should your marketing department not have clearly defined its goals, it's likely too soon to add in a layer of AI as well [more]

March 9, 2018 / 9 mars 2018

Social Networks / Réseaux sociaux

How to nail community management
March 9, 2018 – Saintnicks

Online community management can build and grow a brand but only if it’s done right. Here you can find tips like keeping your post casual, crowdsourcing some of your content to show the engagement of the community towards your brand, and owning up to your content, all with shining examples of businesses that excelled in community management.[more]

Canadian internet use is expanding past Facebook and Google: report
March 8, 2018 – Mobilesyrup

Based on comScore’s [2018 Global Digital Future in Focus report], the total minutes for the top 100 properties, excluding Google and Facebook, is growing steadily. Among the presences breaking up the Facebook-Google duopoly, there is Snapchat, still keeping up its popularity amongst the younger audiences, and Instagram. The report noted that Canadians differed from other countries in the rise of mobile-only use as desktop use it still edging out mobile use by about 20% more than other countries as of December 2017.[more].

Facebook annonce la fin du Fil Explorer, les marques ne seront finalement pas exclues du fil d’actualité
2 mars, 2018 – Blog du modérateur

Facebook vient d’annoncer officiellement la fin de l’expérimentation avec la séparation des médias, des marques et des amis. Le « Fil Explorer », qui contenait les medias et les marques et qui étais séparer du fil d’actualité, va totalement disparaitre du réseau social et ces publications continueront d’évoluer ensemble au sein du fil d’actualité avec les publications de la famille et des amis.[suite].

Facebook essaye de relancer la reconnaissance faciale en Europe
1 mars, 2018 – ZDNet

Facebook aimerait pouvoir essayer une nouvelle version de sa fonctionnalité de reconnaissance faciale en Europe qui ce conformerais aux règlements généraux sur la protection des données (RGPD). Cette fonctionnalité est déjà activée aux É.-U. depuis plusieurs années et permet aux utilisateurs d’avoir un meilleur contrôle sur les photos d’eux mis sur le réseau social en se chargeant de reconnaitre l’utilisateur et de l’avertir chaque fois qu’une image de lui est mise sur le réseau, ce qui permettra à l’utilisateur d’accepter ou de s’opposer à la mise en ligne de celle-ci.[suite].

Twitter lance les Signets pour sauvegarder des tweets
1 mars, 2018 – Blog du modérateur

Twitter annonce que les « tweets » que l’on désire conserver pour une prochaine lecture seront désormais consignés dans un volet appelé Signet ou « Bookmark » en anglais. Twitter annonce également qu’il sera possible de sauvegarder un « tweet », le partager en Message Privé, ou encore le partager en dehors de Twitter, une amélioration de la fonction de partage sur la plateforme.[suite].

Machine Learning / Apprentissage machine

Next big Windows update will bring hardware-accelerated machine learning
March 7, 2018 – ARS Technica

Microsoft is busy prepping developers for the next big Windows 10 update. The new version will include a new machine-learning framework for using machine-learning models in Windows applications. It is hardware accelerated on the CPU meaning it will use instruction sets up to and including the latest AVX512, and it can also be used on the GPU, with Microsoft saying that about 80% of Windows 10 systems have sufficiently powerful GPUs to run the models. There's also a driver model for dedicated machine-learning accelerators so that these too can be used to run the models. The models themselves use a format called ONNX, developed by Microsoft, Facebook, and Amazon Web Services and supported by Nvidia, Qualcomm, Intel, and AMD.[more]

Getting Value from Machine Learning Isn’t About Fancier Algorithms — It’s About Making It Easier to Use
March 6, 2018 – Harvard Business Review

Machine learning can drive tangible business value for a wide range of industries but only if it is actually put to good use. Here is a demonstration that getting value from machine learning is less about cutting-edge models, and more about making deployment easier. Feature Labs, the team behind this article, is using AI as a project manager, an example for model training, and showing that the ability to anticipate is a competitive advantage.

The four most important aspects of the new Machine Learning paradigm are as follows:

1. Speedy process
2. Greater involvement of domain experts
3. Automated feature engineering
4. Intelligent model-testing

To read more about this topic, please click [here]

Google propose un programme éducatif en ligne pour apprendre le machine learning
1 mars, 2018 – Blog du modérateur

Le programme éducatif en ligne « Learn with Google AI » est gratuit et accessible à tous, pour permettre à chacun de s’initier à l’apprentissage machine. C’est une initiative pour sensibiliser le grand public à l’intelligence artificielle mettant à la portée des doigts une multitude de ressources.

Un filtre permet à chaque profil de choisir les ressources à étudier en fonction de son niveau et de l’étape qu’il souhaite aborder :

• Le développement de l’idée
• La collecte des données
• La préparation des données
• La construction du modèle
• L’évaluation du modèle
• Le déploiement du modèle

Afin de lire plus en détails, cliquez [ici]

8 Ways to Measure Chatbot Program Success
March 7, 2018 – CSM Wire

According to Inbenta’s Chatbot Consumer and Business Survey, 50% of consumers prefer chatbots when shopping online rather than calling support, and 72% of consumers say that chatbots hold the answer to frustration-free customer service.

8 Ways to Measure Chatbot Program Success:

1. Start By Defining KPIs
2. Human Interaction Vs Chatbot Interaction
3. Measure Task Success Rates
4. Consider Scalability and User Retention
5. Analyze “Unproductive Interactions”
6. Set Benchmarks, Note Sentiment
7. User Adoption, Retention
8. Track Engagement Metrics

To read more in detail, click [here].

AI / I.A.

3 Tips to Avoid the Embarrassment of AI's Unintended Consequences
March 6, 2018 – CSM Wire

CEO of Singapore-based technology company Tenqyu, Jan Semrau says: “In all machine learning and/or AI implementations, the forecast, decision and classification should be accompanied by a score and an evaluation as to how much the score can be trusted. These values need to be continually monitored to ensure that the trained model is still performing within defined parameters and has not experienced a significant population shift leading to an over-or-under fitting of the model,”

After Tengyu’s experience with a Twitter-bot that ended up being banned, they share their tips to mitigate against unintended consequences of AI including to review internal data transformations of AI algorithms, to improve algorithm transparency, to test and evaluate the impact on the consumer and to have a legal review of the AI.[more]

Here’s what top investors are asking about AI
March 7, 2018 – Venture Beat

Sam Charrington, host of the podcast This Week in Machine Learning & AI (TWiML & AI) and founder of CloudPulse Strategies, shares the key themes of discussion at the KeyBanc Capital Markets Emerging Technology Summit.

These themes include:

• The rise of enterprise machine learning
• Enter conversational AI
• AI and the cloud
• AI chips and hardware
• Winners and losers

To read more on these themes, click [here]

Augmenting employee performance with AI and other technologies
March , 2018 – ZD Net

US companies face a productivity paradox: Despite billions of dollars invested in technology, growth in employee productivity has slowed since 2004.

Augmenting workers more frequently and with more sophisticated tools will require an upgrade in employees' skills. RQ (robotics quotient) will join IQ (intelligence quotient) and EQ (emotional quotient) in the lexicon of human resources, business, and technology leaders everywhere because RQ measures the skill set that human workers have when working with automated and semiautonomous systems. Meaning that people who are adaptable, flexible, pick up new smart tools quickly, and who can problem-solve have higher RQ. In many cases, organizations with a lower RQ rating will need to invest in training, learning and development efforts to raise RQ, even if they don't know it yet. [more]

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March 2, 2018 / 2 mars 2018

Digital Workplace / Espace de travail numérique

5 Strategies to Manage Change In a Digital Workplace
February 23, 2018 – CSM Wire

Effectively managing change requires a clear understanding, making the first step towards the transformation to a digital workplace a full assessment of the state of the business. These techniques listed here can be used to effectively manage change.

1. Recognize Change Must Be a Big Part of Your Strategy
2. Don’t Just Embrace Technology, Pursue It
3. Assemble a Digital Workplace Task Force
4. Build Your Culture around Your Vision for a Digital Workplace
5. Conduct Frequent Process Reviews to Establish Best Practices

To read more about these steps, please click [here]

5 Ways to Kick-Start Your Enterprise Social Network
February 28, 2018 – CSM Wire

Internally, enterprise social networks (ESN) can help employees to access the knowledge and resources they need to work together effectively and solve business problems. Externally, public social media platforms can help an organization stay close to their customers and conduct research to improve business processes and operations.

Here are five things you can do today to energize your enterprise social network:

• Host a “Jam”
• Create a Community
• Tell Stories
• Ask the Right Questions to Crowdsource Answers
• Find the Catalysts

To read more about these steps, please click [here].

Social Networking / Réseautage social

Vero : le nouveau réseau social qui n’exploite pas les données de ses utilisateurs
26 février 2018 – Blog du modérateur

La monétisation des données par Google, Apple, Facebook et Amazon est un débat récurrent. Cette pratique permet de proposer des services gratuits, en échange de monétisation publicitaire des données utilisateurs, mais Vero, une application existante depuis avril 2017 qui est un mélange de Facebook, Twitter, Instagram et Pinterest, propose un fil d'actualités sans algorithme, et sans publicité afin de créer un réseau social totalement transparent.[suite]

Facebook rolls out job posts to become the blue-collar LinkedIn
February 28, 2018 – TechCrunch

LinkedIn wasn’t built for low-skilled job seekers, so Facebook is barging in. The social network is rolling out job posts to 40 more countries to make itself more meaningful to people’s lives while laying the foundation for a lucrative business.

Businesses will be able to post job openings to a Jobs tab on their Page, Jobs dashboard, Facebook Marketplace, and the News Feed that they can promote with ads. Meanwhile, job seekers can discover openings, auto-fill applications with their Facebook profile information, edit and submit their application, and communicate via Messenger to schedule interviews.

The Job posts rollout could help Facebook steal some of the $1.1 billion in revenue LinkedIn earned for Microsoft in Q4 2017.[more]

Google's Slack alternative is available starting today (February 28, 2018)
February 28, 2018 – Engadget

Hangouts Chat is a totally redesigned messaging service that's more like Slack than the Hangouts most users know today. As of now, Hangouts Chat is out of its "early adopter" program and will be available to all Google Suite users over the next week, assuming their company enables it.

Hangouts Chat features virtual rooms for different parts of a company's team or to organize people around a specific project or task. Each room can hold up to 8,000 people, and Chat works with 28 different languages total. Naturally, it has direct messaging and threaded conversations as well as apps for iOS, Android, macOS and Windows.

Hangouts Chat includes a total of 25 bots that interface with other Google Suite apps so you can talk with @Drive to get updates on shared files, or use @Meet to check people's calendars and schedule meetings.[more]

AI / I.A.

Artificial Intelligence Moves Past the Novelty Stage to Practical Workplace Application
February 21, 2018 – CSM Wire

Businesses are implementing useful AI technologies such as digital assistants into everyday operations to not only increase employee productivity, but also streamline business processes. For example, in accounting, employees can use machine learning and predictive analytics technologies to match incoming payments to the applicable invoices, reducing time spent manually matching payments, and reducing the risk of human error.

Gone are the days of implementing AI just for the sake of staying relevant. It’s critical that businesses deploy AI applications that serve practical, functional purposes in the workplace to garner the best results.[more]

AI Bias: When Algorithms Go Bad
February 27, 2018 – CSM Wire

There are several reasons how algorithms deliver unexpected results said Julia Stoyanovich, a professor in Drexel’s College of Computing & Informatics who studies the ethical development of algorithms and artificial intelligence, but it usually comes down to bias in the original data on which the algorithm is trained, validated and ultimately deployed or, the unexpected result can come from humans providing the algorithm faulty data against which to train. An example of bias was found by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and at Stanford University where facial-analysis programs from major tech companies showed bias in both skin-type and gender. “The algorithms that can do the most damage are both discriminating against groups of individuals systematically and are opaque so an individual cannot know that there’s something going [on]” Stoyanovich said.[more]

What Data Will You Feed Your Artificial Intelligence
February 28, 2018 – CSM Wire

An AI’s very existence is defined by the information a user “feeds” it, so if you don’t provide that engine with a representative sample of your content, or a large enough one, it won’t learn what it needs to do the job. The data requires a little structure, enough to let the AI take over, and the user needs to ensure that there is no bias in the data. [more]

Machine Learning / Apprentissage machine

10 Ways Machine Learning Is Revolutionizing Marketing
February 25, 2018 – Forbes

The best marketers are using machine learning to understand, anticipate and act on the problems their sales prospects are trying to solve faster and with more clarity than any competitor. Having the insight to tailor content while qualifying leads for sales to close quickly is being fueled by machine learning-based apps capable of learning what’s most effective for each prospect and customer.

Discover how 57% of enterprise executives believe the most significant growth benefit of AI and machine learning will be improving customer experiences and support and how, by 2020, real-time personalized advertising across digital platforms and optimized message targeting accuracy, context and precision will accelerate.

For more on the 10 ways machine learning is revolutionizing marketing today and in the future, please click [here].

A Tour of The Top 10 Algorithms for Machine Learning Newbies
February 28, 2018 – KDnuggets

For anyone eager to understand the basic of machine learning, here is a quick tour of the top 10 machine learning algorithms used by data scientists:

1. Linear Regression
2. Logistic Regression
3. Linear Discriminant Analysis
4. Classification and Regression Trees
5. Naive Bayes
6. K-Nearest Neighbors
7. Learning Vector Quantization
8. Support Vector Machines
9. Bagging and Random Forest
10. Boosting and AdaBoost

For more information about these 10 algorithms, please click [here].

Design and Development / Conception et développement

7 Tips to Better Voice Search Optimization
February 26, 2018 – CSM Wire

Voice-enabled search is due to become the dominant form of search but it doesn’t present the user with a list of results, like a Google search results page does. Instead, Alexa, Siri, Cortana and company each decide what the top result is, and they present that, and only that. Thus, when it comes to voice search optimization, you either rank first, or you don’t rank at all.

In this article, the focus is on informational search, and the 7 tips you can use to optimise your content for voice search:

1. Know That Voice SEO Is In Its Infancy
2. Launch Your Own Alexa Skill or Voice-enabled App
3. Start Local
4. Write For Humans
5. Write Short Answers to Long Questions
6. Optimize Content with Schema Data
7. Ensure Your Mobile and AMP Friendliness

For more details, click [here].

Use These Web Design Tricks to Grow Your Business Exponentially
February 27, 2018 – Entrepreneur

Here are five top web design and UX trends that will grow your business fast and these are: a video landing page, parallax scrolling, animated calls to action, custom typography and artificial intelligence.

While there are many more design elements that you can incorporate into your designs, ultimately each choice should make users feel comfortable while representing the brand and these elements need to clearly draw attention to important calls to action to give users the information they need to make an informed choice. [more].

February 23, 2018 / 23 février 2018

Social Networking Trends / Tendances dans les réseaux sociaux

Twitter durcit sa politique antispam
22 février 2018 – Blog du modérateur

Dans la nuit du 20 au 21 février, Twitter a suspendu plusieurs milliers de comptes considérés comme des « bots » russes, qui auraient participé à une large campagne de spam depuis la tuerie dans un lycée de Floride qui a fait 17 morts. Aujourd’hui, Yoel Roth de Twitter confirme la volonté du réseau social de lutter plus activement contre les comptes automatisés avec l’ajout de plusieurs nouveaux règlements. La plateforme TweetDeck qui permet entre autres de pouvoir modérer plusieurs comptes Twitter va aussi connaître des modifications dans ses règles d’utilisation.[suite]

Des posts 3D interactifs sur Facebook
21 février 2018 – Blog du modérateur

Facebook a développé un support pour le format de fichiers gITF 2.0. Les artistes et les créateurs peuvent dorénavant partager leurs contenus 3D, plus riches et de meilleure qualité. Les utilisateurs du réseau social peuvent dorénavant interagir avec ces publications, en cliquant et faisant glisser la souris pour les regarder dans tous leurs sens. L’objectif est de démocratiser ce type de contenu, que les utilisateurs peuvent découvrir à travers leur fil d’actualité ou sur Facebook Space. Ils peuvent aussi les partager avec leurs amis en réalité virtuelle.[suite]

Snapchat ajoute un onglet ‘Stories’ (et des GIF) pour calmer la fronde des utilisateurs
20 février 2018 – Blog du modérateur

Actuellement, pour regarder une « story », les utilisateurs doivent accéder à la partie « Social » de l’application et appuyer sur le cercle situé à côté du pseudo de leur ami. Auparavant, toutes les stories étaient listées à droite de l’application. Snapchat annonce que cette interface sera modifiée une fois de plus dans les semaines qui suivent : les amis seront toujours à gauche, les médias seront toujours à droite, mais des onglets seront ajoutés à ces deux parties pour mieux classer les contenus.

Une autre annonce est l’arrivée des GIF animés sur Snapchat, possible depuit le partenariat entre Snapchat et GIPHY.[suite]

Acquisition de trafic : Google creuse l’écart sur Facebook pour les médias
19 février 2018 – Blog du modérateur

Il y a quelques semaines, Google avait dépassé Facebook en matière de trafic apporté, creusant petit à petit l’écart sur son concurrent. La tendance s’accélère encore! Alors que Google vient d’annoncer avoir passé la barre des 31 millions de sites utilisant AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages), une hausse de 25% depuis octobre dernier, Facebook continue d’enchaîner des annonces et nouveautés qui font baisser l’étendue de ses pages web.[suite]

Data and Development / Données numériques et développement

How Machine Learning Will Tame the Explosion of Unstructured Data
February 21, 2018 – CSM Wire

The most mature deployments of Machine Learning are in the areas of data analysis and processing, where the technology is capable of exceeding levels of human accuracy in some domains. Business process digitization has enabled new ways of working, which in turn have led to the production of all kinds of unstructured data. With most of the technologies businesses use to manage information today, the more data you have, the harder it is to make sense of it all, but with the cloud and Machine Learning, the opposite can be true. Using machine learning, businesses can add structure to their content and automate processes around their information.[more]]

Google recommends the best Android devices for business in new program
February 21, 2018 – Mobilesyrup

Google has launched a new program called ‘Android Enterprise Recommended’ that aims to provide enterprises with a list of Android devices ideal for business. The devices must meet “elevated enterprise requirements validated by Google” which include being able to run Android 7.0 or higher, they need to be sold unlocked and be able to receive security updates within 90 days’ of Google’s release (for a minimum of three years). These business-friendly phones also need to meet hardware requirements like 2GB of RAM, 32GB of storage and a 10-megapixel rear camera.[more]

La Data et le Big Data : La révolution du numérique
22 février 2018 – Journal du CM

Les données numériques ou « Data » ont bouleversé notre quotidien. Du simple utilisateur d’internet aux acteurs de grandes entreprises, les données numériques représentent incontestablement une véritable révolution. Apprenez-en plus avec les sujets suivants :

1. Les secteurs concernés par la Data
2. Tout le monde produit des données numériques
3. A quoi servent les Data ?
4. Et la notion de Big Data ?
5. La problématique du Big Data
6. D’autres domaines exploitant le Big Data
7. Besoin de formation et nouveaux métiers dans la Data

Pour plus de détails, cliquez [suite]

Can Agile Marketing Help Streamline Your Strategy?
February 20, 2018 – CSM Wire

Agile Marketing is “an approach to marketing that takes its inspiration from Agile software development. It values the following:

• Responding to change over following a plan.
• Rapid iterations over big-bang campaigns.
• Testing and data over opinions and conventions.
• Many small experiments over a few large bets.
• Individuals and interactions over one size fits all.
• Collaboration over silos and hierarchy.

Bryan Semple, chief marketing officer at SmartBear, leads marketing teams that have implemented an Agile marketing methodology. “As we know, there's an infinite amount of things that we can do. There's just a limited amount of time to get them done.” Running an Agile program, you know that in a given timeframe, you have X number of hours of work that is available, and it allows you to schedule that work, Semple said.

To read more about the steps and benefits that Agile Marketing can bring, click [here]

What DataOps Is and How It Can Deliver Better, Cross-Functional Analytics
February 20, 2018 – CSM Wire

With the democratization of data analytics, so many different teams and individuals are handling data, and the need for a data consumption model has emerged. DataOps (data operations) is a new approach to data management which brings together data workers (the individuals who collect, clean and prepare data) with data analysts to help enterprises make data-driven decisions at the moment of opportunity to enable data-driven enterprises by eliminating friction so that data can be turned to dollars faster without sacrificing security and governance.[here].

AI / A.I.

How AI's Answer to Cyberbullying Can Help in the Workplace
February 22, 2018 – CSM Wire

The Annual Cyberbullying Survey 2017, conducted by an anti-bullying organization called Ditch the Label, found that Facebook and Instagram hosted the most instances of cyberbullying. It therefore came as no surprise when Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom announced an initiative to help stamp out cyberbullying. This initiative is using AI text analysis to help “understand” textual statements in order to either block inappropriate content or, in Facebook’s case, “enhance” online experiences. Business conversations inside the enterprise are also moving onto digital platforms, such as Yammer, Teams, Slack, Workplace and the like. And just like the consumer platforms, these platforms can also benefit from the application of AI-driven text and sentiment analysis. [here].

Top Researchers Write 100-Page Report Warning About AI Threat to Humanity
February 20, 2018 – Motherboard

A group of 26 leading AI researchers from 14 organizations met in Oxford to discuss how superhuman artificial intelligence may be deployed for malicious ends in the future. The result of this two-day conference was a sweeping 100-page report published today that delves into the risks posed by AI in the wrong hands, and strategies for mitigating these risks.[here].

5 Steps to Jumpstart Your Artificial Intelligence Success
February 21, 2018 – CSM Wire

The following steps outline the process of preparation, planning, innovation and education required to jumpstart AI in the enterprise:

1. Identify Competitive Advantage
2. Select Specific AI Application
3. Procure AI Technology
4. Develop AI Skills
5. Build on Success

To read more about these 5 steps, click [here].

Our Sentient Future: If You Can't Beat Them, Lead Them
February 19, 2018 – CSM Wire

We’re at a nexus where artificial intelligence, cloud technology, and robotics have collided, and the result of that mash-up is sentient tools that are aware, can think and are social. The emergence of sentient tools is going to disrupt the way we live, that’s for certain, but we can make it happen in a way that meaningfully touches the lives of people in positive ways by doing research, utilising data efficiently and by using storytelling to think like a futurist.[here].

The future of AI: from siloed data to shared expertise
February 19, 2018 – Medium

In 2012, Google aggregated most of its privacy policies into one main privacy policy, explaining what information was collected and how it was being used by all Google products. It’s no coincidence that this move took place at the same time deep learning really started picking up. Back then, every AI researcher was discovering the following adage: “The greatest killer of AI is siloed data”.

Using this example, learn how breaking down silos can increase the diversity of the data being used by AI to improve their expertise over time.[here].

Open Source / Code Source Libre

Remembering The Dawn of the Open Source Movement
February 18, 2018 – The New Stack

The Open Source Initiative just announced new outreach programs this month, urging companies to “Share your story,” and revealing that OpenSource.Net will now “serve both as a community of practice and a mentorship program.” For this occasion, Christine Peterson, who coined the term Open Source, shares a never-before-published memoir about the day, in August of 1998, when she attended an “Open Source Town Meeting and O’Reilly Beer Bash” hosted by geek-book publisher O’Reilly and Associates.[more]

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February 16, 2018 / 16 février 2018

Digital Collaboration / Collaboration numérique

OpenText buys Hightail, eyes growth in content collaboration market
February 14, 2018 – ZDNET

Hightail is a 14-year-old company formerly known as YouSendIt and its primary product was a tool for sending large file attachments that outsized email capacity. It eventually rebranded to Hightail and expanded into collaboration services. In its plan to aquire Hightail, OpenText it will keep Hightail as a standalone company but many of its services will integrate into other OpenText products, including OpenText Content Suite, Documentum, Core, and Media Management. An OpenText spokesperson said the deal expands OpenText's foothold in the content collaboration market through Hightail's existing (5.5 million) user-base of marketing, advertising and creative professionals. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.[more]

Internet Trends / Tendances internet

Facebook est-il en train de devenir un réseau social pour vieux ?
13 février 2018 – Blog du modérateur

Facebook doit maintenant gérer une perte de popularité chez les jeunes utilisateurs de moins de 25 ans. Une perte de 2,8 millions d’utilisateurs aux USA et, selon eMarketer, il y a une perte de 2,2 millions de 12-17 ans et 4,5 millions de 18-24 utilisateurs au UK (Une baisse de 700 000 utilisateurs qui confirme la tendance américaine). En 2018, le 2ème groupe démographique le plus représenté à l’UK sera… les plus de 55 ans. Alors qu’on annonçait Snapchat sur la pente descendante, il y aurait un transfert d’utilisateurs de Facebook vers ce dernier, et vers Instagram qui est appartenue par Facebook..[suite]

The rise of a visual internet: Welcome to a post-text future
February 14, 2018 – The New York Times

The defining narrative of our online moment concerns the decline of text, and the exploding reach and power of audio and video. Artificial intelligence might soon let us search and index much of the world’s repository of audio and video, giving sounds and pictures a power that has kept text dominant online for so long. Technology didn’t just make multimedia easier to produce; it also democratized non-text formats, which for so long had been accessible only to studios. With these changes, it is important to consider that an information system dominated by pictures and sounds prizes emotion over rationality. [more]

How Holograms Will Disrupt Visual Collaboration in the Workplace
February 12, 2018 – Adweek

Visual collaboration involves engaging ways of using technology to bring information together in one space, accessible from multiple locations and a hologram is a 3-D image formed by the interference of light beams from a laser or other coherent light source. With these two being combined, as Deepak Chopra said, it will have “huge implications for education, for workshops, for bi-directional engagement, for entertainment, […]”.Possibly the most exciting aspect of holograms in visual collaboration is the way they draw people together for human experiences, and this kind of intimacy may bring a little humanity to technology.[more]

AI / A.I.

What is AI? Everything you need to know about Artificial Intelligence
February 12, 2018 – ZDNET

At a very high level artificial intelligence can be split into two broad types: narrow AI and general AI. Narrow AI is what we see all around us in computers today: intelligent systems that have been taught or learned how to carry out specific tasks without being explicitly programmed how to do so. Artificial general intelligence is very different, and is the type of adaptable intellect found in humans, a flexible form of intelligence capable of learning how to carry out vastly different tasks, anything from haircutting to building spreadsheets, or to reason about a wide variety of topics based on its accumulated experience.[here].

The Policy Deficit behind Canadian Artificial Intelligence
February 13, 2018 – Centre for International Governance Online

Canada is in an arguably optimal position to lead AI governance with the federal government alone pledging $125 million in the 2017 budget and AI is currently one of the most widely discussed public policy areas but Canada is still falling behind when it comes to effective AI governance. Canada defaults to its Charter of Rights and Freedoms when it comes to governing AI but this has been largely unsuccessful at holding companies accountable for issues such as discrimination. Elizabeth Dubois, an assistant professor at the University of Ottawa, argues that “AI is becoming pervasive and omnipresent. As Canadians we need to be aware of this reality and confident that our government is protecting our interests and needs.”[here].

Should AI bots lie?
February 15, 2018 – ZDNET

Should AI be programmed to lie to humans? Computer scientists Tathagata Chakraborti and Subbarao Kambhampati of Arizona State University frame the issue this way: “Effective collaboration between humans and AI-based systems requires effective modeling of the human in the loop . . . . However, these models [of the human] can also open up pathways for manipulating and exploiting the human. . . when the intent or values of the AI and the human are not aligned or when they have an asymmetrical relationship with respect to knowledge or computation power.” [here].

Why Organizations Are Turning To Artificial Intelligence
February 15, 2018 – CMS Wire

There is an increasing adoption of artificial intelligence in all industries and the AI market is starting to solidify around real-world applications with the pace of change being faster than it ever has been before, as startups and technology providers rush to create platforms and targeted niche solutions for solving specific enterprise problems. AI can also be used to drive customer engagement and gather data for businesses to better understand their customers’ wants and predict their needs. AI, even in its current form, even has the capability of compensating for significant deficiencies in the enterprise, particularly around skills shortages and providing top customer experiences. [here].

Machine Learning and Web design / Apprentissage machine et design de sites web

8 Things to Incorporate Into Your Website Redesign Process
February 13, 2018 – CMS Wire

Experts provide their tips for making sure web creators have a website worth visiting, and returning to. These tips include removing barriers for customers, creating a clean feel and easy tracking, building a community to enhance customer relationships, keeping omnichannel consistency, complying with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, considering chatbots, constently assessing your website and keeping data security in mind with the General Data Protection Regulation consent requirements coming out in May.[more]

Arm Plans to Make Edge Machine Learning Ubiquitous
February 14, 2018 – Tom’s Hardware

Arm announced Project Trillium, a new IP suite that aims to give every embedded device, from Internet of Things products to smartphones and Advanced Driver Assistance Systems, machine learning and object detection capabilities. They have designed a new highly-efficient machine learning processor that can achieve an efficiency of 3 trillion operations per second (TOPs) per Watt, with a total performance of up to 4.6 TOPS and a peak power consumption of 2W. While the machine learning processor will be programmable, allowing greater flexibility for developers, the object detection processor created will use fixed-function hardware to further increase efficiency in order to become extremely good at one task: image recognition. Arm also developed a lower-level software development kit, which can more efficiently translate existing neural network software libraries.[here].

Open Source / Code Source Libre

GPUs on Google’s Kubernetes Engine are now available in open beta
February 12, 2018 – TechCrunch

The Google Kubernetes Engine (previously known as the Google Container Engine and GKE) now allows all developers to attach Nvidia GPUs, the Tesla P100 and K80 to be precise, to their containers which provide an easy way to scale the user’s workloads up and down. Google makes it easy to monitor GPU jobs through its API and its Stackdriver monitoring and logging service. [more]

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February 9, 2018 / 9 février 2018

Social Media Platforms / Plateformes de Médias sociaux

Snapchat will not let users broadcast Live
February 8, 2018 – TechCrunch

Snapchat users will be getting live video snippets of NBC’s Live Olympics coverage directly on the app. Snapchat’s special live video player shows the full horizontal TV stream in the bottom quarter of the screen where users can tap to choose which vertical slice they want to see zoomed into in the top three-quarters of their phone. Strangely, Snapchat will show these notifications at the top of the Friends list if someone is subscribed and currently in the app, despite the fact that the big redesign it’s rolling out was specifically designed to filter publishers and professional content out of the Friends section and into Discover.[more]

Mark Zuckerberg reconnaît avoir fait des «erreurs» avec Facebook
5 février, 2018 – maPresse

Ces dernières semaines, Facebook a dévoilé des mesures pour recentrer le réseau sur les activités des amis et de la famille, même si cela signifierait que les usagers passent moins de temps sur la plateforme. Mark Zuckerberg, pour le 14eme anniversaire de Facebook, a écrit sur la plateforme : «La raison pour laquelle notre communauté existe, n'est pas parce que nous avons évité de faire des erreurs […]C'est parce que nous croyons que ce que nous faisons a suffisamment d'importance pour continuer à essayer de résoudre les défis qui se présentent à nous, tout en sachant très bien que nous connaîtrons encore et encore des échecs, mais c'est la seule manière de faire des progrès ». [suite]

AI / I.A.

How Artificial Intelligence is Impacting Today's Enterprise Workplace
February 7, 2018 – CMS Wire

The impact on today’s enterprise workforce is reflected in the increasing demand for AI where it adds another layer of evolution to search and the people working with artificial intelligence need to change their way of thinking to integrate AI into their processes. According to a 2017 study by Cowen, 81 percent of IT leaders are investing in or planning to invest in AI. Specifically, 43 percent are evaluating and doing a proof of concept; 38 percent have already launched initiatives and are targeting more investments.[more]

AI Just Learned How to Boost the Brain's Memory
February 6, 2018 – Wired

In the latest issue of Nature Communications, researchers led by University of Pennsylvania psychologist Michael Kahana shows that machine learning algorithms can be used to decode and then enhance human memory by triggering the delivery of precisely timed pulses of electricity to the brain. During a study, the researchers' system improved patients' ability to recall words by an average of 15%. [more]

Will Artificial Intelligence Write Performance Evaluations One Day?
February 5, 2018 – CMS Wire

Jason Wisdom, CTO of Aponia Data writes that performance reviews are too subjective, too tense and, frankly, have too much riding on them. He does make clear, however, that business intelligence (BI) methods can greatly assist performance reviews. “Many quantitative performance evaluation metrics can be gathered and reported BI-style. AI can take BI results and make the process interactive/intuitive,” he said. A more realistic scenario, he advises, is a hybrid BI/AI approach. [more]

Machine Learning and Deep Learning / Apprentissage machine et Apprentissage profond

12 Amazing Deep Learning Breakthroughs of 2017
February 5, 2018 – Forbes

Machine learning and deep learning practically delivered all of the most stunning achievements in artificial intelligence so far — from systems that beat us at our own games to art-producing neural networks that rival human creativity. The top 12 breakthroughs of 2017 start with DeepMind’s AlphaZero beating the top AI champions in Go, Shogi, and Chess. Then we have OpenAI’s universe gaining traction with high-profile partners, Sonnet and Tensorflow Eager joining their fellow open-source frameworks and also Facebook and Microsoft joining forces to Enable AI framework interoperability.

To see the full list of achievements, click [here].

4 Ways Machine Learning May Soon Solve (Some of Your) PR Problems
February 6, 2018 – PR News

Heyward and his colleagues at MIT Media Lab’s Laboratory for Social Machines are studying artificial intelligence solutions to the modern plights of the PR practitioner (fake news, polarization, the public's lack of faith in journalism and short attention spans, etc.) using machine learning algorithms.

Here are four PR applications of AI and machine learning shared by Heyward.

1. Faster and more accurate social listening. 2. Determining share of conversation. 3. Finding a common thread across polarized groups. 4. Crisis management.

To read the full article, click [here].

Open Source and Cloud Computing / Code Source Libre et informatique en nuage

Open Source Turns 20 Years Old: How This Term Came Into Existence?
February 5, 2018 – FOSSBYTES

For the first time, on February 3rd, 1998 in Palo Alto, the term Open Source was coined by Christine Peterson, who was executive director at Foresight Institute. The Open Source Initiative was formed in following days. People like Tim O’Reilly, Bruce Perens, and others played a pivotal role in popularising the term. Perens also adapted his Free Software Guidelines for Debian GNU/Linux to serve as Open Source Definition.[more]

Cloud computing will virtually replace traditional data centers within three years
February 5, 2018 – ZDNET

Cloud data center traffic will represent 95 percent of total data center traffic by 2021, says Cisco. Both consumer and business applications are contributing to the growing dominance of cloud services. For consumers, streaming video, social networking, and search are among the most popular cloud applications; for business users, enterprise resource planning, collaboration, and analytics are the top growth areas, according to research from Cisco.

To see the full report, click [here].

Diamanti Offers a Plug-and-Play Kubernetes Deployment
February 5, 2018 – FOSSBYTES

Diamanti is focused on the networking and storage aspects of getting up and running fast, especially for large enterprises. The company released a Kubernetes packaged appliance that, the company boasts, can be up and running in 15 minutes.

“One of the challenges for IT is standing up infrastructure, downloading software and putting it all together,” said Jeffrey Chou, Diamanti CEO and founder. “Our premise is a one-stop shop, one throat to choke. Plug it in and it works. You don’t have to hire a team of engineers to build something.”[more]

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February 2, 2018 / 2 février 2018

Social Media Platforms / Plateformes de Médias sociaux

L’API d’Instagram supporte maintenant la publications
30 janvier 2018 – Blog du modérateur

Jusqu’à présent, l’API Instagram ne supportait pas la publication et il était nécessaire de passer par le réseau social afin de partager une photo ou une vidéo. Maintenant, avec la mise à jour de l’API et le lancement de la fonctionnalité nommé « Content Publishing », les outils comme Hootsuite, les Français d’Agorapulse ou d’Iconosquare vont pouvoir proposer la publication des photos et des vidéos sur Instagram, sans quitter leur plateforme. Instagram précise que dans un premier temps, seuls les partenaires (« Facebook Marketing Partners » et « Instagram Partners ») peuvent utiliser la fonctionnalité « Content Publishing », pour faire une publication et ce, si vous avez un profil professionnel Instagram.[suite]

Even as people spend less time on Facebook, their sales remain stronger than expected
January 31, 2018 – CNET

Zuckerberg wrote on the 12th of January that “By making these changes [to the news feed], I expect the time people spend on Facebook and some measures of engagement will go down," and he was correct as users are spending 50 million fewer hours on Facebook every day. He also wrote “I also expect the time you do spend on Facebook will be more valuable. And if we do the right thing, I believe that will be good for our community and our business over the long term too." Though the full effect of these changes on Facebook’s business won’t be known for a while, the business reported $12.97 billion in sales during the last 3 months of the year and that beat the Wall Street estimates of $12.55 billion. After first dismissing claims that Facebook was part of the "fake news" problem, Zuckerberg said in January that his primary goal for 2018 is "fixing" the site's biggest problems, including misinformation, harassment and undermining election integrity. [more]

Machine Learning and Deep Learning / Apprentissage machine et Apprentissage profond

Deep learning vs. machine learning: what's the difference between the two?
January 27, 2018 – Digital Trends

Machine learning typically runs on low-end devices and breaks a problem down into parts. Each part is solved in order, and then combined to create a single answer to the problem. Machine learning algorithms are essentially enabling programs to make predictions, and over time get better at these predictions based on trial and error experience. Deep learning is inspired by how the human brain works. It requires high-end machines with discrete add-in graphics cards capable of crunching numbers, and enormous amounts of “big” data. Small amounts of data actually yield lower performance and unlike standard machine learning, deep learning solves the problem from end to end.[more]

Which tech is most likely to transform the world?
January 31, 2018 – ZNET

Research and advisory firm Lux Research set out to find the answer to which technologies have the greatest potential to transform the world in the next ten years, applying its in-house data analysis platform and the expertise of its global technical team to identify and rank the 18 most transformative technologies. At the top of that list is machine learning and deep neural networks as it touches almost every industry ranging from agriculture to automotive to pharmaceuticals and retail. Others in the list of technologies that will likely change our world are: 3D printing and additive manufacturing, genome editing, 5G networks, microbiome, solid-state batteries, synthetic biology, augmented reality, smartwatches, wireless charging, materials informatics, Internet of Things security, edge computing, energy distribution system monitoring, polyethylene furanoate, sugar reduction, neural interfaces, syngas, and power-to-gas." [more]

Google is now using machine learning to predict flight delays
January 31, 2018 – The Verge

In its ongoing efforts to improved its user experience and make its apps even smarter, Google has added a pair of new features to its Flight app. The first uses machine learning to predict upcoming flight delays, using patterns found in flight locations, weather and aircrafts arriving late, to provide the user with a warning when algorithms are 80% sure a delay will occur. The second breaks down exactly what airlines mean by “basic economy”, providing the user with the knowledge of what amenities are and are not included in the flight class fees since they differ from one airline to another.[more]

5 Essential Pieces of the Deep Learning Puzzle
January 29, 2018 – The New Stack

Deep learning allows computers to learn and make decisions based on massive datasets. For companies who want to implement deep learning, there are five pieces they must have in place to ensure they are making the most of it:
1) A way to quantify success
2) An abundance of clean data
3) A deep learning framework
4) A robust cloud infrastructure, and
5) A way to optimize the models.
By following these steps companies can make sure their models are aimed in the right direction, and their deep learning efforts are possible, scalable, and optimal. [more]

AI / I.A.

MIT launches MIT IQ, aims to spur human, artificial intelligence breakthroughs, bolster collaboration
February 1, 2018 – ZNET

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is launching an initiative called MIT Intelligence Quest in an effort to combine multiple disciplines to reverse engineer human intelligence, create new algorithms for machine learning and artificial intelligence and foster collaboration. What MIT IQ is really trying to address is the reality that the foundations of AI are dated. The mathematics and core principles of AI date back to the 1950s and 1960s. James DiCarlo, head of the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences said that MIT IQ will take a reverse engineering approach to artificial intelligence. The first of two units in MIT IQ, dubbed The Core, will look to develop machine-learning algorithms. The second unit, called The Bridge, will be dedicated to applying MIT discoveries in natural and artificial intelligence across multiple disciplines. [more]

Facebook tries giving chatbots a consistent personality
January 28, 2018 – Engadget

Facebook’s research team has tested a new approach that gives bots more consistent personalities and more natural responses. The approach teaches its AI to look for patterns in a special 164,000-utterance data set, called Persona-Chat, which includes a handful of facts about a given bot's persona. Sample conversations from Facebook's study showed that the bots were much more consistent and fluent than bots trained on movie phrases, but they definitely wouldn't pass a [Turing test] (test of a machine's ability to exhibit intelligent behavior equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, that of a human). This will hopefully allow for the development of real-world chatbots or other conversational AI systems with more personality. [more]

Open Source / Code Source Libre

The Emotional Chatbots Are Here to Probe Our Feelings
January 31, 2018 – Wired

Since it became available in November, more than 2 million people have downloaded the Replika app, a chatbot that uses a neural network to hold an ongoing, one-on-one conversation with its user, and over time, learn how to speak like them. The creators, Kuyda and her team, are releasing Replika's underlying code under an open source license to allow developers to take the app’s AI engine and build upon it. The chatbot uses a deep learning model called sequence-to-sequence, which learns to mimic how humans speak in order to simulate conversation. Another chatbot called Woebot, which bills itself as "your charming robot friend who is ready to listen, 24/7,” uses artificial intelligence to offer emotional support and talk therapy, like a friend or a therapist. Other projects have looked at how to use AI to detect human emotions, by recognizing and responding to the nuances in human vocal and facial expression. [more]

Red Hat Will Acquire CoreOS for Greater Kubernetes Presence
January 30, 2018 – The New Stack

Red Hat will pay approximately $250 million for CoreOS. In the press release announcing this acquisition, Red Hat specifically called out CoreOS as an innovator in Kubernetes and container-native solutions. CoreOS CEO Alex Polvi said, “We want to ensure businesses have the ability to scale their applications in containers by using Kubernetes on AWS. The combination of Kubernetes, CoreOS, and AWS is another step forward in helping companies reach hyperscale.” [more]
For even more information, read the [Red Hat FAQ].

January 26, 2018 / 26 janvier 2018

Social Media/Social Networking / Médias sociaux/Réseaux sociaux

The Lesson of Facebook’s Hammer Drop? Build a Community, Not an Audience
January 25, 2018 – ADWEEK

Mark Zuckerberg announced a massive shift in what Facebook’s 2 billion users will see on their news feeds: fewer posts from businesses and media companies, and more from friends and family. This is an opportunity for businesses using Facebook to embrace a more sustainable and ultimately more profitable approach to social media platforms, an approach that focuses less on audience and more on community. That will mean doing the hard work that comes with identifying target groups and engaging them with content, experiences, benefits and education that are of value to their professional and personal lives. [more]

Désinformation: Facebook sonde ses usagers sur les sources «fiables»
January 19, 2018 – maPRESSE

Afin de lutter contre la désinformation et identifier les sources « fiables », Facebook demandera directement aux utilisateurs leur avis au travers d'enquêtes de satisfaction. L’utilisateur sera questionné sur la connaissance de telle ou telle source afin de déterminer s’il fait confiance à la provenance de l’information. Le montant d’information disponible pour les lecteurs ne changera pas, seulement la priorité des articles. Ceci vient à la suite de l’annonce de Facebook qui a l’intention de donner la priorité aux publications partagées par la famille et les amis, au détriment des pages « aimées » par les utilisateurs.[suite]

Instagram Adds GIFs to Stories and, Yes, It's a Direct Shot at Snapchat
January 23, 2018 – AdAge

In the competition to acquire more active users than Snapchat, Instagram announced that users can now add GIF stickers to all photos and videos uploaded to Stories, the platform's popular Snapchat-esque offering. Von Scheiner, founder and creative director at social media agency VonShine Industries says: “While Instagram is obviously a lot bigger, Gen Z is on Snapchat. Millennials and, to some extent, Gen X, are on Instagram. Should this work according to Instagram's intentions, you'll see Instagram grab a young and very active audience, which opens a lot of new possibilities for marketers.”
Instagram is also planning on giving users the ability to upload photos and videos of any size to Stories, adding a color gradient to fill the background when needed.[more]

Design and Development / Design et développement

A Look at Nielsen Norman Group's Top 10 Intranets of 2018
January 24, 2018 – CSM Wire

Nielsen Norman Group's Top 10 Intranets of 2018 confirms the current trend of organizations making their intranets a place where people can connect, communicate and collaborate. All of the 10 intranets on the list had three trending characteristics present in their design: the first is a strong focus on basic intranet design geared towards information architecture, content and page structure. The second is the practical limitations of mobile design, often offering only the top tasks on intranets’ mobile site, and the third characteristic is photos of employees at work instead of the traditional use of stock images. Follow the link to see the list and a detailed description of each individual intranet. [more]

Facebook buys government ID authentication start up Confirm
January 23, 2018 – ZNET

Facebook has acquired government ID authentication startup Confirm in order to validate the identities of the people on its social network to protect users and political elections worldwide. Confirm is a Boston-based startup that offered an API that can confirm a person's identity for any transaction that requires proof of identity using a smartphone camera. Confirm wrote on its website: "We're excited to announce that we have agreed to be acquired by Facebook! This is the culmination of three years of hard work building technology that will keep people safe and secure online." [more]

AI and Machine Learning / I.A. et apprentissage machine

Twitter is using machine learning to crop photos to the most interesting part
January 25, 2018 – The Verge

Twitter has been working on using machine learning to crop picture previews to their most interesting parts. Their solution was “cropping using saliency” using defining data from academic studies in eye-tracking (saliency here meaning whatever’s most interesting in a picture — faces or not). ML researcher Lucas Theis and ML lead Zehan Wang wrote: “This data can be used to train neural networks and other algorithms to predict what people might want to look at [and] this lets us perform saliency detection on all images as soon as they are uploaded and crop them in real-time”. This new feature is currently being rolled out on desktop, iOS, and Android apps to all users.[more]

Facebook’s translation methods are faster — including at catching violations
January 25, 2018 – Digital Trends

Facebook spans more than 100 languages and now the platform is bringing new features across multiple languages faster, thanks to multilingual embeddings powered by neural language processing, a type of A.I. designed to process language. The update has implications even for English users that aren’t bilingual. The programs that detect posts that are against Facebook’s policies will gain more accuracy across more languages, Facebook says, supporting the platform’s ongoing work against hate speech, terrorism, and fake news.[more]

Open Source / Code Source Libre

Microsoft Expands the Kubernetes Toolset with the Virtual Kubelet
January 24, 2018 – The New Stack
Microsoft’s support for open source Kubernetes has enabled the tool for a wider array of workloads. The new addition, Virtual Kubelet, allows users to manage serverless containers using Kubernetes (an open-source system for automating deployment, scaling and management of containerized applications) either in Azure Container Instances or on any other runtime platform. Also new to the tool is Open Service Broker for Azure (OSBA), built using the Open Service Broker API, as well as the dashboard and visualisation tool called Kashti.[more]

January 19, 2018 / 19 janvier 2018

Search / Recherche

Google will make page speed a factor in mobile search ranking starting in July
January 17, 2018 – TechCrunch
Google announced that it will now take page speed into consideration, amongst other factors, when ranking mobile websites searches, in what they are calling the “Speed Update”. This will only affect a small percentage of queries and it’s about the page’s performance in general, with the goal of offering mobile users a better overall experience when searching since 60% of its lookups are done on mobile and they account for 94.4% of the mobile search market in the U.S.
Tools to assist in bolstering the performance of a website on the search engine include the Chrome User Experience Report, Lighthouse and PageSpeed Insights. [more]

Social Networking and Team Collaboration / Réseaux sociaux et collaboration d'équipe

Facebook's New Mission May Be Impossible
January 15, 2018 – Bloomberg
In order to address fake new, Facebook wants to separate the media element from social media on users’ news feeds, which may prove to be more difficult than anticipated. Mark Zuckerberg said: "Since there's more public content than posts from your friends and family, the balance of what's in News Feed has shifted away from the most important thing Facebook can do — help us connect with each other". So much so that according to Pew Research, Facebook has outcompeted traditional media for the role of top news purveyor to the U.S. — so much so Facebook’s average quarter revenue doubled in 2017 to $9.2 billion up from $4.5 billion per average quarter in 2015. In addition to addressing Fake news, the changes will show users “less public content from businesses, brands and media,” a move Zuckerberg says is intended to promote “more meaningful social interactions.” While these moves will likely hurt revenues, according to Zuckerberg, a happier audience should be good for business long-term. [more]

Slack launches private shared channels for more discreet conversations between businesses
January 17, 2018 – VentureBeat
Slack announced that its channels shared between two companies can now be set to private. Employees and team members can collaborate in private shared channels that are no longer visible to other team members or even team administrators. “Both teams in a private shared channel will be able to choose if they want the channel visible to their side’s other team members” said product manager Sean Rose. Slack is also working on releasing more features like shared channels for collaboration between Enterprise Grid customers and the possibility of having more than two companies on a single shared channel.[more]

AI / I.A.

2018 marque le début de la démocratisation de l’IA
15 janvier 2018 – Direction Informatique

Tout au long de l’année 2018, l’intelligence artificielle améliorera sa performance et ses capacités stimuleront l’intégration d’interfaces conversationnelles intelligentes à un grand nombre de produits et de services. Un récent sondage de Gartner mené auprès de 3160 directeurs des services d’information (DSI) de 98 pays a révélé que 21% des DSI en sont aux essais pilotes ou prévoient en mettre en œuvre à court terme. Une proportion de 25% à de tels plans à moyen ou long terme. L’insuffisance de ressources compétentes demeure le plus grand défi à relever pour la mise en œuvre de l’intelligence artificielle.[suite]

Google’s updated Search Console gives you more detailed search performance and indexing data
January 17, 2018 – The Verge

Cloud AutoML is a new tool that will let users train their own custom machine learning algorithms without having to write a single line of code. It does this by offering a simple graphical interface where users can drag and drop sets of images so the software starts picking out recurrent elements or items. Urban Outfitters, for example, is testing how Cloud AutoML might be used to identify items of clothing in their catalog, so users can filter by certain characteristics, as it is currently limited to image recognition. [more]

Les robots n’ont pas vraiment appris à lire, mais une intelligence artificielle a battu les humains à un test de lecture
17 janvier 2018 – Blog du modérateur

Une intelligence artificielle a obtenu un meilleur résultat que les humains pour la première fois lors d’un test de compréhension de lecture. La division Data Science d’Alibaba, les concepteurs du programme, indique dans un communiqué que «son modèle de deep learning a obtenu un score de 82,44 au Stanford Question Answering Data Set, le 11 janvier, battant ainsi le score des humains (82,304)». Alilbaba précise que son modèle est déjà appliqué, notamment lors du Singles’ Day, depuis plusieurs années.[suite]

UI / U.X.

Customer Experience Best Practices: A Framework for Designing Outstanding CX
January 17, 2018 – CMS Wire

When designing (or redesigning) a digital transformation strategy, a key component is to create a compelling customer experience (CX). Best practices and guidelines involve a customer-first focus, empathy for the customer, a holistic outlook and an agile approach to development. As an example, the way the Washington Post has approached CX with an intense digital transformation focus has been so successful that they now offer their products and services that were “born out of necessity” to other companies, brands and digital publishers under the Arc Publishing umbrella. Whether your CX is still being established or it is well-defined, best practices are characteristics of a design-thinking approach.[more]

Open Source / Code Source Libre

Open Source Initiative Announces New Partnership With Adblock Plus
January 16, 2018 – Open Source Initiative

Adblock Plus is a free open source web browser extension that gives the user control of the ads they want to see by filtering them or blocking them. Eyeo GmbH, the German business behind Adblock Plus, has joined The Open Source Initiative as corporate sponsors in order to contribute to the open source community and “to contribute to a sustainable, fair and open web for creators and consumers” said the founder and CEO of Eyeo, Till Faida. [more].

Digital Collaboration / Collaboration digitale

Where is your company on the path to optimizing a collaborative digital workplace?
January 18, 2018 – CIO

Page O’Neil, chief marketing officer at Prysm, explains the company’s “Technology Maturity Framework”: an evaluation to determine where a business stands as a digital collaborative environment and helps to establish how to move forward as “a digital workplace”. The “Technology Maturity Framework” has five stages: Reactive, exploratory, emerging, integrated and optimizing. O’Neil notes that these stages are ordered and that your organization should not attempt to skip vital steps before moving on the next. For instance, it is not worthwhile to move from Reactive to Emerging without creating a strategic plan, enlisting support and exploring options in the marketplace. [more].

January 12, 2018 / 12 janvier 2018

AI and Machine Learning / I.A. et apprentissage machine

YouTube's AI is the puppetmaster over most of what you watch
January 10, 2018 – CNET
YouTube's artificial intelligence is getting better at dragging you down a video rabbit hole. YouTube Chief Product Officer Neal Mohan explained that “70% of the time users watch a YouTube video, they get lured in by the service’s AI-driven recommendations,” leading to the average viewing session on mobile to over 60 minutes. Mohan highlighted that YouTube “focused a lot in [the] last several years on machine learning and artificial intelligence to learn what our users like […] to give the [user] a steady stream, almost a synthetic or personalized channel".[more]

Facebook is testing a new section of the app specifically for local news and events
January 10, 2018 – Recode
Facebook is testing a new section in its app called “Today In” to provide local news from vetted sources. All publishers who appear in this section will be approved by the News Partnership team which is overseen by former NBC news anchor Campbell Brown. This is part of Facebook’s Journalism Project initiative which was launched in an effort to cleanse the service of false information. Though it is currently only being tested in New Orleans, LA; Little Rock, AR.; Billings, MT; Peoria, IL; Olympia, WA; and Binghamton NY, the service will be available to more US cities eventually. [more]

Facebook is shutting down its standalone personal assistant “M”
January 8, 2018 – TechCrunch
“M”, FaceBook’s standalone personal assistant, was first introduced in August 2015, back when the Amazon Echo was new and Google Assistant wasn’t around yet. This service used Messenger and text-based interactions to assist the user with, for example, booking a table at a restaurant or organizing a vacation. In addition to AI, “M” relied on human interaction to help users’ most complicated queries. Facebook hoped to use those human interactions to help train the AI model to rely less and less on humans.[more]

Data and Development / Données et développement

Marketers Share Strategies for Twitter's New 280-Character Limit
January 10, 2018 – CMS Wire

Of 1,200 Twitter users who had used the social network in the month following Twitter’s character change, 38% told YouGov, a London-based analytics firm, they liked the tweet bump to 280 characters while 32% said they longed for a return to the 140 character days. The other 30 percent said they didn’t know either way. Some marketers and social media leaders shared their thoughts on the character limit change: Charney Weiss, social media director at Los Angeles-based agency Dailey said she tries to remain “Snappy and Pithy” while also placing a higher importance on grammar while some marketers have barely noticed a change in the character limit difference. Others, like Joshua Feinberg, vice president and co-founder of SP Home Run Inc., said he uses the additional space to add more Hashtags as well as provide a more focused approach on messaging and better content promotion.[more]

Google’s updated Search Console gives you more detailed search performance and indexing data
January 8, 2018 – TechCrunch

After a few months in beta testing, Google is ready to launch the production of the update to its webmaster’s console. The update that’s probably most important for most users is the new search performance report that now features a new design and access to 16 months of data. The changes to the Index coverage report and both the AMP and Job Posting reports were focused on making existing features easier to find and use.[more]

Online engagement / Mobilisation en-ligne

Qu’est-ce que le taux d’engagement Facebook et comment le calculer ?
9 janvier 2018 – Le journal du CM

Le taux d’engagement Facebook est une valeur importante pour le « community manager » ou l’internaute gérant des pages professionnels sur le réseau social afin de créer une stratégie Facebook autour des interactions et leurs mesures. Il faut d’abord calculer le taux (il est aussi possible d’accéder au taux d’engagement Facebook depuis les options d’une page professionnelle) afin de définir des objectifs de taux d’engagement et de les améliorer. Un taux d’engagement compris entre environ 7 et 10% est excellent, un taux compris entre 3 et 6% serait bon, en dessous ce serait à revoir, mais il est important de considérer la portée d’une page Facebook. Un taux de 1% est considéré comme très bon sur les pages qui recensent plusieurs milliers de fans.

Il y a plusieurs manières de calculer le taux :

• Par publication (ce qui peux établir une moyenne mensuelle, des ratios entre les articles, etc.), par exemple : (50 interactions sur une publication / 1500 personnes potentiellement atteintes) x 100 = 3.33 %. Cette méthode ne peux être utiliser que par quelqu’un qui a accès aux statistiques de publications (admin, contributeur, etc.).

• Perception des concurrents. Par exemple, (105 interactions sur une publication / 98.000 abonnés total à la page) x 100 = 0.10% . Il est aussi possible d’utiliser MakeMeStats pour établir ce taux et aussi d’isoler le taux d’engagement entre la portée organique et la portée payante sur le réseau social.[cliquez ici]

In the know: how a digital workspace can drive innovation
January 2018 – ComputerWeekly

In a digital world, engaged employees can support innovation using a new generation of tools that leverage behavioural science to: develop new approaches, services and products (and to fail fast); source new skills; engage employees in the latest challenges; and get small, innovative projects up and running rapidly. “Organisations want better collaboration, better analytics capabilities and they want to be agile,” says Matt Cain of Gartner. Some offerings such as software-as-a-service (SaaS) office suites (e.g. Microsoft 365, G Suit, or Workday) are enabling a digital workspace, however there are emerging tools that can fill important gaps such as ideation and ideas management and how to quickly find who in an organization has the expertise to support a particular project. The article takes a look at two such tools: Solverboard for ideation and Talking Circles for skills and project matching. [more]

Open Source / Code Source Libre

FB strengthens its commitment for Open Source with Docusaurus
9 janvier 2018 – OpenSourceForU

As part of its commitment to the open source community FaceBook unveiled Docusaurus: an open source toolkit that lets users and teams easily publish documentation websites. The primary function of Docusaurus is to publish a set of static HTML files, ready to upload onto a server for public viewing that lets the users customise their project layout. It comes with features such as preconfigured support for over 70 languages, versioning support and document search. [more].

January 5, 2018 / 5 janvier 2018

AI, Data and Analytics / IA, données et analytique

Google Chatbase Ushers in the Rise of Chatbot Analytics
January 2, 2018 – CMSWire
A few analytics tools for chatbots are starting to emerge, but the most noteworthy one this year comes from Google. Called Chatbase, the platform provides data from AI-driven responses to user requests which in turn provides responses that are more varied than text on a webpage.

Once Chatbase is installed using the kit that Google provides, users can look at three sets of report panels to review the chatbot’s performance. The first is the “Sessions report” which shows four metrics: daily sessions, daily sessions per user, sessions per user and user messages per session. The second is the “Messages report,” designed to identify opportunities to improve response efficiency. The third is the “Transcripts report” that highlights repeated requests in the request history.[more]

Google is sending more traffic than Facebook to publishers — again
December 11, 2017 – Recode
During 2017, Google rose back to the top of the list as the main source of referral traffic for web publishers beating out Facebook according to Parse.ly, a digital analytics company. In January 2017, Facebook provided nearly 40% of this traffic, while Google provided 34%. Now Facebook is at 26% and Google rose to 44% of publisher’s external traffic. Parse.ly’s data comes from some 2,500 publishers that use its analytics service, including the Wall Street Journal, Time Inc., Mashable and Huffington Post.

Some of the reasons for the changes include Facebook tweaking its algorithm to prioritize posts from friends and family over publishers as well as the declining importance of the “instant articles feature” which promised to send more readers to publishers’ original content. [more]

Facebook Uses Facial Recognition to Help You Manage Your Identity
January 2, 2017 – Forbes

Facebook is launching “Facebook photo review”, a new feature with facial recognition technology to assist users in finding pictures of them that could be shared without their knowledge or consent. The Feature will notify users of the existence of a picture that they appear in, even if they are not tagged in it. Although only applicable to the pictures for which users would already be a part of the audience, it will permit users to have full control over the images posted of them, and it will give them the opportunity to tag themselves or contact the people or businesses that posted their image should they have any concerns. Facebook will not be rolling out this feature in Canada and the EU due to the privacy laws preventing the use of facial recognition technology in this manner. [more]

Instagram is changing your feed again, this time with “recommended” posts
December 27, 2017 – Digital Trends

Instagram is gradually releasing its “recommended for you” feature to all its users. The posts suggested will be based on posts liked by accounts users already follow. Should users not want to see this information, they hide it. Users can now also choose to follow particular hashtags. The changes made are to drive engagement on the social app and allow Instagram to charge top dollar for the advertisement to larger audiences. [more]

Development / Développement

Apple buys app development service Buddybuild
January 2, 2018 – TechCrunch

Apple acquired Buddybuild, a Vancouver-based app tool designed for continuous integrations and debugging founded in 2015 by former Amazon employees Dennis Pilarinos and Christopher Stott. The company, in the 3 years since it has been founded, managed to raise $8.8 million and has several high-profile customers such as Mozilla, Hootsuite, Reddit, SoundCloud, FourSquare and The New York Times. Buddybuild will be rolled into Xcode, Apple’s suite of development tools for iOS, macOS, watchOS and tvOS but have yet to disclose a timeframe for its implementation.[more]

Snapchat : il sera bientôt possible d’intégrer les «stories» sur un site web ou une app tierce
2 janvier, 2018 – blog du modérateur

« Stories Everywhere » est une fonctionnalité ajoutée qui va permettre de consulter le contenu Snapchat partout comme l’intégration de tweet actuellement sur des millions de pages web. Ceci permettra d’intégrer du contenu brut créé par les internautes dans des articles de la presse par exemple. Snapchat pourrait aussi mettre du contenu sous licence et se rémunérer dès qu’un acteur tiers l’utilise. [more]

Social Media Trends / Tendances en médias sociaux

Les 50 chiffres à connaître sur les médias sociaux en 2018
28 décembre, 2017 – blog du modérateur

Pour la première année, plus d’une personne sur deux accède à l’internet, comparativement à 46% en 2016. Le nombre d’internautes qui utilisent les média sociaux a augmenté, passant de 31% l’an dernier, à 40% cette année, et 9 utilisateurs sur 10 y accèdent d’un appareil mobile. Les 10 principaux réseaux sociaux en ordre d’importance sont : Facebook (2,072 milliards d’utilisateur par mois), YouTube (1,5 milliard), Instagram (800 millions), Qzone (638 millions), Twitter (330 millions), Sina Weibo (313 millions), Baidu Tieba (300 millions), Pinterest (200 millions), Snapchat (178 millions) et LinkedIn (115 millions). Pour voir la liste complète qui comprend Le top 5 des applications de messagerie en 2018, Les réseaux sociaux en France en 2018, L’audience des réseaux sociaux en France et plus encore, [more]

2018's Biggest Social Media Trends for Business
January 2, 2017 – Forbes

Ryan Holmes, founder and CEO of Hootsuite, relates what he sees will be the biggest social media trends for business in 2018. These include:

• An end to unpaid advertisement on social media. For example, Facebook rolled out a new “Explore Feed” specifically for business updates — testing is underway in some countries to remove all company social posts from the News Feed unless the company pays.

• Increased importance of videos that maintain and grow user base (whether or not they go viral). By 2018, Cisco forecasts that 82% of all consumer Internet traffic will be video. Nearly half of businesses are already implementing social videos, with another 26% planning to implement in 2018. However, going viral is not something to aim for, companies should produce videos that actually lead to the acquisition and retention of customers.

• QR codes will make a comeback. Apple’s newly released iOS 11 has a native QR code reader so all a user has to do to read the code is point the iPhone camera at it and it’s automatically activated. Scan a Facebook Messenger Code, for instance, and a handy bot or customer service agent automatically pops up on your phone.

• The era of “millisecond marketing”. Case in point: emerging technology that enables testing hundreds of social media ad variations, simultaneously. In 2018, these tools should enable companies to reach bigger audiences with better targeted and more personalized messages than ever before

• Business software clouds will boost their social media game. Microsoft’s purchase of LinkedIn for $26 billion set off a quiet arms race among big software sellers to integrate and upgrade social media features. Not to be outdone, Adobe, Salesforce, IBM and Oracle have all embarked on a flurry of purchases and integrations to improve their marketing clouds with social media features. [more]

Archives 2017

December 1, 2017 / 1 décembre 2017

Enterprise Collaboration / Collaboration à l’échelle de l’entreprise
Building a Collaborative Workplace Culture
November 27, 2017 – Bizztor

HR leaders and employees are currently facing the challenge of a ‘lack of collaboration’. Collaboration has a direct correlation to productivity, work efficiency, problem-solving, decision-making and employee retention. With the growing strength of remote, diverse and global workforce, collaboration has become more important than ever for organizations. If collaboration is forced, it won’t work. So, give employees a sense of purpose with which to connect strongly. Open workstations are also helpful, as common work areas will help employees interact more and share their workplace concerns/ideas. It may even remove the hierarchy barriers. When you give freedom to employees express their ideas and brainstorm together, it creates a team spirit. In many cases, ineffective communication also plays a devil in creating conflicts because people get inaccurate, incomplete or incomprehensible information. Collaboration tools can help address these issues. [more]

How to Streamline an Enterprise Collaboration Ecosystem
November 28, 2017 – EWeek

Because there are so many competitors in this market and that employees already come into a job with their favorite tools, most companies find themselves using multiple platforms for conferencing and collaboration tasks. Industry analysts have predicted that the enterprise collaboration market will balloon from $7 billion in 2015 to $49.51 billion by 2021. As collaboration technology continues to play an escalating role in enterprise productivity, proper management and insight into cost and time spent by IT is crucial to gauge effectiveness. Bobby Beckmann, CTO at video communication provider Lifesize, outlines the current landscape. In today’s scattered workforce, virtual collaboration has become critical for business productivity. For IT, managing multiple systems is confusing and costly. Collaboration is the cornerstone of the modern workplace and a key ingredient for teamwork and a thriving business. IT’s role is vital in creating and maintaining a cohesive collaboration ecosystem in which technology facilitates seamless communications rather than hindering it. With a bit of strategic planning, a cohesive cost-effective collaboration ecosystem can be a reality. [more]

3 Ways Partners Can Help Customers Achieve Borderless Collaboration
November 30, 2017 – Channel Partners

The workforce is more geographically dispersed and mobile than ever before. As a result, the way we work is undergoing a fundamental shift. Because of this, borderless collaboration – the ability to seamlessly collaborate with people both inside and outside of the organization – has become necessary for business operations. Despite these exciting improvements, several hurdles are keeping customers from true borderless collaboration. Here are three of the biggest, and how to overcome them:

Hurdle 1: Teams within the same organization use different platforms. To tackle this issue, work with the leadership team and department heads to determine how many different tools are currently in use and why each team prefers its own method.

Hurdle 2: Cross-vendor integrations remain limited. While there’s no one-and-done solution to this problem, once the customer standardizes an internal system, extend the conversation to critical external partners about the tools they use and why. Often the easiest route is to see if the tools leverage APIs from other collaboration vendors.

Hurdle 3: IT environments are more complex. Partner with employees instead of dictating choices or working around them. [more]

Agile Development / Développement agile

Adopting agile across your business
December 1, 2017 – In the Black

Some organisations are adopting the agile approach right across their business. But can a large organisation ever really be agile? Agile is about combining speed and stability, say researchers at McKinsey & Company. It’s the ability to rapidly adjust to new ways of doing things, while having clear roles and structures. It’s also about breaking down silos between business units. Technology on its own can’t turn a slow-moving organisation into an agile one. However, there are tools that can help. By breaking down silos, collaborating on documents, using collaboration tools to stay organized, staying up to date, and by taking an iterative approach, organisations can ease the transition to agile. [more]

Digital Collaboration Tools / Outils de collaboration numérique

Low code development: Is this the future of enterprise apps?
November 27, 2017 – ZDNet

Low-code development aims to make it easier to build applications by removing as much of the hand-coding as possible. Such initiatives become even more important as companies have to build applications to work across a wider range of devices, including smartphones. Appian is one of the low-code companies looking to accelerate this trend. Appian CEO Matt Culkins describes the company and with the low-code industry which has come along with it as having a new way of building unique software that allows the user to make this software very powerful very easily. “Instead of starting with writing lines of code you begin with a drawing like a flow chart. You drag-and-drop elements onto the palette and you create a flow of behaviours. Then, you can configure each one of those elements and drill into it and configure your forms, and your data integrations,” outlined Culkins. [more]

Six question to ask before buying a team collaboration app
November 28, 2017 – Tech Target

A consideration to make when vetting collaboration products is whether the platform will be deployed to fit a specific subset of your organization's overall collaboration needs, or if the platform will be used as a one-stop shop for all collaboration uses. You'll need to research the various team collaboration apps for data security specifics, including the need for end-to-end message and data transport encryption. You should closely examine how the team collaboration app integrates with third-party web or cloud-based applications, as your organization may also benefit from integrating other applications within the overall collaboration landscape. It is also important to consider what type of technical support is available. The capability of managing collaboration users and groups from an administration standpoint is another important aspect of collaboration products. Finally, you must factor cost into your list of considerations, as the pricing models between products can vary significantly due to the major differences in features and management options. [more]

Are You Ready to Handle Microsoft Teams?
November 28, 2017 – NoJitter

Early this fall, Microsoft announced that 125,000 organizations in 181 markets use Teams, its group chat tool that competes with Slack. Teams is making inroads with the enterprise. And it's doing so because it offers a new approach of communicating and collaborating within Office 365, enabling organizations to work faster and more effectively than ever by pivoting the communications experience by project and topic, instead of by people and meetings. It allows you to aggregate related content from other sources for inclusion in your Teams channel. Real-time voice/video calling and online meetings via Skype for Business is integrated into the Teams experience. However, organizations just aren't prepared for the increased demand on the network that comes with Teams and other tools that make real-time communications super easy to use. If everyone in your organization is suddenly connecting on Teams, which is a cloud-based service, your network may not be able to handle the load. Today's new collaboration tools like Teams can be highly effective, but they require a robust network and Wi-Fi to deliver optimal performance everyone will expect, as well as to provide the ability to respond to a problem quickly and identify the root cause immediately. [more]

Social networking / Réseautage sociaux

Facebook, Google, IBM, Red Hat Strengthen Open Source License Protection
November 27, 2017 – SDxCentral

Facebook, Google, IBM, and Red Hat today announced they’re going to provide greater legal protection for some of the open source code they license. The companies committed to extend more rights to cure open source license compliance errors. Their announcement relates to two widely used open source software licenses: The GNU General Public License (GPL) and the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL). The GPL version 3 (GPLv3) introduced an express termination approach that offered users an opportunity to cure errors in license compliance, especially mistakes that are inadvertent. According to new research from SDxCentral, three types of licenses are used most frequently by open source networking projects: Apache, GPLv2, and Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), with Apache being the most prevalent. According to the report, the majority of end users such as cloud service providers, telecommunications service providers, and enterprises are using open source software in their networks. [more]

YouTube lance « Reels » son proper format de Stories
30 novembre 2017 – Blog du Moderateur

Les Stories ont été adaptées par à peu près tous les acteurs avec plus ou moins de succès : Instagram, Skype, Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp… C’est maintenant au tour de YouTube d’adapter le format, et il faut avouer que pour une fois il a une vraie utilité. Reels permettra aux YouTubeurs d’engager leur communauté, sans pour autant créer et monter une « vraie » vidéo. Le format demandera donc beaucoup moins de travail, et pourra être utilisé de façon plus récurrente. Pour l’utilisateur souhaitant voir les Reels, il faudra aller sur l’onglet communauté d’un créateur. Les Stories ne seront pas affichées par défaut sur la page d'accueil, mais si vous consultez des Reels, YouTube devrait ensuite vous les proposer sur l’écran d’accueil. [suite]

November 24, 2017 / 24 novembre 2017

Enterprise Collaboration / Collaboration à l’échelle de l’entreprise

Go Digital to Connect and Engage
November 21, 2017 – Huffington Post

Companies such as Walmart, Starbucks, Lyft, Verizon, and Groupon have adopted digital workspace solutions to increase collaboration, improve communication, and enhance employee engagement. For businesses operating in multiple environments, digital workspace tools shorten the distance between locations and teams. Today’s business environment requires a higher level of collaboration than ever before. The current generation of tools is a valuable addition for improving communication, breaking down silos, sharing knowledge, and helping sustain the organization’s culture. It’s important to define goals and parameters for success, including the information you want to share, whether you are open to receiving information and input from employees, and how to ensure that knowledge is shared. The article recommends providing an immediate interface that brings the user to their digital home page, and to make it relevant and useful to ensure the digital work space helps employees be more efficient and effective. The digital workspace should be interactive, as connection and collaboration require conversation. Additionally, the digital work space should include social zones to allow the team to interact on a personal level. [more]

IT leaders shouldn’t underestimate business messaging
November 23, 2017 – Tech Target

Business messaging is currently driving workplace collaboration because it's often free, easy to use and works on all devices. Not all communications technologies can boast these incentives. As a result, businesses should expand their thinking to consider messaging use cases. However, because of the rise of the cloud and mobility, business messaging deployments have become more prevalent in collaboration workflows. Business messaging largely emerged from the consumer world. As people texted each other in their personal lives on their mobile devices, they then expected and wanted those short bursts of information and communication in their work lives. The messaging interface is also familiar to most users, which helps with adoption. [more]

Agile Development / Développement agile

Is Agile Development Dead?
November 20, 2017 – Medium

Polar Talks’ panel on Agile Development didn’t glorify the agile approach. Agile development does not solve all problems, but it does help in their early discovery. However, whether the emerged problems are addressed properly depends on the team, the scrum master and of course the product owner. In the end, developers may end up with an easy solution that solves the task at hand quickly, rather than the best approach that takes longer to build. General architecture guidelines say you need to have some architecture in place before you start the first sprint. But the most important decisions will come as the problems arise, with design proposals that must be tested in order to be proven and accepted. This task is like any other task and can be done in every sprint that requires it. The panel also stressed the importance of keeping clients in the loop and making sure that they truly understand the agile approach. The discussion rested that although not perfect the agile methodology will prevail the development field for couple of more years. [more]

Digital Collaboration Tools / Outils de collaboration numérique

Symphony targets collaboration users outside financial services
November 20, 2017 – Computer World

Messaging and collaboration platform Symphony has been called a ‘Bloomberg-killer’ since its launch in 2014 because it offers a cheaper alternative to the chat function in the popular data terminals long considered a mainstay for traders. The platform started out as an in-house chat tool at Goldman Sachs, providing secure communications between employees and allowing them to easily share sensitive documents. Symphony is now valued at over $1 billion, according to reports, and has 235,000 subscribers, with users that range from traders and portfolio managers to salespeople and risk managers. But Symphony CEO David Gurle believes his company’s appeal goes further than financial market traders. Symphony is already selling to organizations in other highly regulated industries outside of financial services, such as healthcare, defense, legal and government, and wants to expand in the areas in the year ahead. Along with basic chat functions, screen sharing, voice and video calls are supported. As is the case with other enterprise collaboration tools, Symphony also integrates with a range of third-party tools, including Box, Atlassian JIRA, Trello, Salesforce and GitHub. [more]

GitHub’s new collaboration tool is a place for teams to plan and share information
November 21, 2017 – Venture Beat

GitHub has announced a new collaboration tool to facilitate conversations around projects. With team discussions, however, GitHub is serving up a place for teams to discuss anything from general project management and design, to agendas for an organization’s offsite team meeting. Within the main GitHub dashboard users will see a new “Your teams” section within which there will be a discussion view which can be used to kick-start a new discussion, or to join an existing one. Team discussions represent the latest in a line of collaboration-focused tools to emerge from GitHub. Though coding can be a solitary process at times, on larger projects it’s usually imperative to work with others within an organization — as such, GitHub recently launched embeddable code snippets to help developers reference specific pieces of code they’re working on with others. [more]

Social networking / Réseautage sociaux

Les avantages des 280 caratères sur Twitter pour le community manager
22 novembre 2017 – Journal du CM

La Twittosphère a été bousculée avec l’annonce et le déploiement des 280 caractères sur Twitter pour tous les utilisateurs. Tout le monde en a parlé fin septembre et l’annonce s’est répandue à vitesse, avec comme toujours son lot de mécontents mais aussi de satisfaits. Des extensions Chrome et Firefox ont même été déployées pour ceux qui n’avaient pas encore accès aux 280 caractères. Comme à leur habitude, les réseaux sociaux entament toujours des phases de tests avant un déploiement massif de leurs nouvelles fonctionnalités. Le but étant de voir comment cette mise a jour est reçue par les utilisateurs privilégiés et si elle s’avère pleinement fonctionnelle. [suite]

Twitter is now testing Bookmarks, its save for later feature
November 22, 2017 – The Verge

Twitter is testing a new feature called Bookmarks, which allows users to privately save tweets for later. A previous demo shows how the bookmark function might work: users hit on the corner button of a tweet, a menu pops out and an “add to Bookmarks” option appears. Presently, if you do want to save a tweet, the only workaround is to hit the like button as a way to save a tweet. However, your liked tweets appears publicly on your profile and timeline (and sometimes your followers’ timelines) and also notifies the person who posted the tweet. There is no current roadmap for when Bookmarks will officially roll out. [more]

With Workplace, is Facebook’s move into the enterprise complete?
November 21, 2017 – ITPro

Late last month, Facebook's collaboration tool, appropriately named Workplace, was revealed to have been adopted by more than 30,000 organisations since its launch in 2016. Facebook's advantage in the space is similar to the advantage Google had when it launched its collaboration tech offering a decade ago: it's a powerful name with a well-known, widely-used product. As the way we work continues to change, so should the tools that help us get that work done quickly and securely. Facebook's success with Workplace could mean the company will begin a larger transition away from the consumer market. A desktop chat app has already been added to the product's repertoire and group video calling has been teased. While organisations such as Slack and Microsoft may be feeling threatened by Facebook's new offering, it's just as likely the added competition will simply inspire innovation at an increased rate. [more]

The SocialNetwork releases its data networking code
November 19, 2017 – The Register

Open/R, Facebook’s now-open source routing platform, runs its backbone and data centre networks. Facebook said it began developing Open/R for its Terragraph wireless system, but since applied it to its global fibre network, adding: “we are even starting to roll it out into our data center fabrics, running inside FBOSS and on our Open Compute Project networking hardware like Wedge 100.” Facebook said in the post that while working on Open/R with Terragraph, it decided it needed a distributed networking platform to get over the shortcomings of both Layer 2 protocols for large networks (lacking resiliency) and Layer 3 protocols (“poorly suited to highly variable and dynamic outdoor conditions”). [more]

November 17, 2017 / 17 novembre 2017

Enterprise Collaboration / Collaboration à l’échelle de l’entreprise

Deskless Workers Need UC Too
November 13, 2017 – No Jitter

Unified communications largely benefit knowledge workers. This loosely defined group mostly consists of white-collar workers who perform non-routine tasks often requiring critical thinking. A knowledge worker usually has a phone, email account, and desk. Of course, the modern enterprise also has many other kinds of employees, such as those in manufacturing, on the sales floor, and providing field service. UC has underserved these groups. Both workstream collaboration applications and the shift toward mobile-first are enabling more effective enterprise-wide communications. Workstream collaboration solutions initially built momentum around development teams. Today, they're quickly expanding to serve deskless workers. Mobile apps defer installation and setup to the end user. Less training -- or even zero training -- means employees begin interacting and collaborating right away. International Data Corporation forecasts mobile workers will account for 72% of the US workforce by 2020. Two factors are fueling this trend: the increasing functionality of mobile apps, and the near ubiquity of mobile devices and wireless connectivity. For example, Walmart recently announced it was adopting Workplace by Facebook. Employees who had no tool can now suddenly easily interact with co-workers in the same store and between different locations. Furthermore, messaging-based solutions are more inclusive than voice, IM, and email, and more tolerant to the inevitable interruptions that field workers encounter. These solutions also enable improved content discovery and keep a higher percentage of employees better informed. [more]

Agile Transformation? Time To ‘Rehumanize’ the Business
November 12, 2017 – Forbes

Chuck Blakeman, author and founder of the Crankset Group, takes issue with the hierarchical organizational models that have been with us since the dawn of the Industrial Age. Blakeman calls for ‘rehumanizing’ businesses, where employees become stakeholders, and managers give way to leaders – what he calls the ‘participation age.’ The key to this is driving decision-making down to individuals. “The most human things you can do at work is ask questions and make decisions,” Blakeman says. The most dramatic disruption within Blakeman’s vision for the participation age, perhaps, is its complete lack of managers. Instead, companies require leaders, and teams of stakeholders do their own managing. Placing business agility into the context of extracting value from assets thus focuses on the concepts and structures of the business, rather than how people work within that business. “Business Agility” envisions an ability to modify dynamically the concepts and structures of the business itself for maintaining relevance in the context of a dramatically changing, complex and uncertain operational environment. [more]

4 Tips for Building a Cohesive Collaboration Ecosystem
November 15, 2017 – No Jitter

A study Lifesize recently commissioned with Spiceworks shows that 56% of IT professionals don't know how much their organizations are spending on subscriptions or licenses for collaboration. Instead of trying to manage an ensemble of disparate collaboration products, IT should seek to create a cohesive collaboration ecosystem – a network of integrated, interoperable tools at every employee's disposal for the means of communicating more efficiently and effectively. The most critical step for IT teams for figuring out what tools they need is to conduct a collaboration technology audit to identify what collaboration technologies are already in use and how often. In order to consolidate where possible, track down the stakeholders and contracts for all products uncovered by the audit, and look for things like multiple maintenance agreements, support contracts, minute-based fees, and on-premises hardware costs. [more]

3 Collaboration Skills You Need for Today and Tomorrow
November 13, 2017 – CMSWiRE

The ability to collaborate and collaborate well is more important than ever. The following three skills will help organizations meet collaboration demands now and in the near future.
• One of the most important skills is the ability to transfer critical information to other team members. When dealing with other people, your tone of voice, even the expression on your face, can help or hinder these interactions. The best way to learn various collaboration skills is through playing a game or scenario. Learning this way seems to have the greatest impact and improves the rate of retention.
• It is also important to adapt a collaborative mindset. The ability to listen to others, make a judgement on what they say without being dismissive and potentially building on that initial idea requires the ability to hold several conflicting strat-egines in your head at the same time, as well as a level of respect between all participants.
• We must also consider the potential of person to machine collaboration. Collaborating with intelligent agents, bots, conversational interfaces, etc. may not be critical today, but it's becoming more critical as every day goes by. [more]

Digital Collaboration Tools / Outils de collaboration numérique

Why have collaboration tools become so popular?
November 15, 2017 – Clickz

New collaboration solutions are sprouting up to enhance business productivity and team members seem to be eager to try them out. The focus on collaboration becomes more specific with the interest in specific collaboration tools and the way they can facilitate their work and the communication among teams. The rise of collaboration tools can be attributed to a series of changes in the business landscape. The most important has to do with a digital transformation that has led to a huge shift in the workplace and the way teams work. In addition to these, our fast-paced world makes time crucial, which leads to another reason that collaboration tools become vital for organizations. They allow businesses to access and organize files, tasks, and projects while having them available for a transparent environment among teams. This creates a collaborative process that is digital and global, focusing on the business goals and the best ways to achieve them in faster, better and possibly cheaper yet effective methods. [more]

Microsoft dev tool updates improve coders’ workflow with collaboration and more
November 15, 2017 – Venture Beat

Microsoft unveiled a trio of updates to its suit of developer tools today that are designed to improve the workflows for people building modern applications. Visual Studio Live Share will allow developers to collaborate on projects with one another. The feature shares code between people on a team so that everyone can work together on the same project within their preferred editor or development environment. Azure DevOps Projects is a feature that’s designed to help developers set up modern build and deployment pipelines using Microsoft’s cloud. Visual Studio App Center, previously known as Visual Studio Mobile Center, has entered general availability. That suite of services is supposed to help developers build better applications through remote testing with the Xamarin Test Cloud, sharing beta software with users through HockeyApp, and other services. All of this is part of Microsoft’s continuing efforts to help developers be more effective on its platforms. [more]

Social networking / Réseautage sociaux

Twitter présente ses API premium pour les développeurs
15 novembre 2017 – ZDNet

Twitter a officialisé le lancement d’API premium. Payantes, celles-ci permettront aux développeurs de passer outre certaines limites imposées sur les API gratuites sans toutefois être aussi onéreuses que les API d’entreprises. Twitter a lancé en début d’année une plateforme dédiée à ses API, mais les offres manquaient à l’appel pour répondre aux besoins des entreprises et projets de petite taille qui souhaitaient en profiter. Les prix des API premium commencent à partir de 149 dollars par mois et peuvent s’élever jusqu’à 2 499 dollars par mois selon les conditions d’accès choisies par les développeurs. La première de ces API à avoir été présentée s’appelle Search API : elle permet d’accéder aux tweets publiés sur la plateforme dans les 30 derniers jours. [suite]

Facebook, Google and others join The Trust Project, an effort to increase transparency around online news
November 16, 2017 – TechCrunch

“Fake news” and other misinformation, online propaganda, and satirical content people believe is true have filled the web via search engines and social media, and have caused a rift in how people perceive today’s news organizations and the quality of their coverage. A nonpartisan effort called The Trust Project is working to address this situation by helping online users distinguish between reliable journalism and promotional content or misinformation. A key part of that effort – called “Trust Indicators” – are going live on Facebook, offering easy-to-access, transparent information about a news organization’s ethics and practices. On Facebook, an icon will appear next to articles in the News Feed. When you click on this icon, you can read information the publisher has shared related to their organization’s “ethics and other standards, the journalists’ backgrounds, and how they do their work,” according to an announcement from The Trust Project. Facebook, Google, Bing and Twitter have all committed to displaying these indicators, though not all implementations are yet live. [more]

November 10, 2017 / 10 novembre 2017

Enterprise Collaboration / Collaboration à l’échelle de l’entreprise

Proper workplace communications in the age of chat and text
November 6, 2017 – Business News Daily
There are many positives to using Slack, Teamwork Chat and the wide variety of similar communication tools. Collaboration tools provide teams with a designated platform on which to discuss and develop projects, allowing everyone to share and consolidate their ideas. These apps provide a designated platform for workplace communication without the distractions of Facebook Messenger or Google chat, allowing for greater office efficiency. But in this era of digital communication, how formal should our professional communications be? It’s important to set expectations and provide guideposts for the appropriate use of different media in the workplace. Although emoticons provide context, including smiley faces in your email correspondence this allegedly leads readers to view you as less competent. Only professional communication platforms should be used internally, as external tools risk exposing private, confidential, trademarked, financial, or other sensitive information to the public or competitors. Instant communication does have other benefits as well, such as breaking down hierarchal boundaries. [more]

Team collaboration apps can help streamline communications
November 8, 2017 – Tech Target
Advanced communications used to be only for large enterprise customers, however cloud computing leveled the playing field. Now, even the smallest business can use the same team collaboration apps that large companies use. Certain situations accentuate the benefits of these team collaboration apps when compared to traditional communications methods. With a modern, collaborative, messaging-centric platform, project team members can be added or removed from a chat group at any time. Members who are added to the group can access previous messages, links or content that was shared prior to them joining. This ensures everyone has access to project content no matter who they are or when they joined the group. Additionally, many platforms have contextual search capabilities that help users find content in the group chat history. Traditionally, team collaboration tools fell short in providing end-to-end message encryption, data visibility and reporting, as well as the ability to manage their own data encryption keys using a privately managed, on-premises server. Now, several cloud collaboration tools offer these advanced compliance features to allow virtually any business vertical to safely use their platforms. The ultimate goal of unified collaboration should be to use a single platform for all communication needs throughout an entire organization. [more]

Machine Learning / Apprentissage automatique

Pienso raises $2.1M to help non-programmers interact with machine learning models
November 6, 2017 –Tech Crunch
There are a lot of non-programming specialists whose expertise could directly benefit ML models. Pienso, an MIT project that its founders hope can make the process of training machine learning models more accessible to non-technical people, addresses this issue. The Brooklyn-based startup announced that it has closed $2.1 million in seed funding led by Eniac Ventures, with participation from SoftTech VC, Indicator Ventures and E14 Fund. The company is using this cash to grow the small team and start growing its customer base. The company’s core product, the Intelligent Development Environment, is an end-to-end solution that includes features like Lens, which gives non-technical folk the ability to interact directly with machine learning algorithms. Pienso aims to solve what is often referred to as the human-in-the-loop problem, where human judgment is needed to gather feedback and strengthen ML models. [more]

Why can’t we find fulfilling work?
November 7, 2017 – Sourceress
Machine learning can help us build a better future by capturing the complexity of people and jobs, making it easier for them to find each other. Even in this technological era, people still learn about great opportunities via random chance, often because the opportunities they are looking for cannot be captured in search keywords. The article proposes a machine learning model to analyse every job and human attribute, as machine learning models are particularly good at capturing the underlying traits of high-dimensional content. Sourceress creates a custom-tailored model for each role to capture the nuances that job descriptions inevitably brush over. On the candidate side, they’re creating a skill and interest taxonomy that goes far beyond tallying years of experience with Python. [more]

Top 5 open source machine learning projects
November 7, 2017 – Jaxenter
The article offers a closer look at the top five projects on GitHub regarding open source machine learning: 1. TensorFlow: an open source software library for numerical computation using data flow graphs. It comes with an easy-to-use Python interface and no-nonsense interfaces in other languages to build and execute computational graph.
2. scikit-learn: a Python module for machine learning with a number of simple and efficient tools for data mining and data analysis. It’s highly accessible and reusable across various contexts.
3. PredictionIO: built on top of a state-of-the-art open source stack. This machine learning server is designed for developers and data scientists to create predictive engines for any machine learning task.
4. Swift AI: a high-performance deep learning library written entirely in Swift, with support for all Apple platforms.
5. GoLearn: a machine learning library for Go which is still in active development; this project is looking for developers interested in hearing back from users. [more]

Social networking / Réseautage sociaux

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman on the site’s redesign in 2018
November 9, 2017 – Venture Beat
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman talks about the site’s upcoming redesign. In July, Reddit raised $200 million (at a valuation of $1.8 billion) to redesign its website. The company is tweaking the algorithm to improve relevancy based on time spent in individual subreddits, running various experiments to improve onboarding of new users, building new content creation tools, improving moderation tools, tweaking what and how you can post on your profile, creating an event content type for pre/during/post coverage, improving content relevance for users abroad and exploring how to proactively grow internationally. Reddit has succeeded despite having poor UI because they have a wealth great content. Huffman offers two lessons for those considering a redesign-- “Do: Make sure you’re trying to solve real problems. Don’t: Just create busy work for yourself.” Reddit’s redesign focuses on mobile, as engagement in their native apps is very high compared to every other platform. The redesign is supposed to achieve a few things: boost engagement, improve the experience for existing users, get new users to join, revamp the code base, and bring in more revenue. In December, all Reddit users will be able to opt in and try out the redesign. In Q1 2018 (the goal was previously Q4 2017), Huffman hopes to turn on the redesign for all users, by default. [more]

Utiliser les réseaux sociaux au bureau, c’est risqué ?
6 novembre 2017 – Journal du Net
Le salarié doit utiliser les outils informatiques mis à sa disposition par l’employeur dans un but professionnel pendant ses heures de travail. Une utilisation d’internet à des fins personnelles peut être autorisée mais elle doit rester raisonnable et ne pas entraver le bon fonctionnement de l’entreprise. L’employeur est en droit de surveiller les connexions internet des salariés. La fréquence des connexions et le temps passé sur les réseaux sociaux sont des informations dont il peut disposer pour surveiller l’activité de ses collaborateurs et sanctionner disciplinairement un salarié. Ainsi, pour éviter tout abus, l’employeur peut rédiger une charte des réseaux sociaux. La plupart du temps, les salariés ne sont pas assez informés des risques de leur usage et ne maîtrisent pas les règles en matière de paramétrage de confidentialité. [suite]

Artificial Intelligence / Intelligence artificielle

Salesforce aims to make AI predictions easier for its customers
November 6, 2017 – Venture Beat
Salesforce is launching a new feature that uses machine learning to let customers make predictions based on data stored with its software. Einstein Prediction Builder is designed to take any of the fields that users have set up inside a piece of software such as Salesforce’s Sales Cloud CRM and generate predictions for future outcomes based on saved data. The feature is designed to make it easier for companies and users who don’t have machine learning expertise to reap the benefits of the current explosion in AI technology. Custom predictions can be set up through a visual editor and don’t require coding of any sort. The amount of data needed will scale with the complexity of the task customers are asking the Prediction Builder to address. This news comes alongside the announcement of Einstein Bots, a feature that is designed to provide customers with bots that can help automate customer interactions based on information that’s stored in Salesforce. [more]

November 3, 2017 / 3 novembre 2017

Artificial Intelligence / Intelligence artificielle

There’s a Lot More to AI Than Just Chatbots
November 1, 2017 – Entrepreneur

Whenever artificial intelligence (AI) is mentioned in a business context, the conversation inevitably turns to the subject of chatbots. But chatbots are not the definitive example of how businesses can use AI. In fact, not all chatbots will be driven by AI; the majority are scripted and follow a simple decision-tree process. AI's true power lies in analyzing data and making real-time decisions based on that information. An effective AI system draws data from a Data Management Platform: The more complete and high quality the data, the better the AI system will be able to function. Poor data will result in poor, ineffectual artificial intelligence. AI perceives its environment and makes decisions that will maximize its chance of achieving any given goal. For example, this could range from optimizing profit margin, to maximizing stock efficiencies. [more]

OpenAI Director Shivon Zilis explains why AI requires oversight now
November 2, 2017 – Tech Crunch

Google’s second annual Go North conference kicked off with a discussion between OpenAI Director Shivon Zilis and AI Fund Director of Ethics and Governance Tim Hwang. Both shared perspective on AI’s progress, its public perception, and how we can help ensure its responsible development going forward. When Hwang brought up the fact that artificial intelligence researchers are, in some ways, “basically writing policy in code” because of how influential the particular perspectives or biases inherent in these systems will be, and suggested that researchers could actually consciously set new cultural norms via their work, Zilis added that the total number of people setting the tone for incredibly intelligent AI is probably “in the low thousands.” Zilis concluded that she has three guiding principles in terms of how she thinks about the future of responsible artificial intelligence development: First, the tech’s coming no matter what, so we need to figure out how to bend its arc with intent. Second, how do we get more people involved in the conversation? And finally, we need to do our best to front load the regulation and public discussion needed on the issue, since ultimately; it’s going to be a very powerful technology. [more]

The biggest headache in machine learning? Cleaning dirty data off the spreadsheets
November 1, 2017 – The Verge

A new survey of data scientists and machine learners shows expectations that machine learning is all about self-driving cars and working for the biggest names in tech need adjusting: the biggest challenge is actually cleaning dirty data. Contemporary AI systems generally learn by example, which is why companies like Google and Amazon have been able to build such effective image and speech recognition platforms: they have a ton of data from users. But AI systems are still computer programs which are sensitive to errors. This inflexibility includes the data they can learn from. Workers in AI and machine learning fields have to comb through datasets with hundreds of thousands of entries, tracking down missing values and remove any formatting errors. “Data cleaning is a much higher proportion of data science than an outsider would expect” – Kaggle founder and CEO Anthony Goldbloom. [more]

Enterprise Collaboration / Collaboration à l’échelle de l’entreprise

La transformation numérique ? C’est pas plus compliqué que ça
31 octobre 2017 – ZDNet

Une transformation numérique ne s'achète pas sur l’étagère, pas plus qu'elle ne se limite à la technologie. Le pilier «Humains» est capital, mais aussi complexe à maîtriser. Les expériences réussies permettent toutefois de démarrer avec les bonnes approches. Pour un patron, faire référence au «digital» tient de plus en plus de l'incontournable, voire de l'exercice de style. C'est bon pour l'image. Ça rassure aussi actionnaires et investisseurs de compagnies comme Facebook avec le nombre d'internautes actifs ? Peut-être. Parler de numérique ne suffit pas néanmoins. Comment distinguer les beaux parleurs de la transformation numérique de ses artisans ? Ces derniers reconnaîtront volontiers les difficultés rencontrées, comme celles citées dans l'étude «The Digital Transformation PACT». Parmi les 1625 dirigeants interrogés, 46% font état de la mise en place de projet de transformation. Ils sont en outre 86% à planifier «l'impact de la technologie sur leurs activités au-delà des 12 prochains mois». «Il ne suffit plus d'avoir les meilleurs appareils et applications sous la main : sans le talent et les compétences pour les utiliser, ils sont inutiles. Et le personnel le plus qualifié et le plus progressiste du monde ne pourra rien faire dans une culture d’entreprise qui étouffe toute démarche d’innovation» commente d'ailleurs le PDG de Fujitsu, Duncan Tait. [suite]

How Team Collaboration is changing the way we work
November 1, 2017 – The London Economic

Team collaboration is a key driver in achieving the goal of staying ahead of competitors, especially for global businesses that operate in different time zones and use many devices to communicate and collaborate. Yet there is always a need to collaborate more efficiently. In a recent survey conducted by the Harvard Business Review it was found that 72% of companies said “effective team communication” has grown in importance over the past two years – especially since the emergence of unified communications. The working world is changing rapidly and integrated communications and collaborations solutions are fast-becoming a necessity – where those who fail to modernise may get left behind. Without a clear focus on a team collaboration working, a perplexing mixture of tools can have negative consequences on your team’s efficiency, motivation and productivity levels. [more]

Agile Development / Développement agile

On shiny objects, agile & lean start-up for public problems
October 29, 2017 – Medium

Agile or lean start-up can be considered, adapted and effectively applied with the right mindset, capacity and conditions to understand and address needs in a given context. Mindset, practice and context all matter. Purpose and results do too. Perhaps most importantly — and related to capacity — we can also add people, as in, who’s engaged, their perspectives, relationships, roles and responsibilities are all important if any method or approach is to enable meaningful change. The rhetoric of agile, lean start-up, and I’d add, design thinking has informed and followed the drive for public sector innovation with the aim of enabling government to be open, social and digital for better outcomes. Many government organisations have a bias towards getting quick answer. When prompted, we converge on announceables, “shiny objects”, new policy, program and operational ideas and pilot projects. Online portals invite citizens and stakeholders to share their “actionable ideas and solutions” to address complex challenges with limited framing and shared understanding. Is a tendency to call for actions without shared understanding of contexts and needs problematic? Understandably though, existing policy, research and program functions, and enabling services, focus much, if not all, of their efforts on existing delivery. That’s important, but if we engage others through the lens of marketing what we currently do or are proposing to do for them, we may miss out on innovation opportunities with them. [more]

Digital Collaboration Tools / Outils de collaboration numérique

Google Docs plante, les utilisateurs font un malaise
2 novembre 2017 – ZDNet

Une panne technique du service d'hébergement de Google vient de susciter un émoi considérable chez les utilisateurs. Elle rappelle surtout que quand vous confiez des documents à Google, ils sont lus par cette entreprise. Pendant la panne les fichiers des utilisateurs n'étaient plus accessibles pour des raisons de violation des conditions de service de Google Drive. Conséquence : les fichiers étaient alors verrouillés, et n'étaient plus accessible au créateur du document comme à l'ensemble des personnes avec qui le document était partagé. "Cela montre que Google utilise (sur ces services) du machine learning et d'autres technologies d'intelligence artificielle" indique au New York Times Dana Gardner, spécialiste du cloud. Au-delà des questions relatives au respect de la vie privée, la panne interroge sur la fiabilité des services de cloud computing, et la pertinence d'y héberger des documents au lieu de les conserver en local. [suite]

Virtual assistant apps not quite geared for businesses, yet
October 30, 2017 – Tech Target

With the emergence of Amazon Alexa, Google Home and Apple Siri, many consumers now expect to use their voice to control devices and find information. By extension, the practical uses of virtual assistant apps for enterprise collaboration are pretty easy to see. Today, however, personal voice assistant options for businesses are limited. Virtual assistants are becoming a key component of digital transformation. In a recent Nemertes Research study, enterprises cited virtual assistants as one of the most vital technologies for digital transformation success. Virtual assistants aren't quite ready to revolutionize interaction with collaboration endpoints and applications, but it's only a matter of time before voice becomes a common way for application control. [more]

October 27, 2017 / 27 octobre 2017

Machine Learning / Apprentissage automatique

Machine Learning’s “Overhyped” Potential Is Headed Toward The “Trough Of Disillusionment”
October 23, 2017 – Zero Hedge

While advances are being made in the field of artificial intelligence at an increasingly rapid pace, efforts to automate an investor’s process have mostly fallen flat. There are several examples, including a push by Paul Tudor Jones to build an algorithm that would mimic his analytical process, of these types of efforts fizzling – though of course firms like Bridgewater have successfully automated many of their trading strategies. While machine-learning algorithms and other technologies are encroaching on work performed by money managers, traders and analysts, many firms are still facing issues, and coders still have a long way to go. Furthermore, the notion that Wall Street powerhouses use all the latest and greatest technology is misleading. According to Bloomberg, many companies rely on aging computers and Microsoft excel. Bloomberg reports the average age of software used by financial firms is about 38 years, according to technology tracker CB Insights. And data, the bedrock upon which AI is built, are often fragmented or inaccurate. However, replicating the skills of an equity or credit trader remains an obstacle. Automating trading in credit markets has been especially challenging because so much of a credit traders job hinges on judgment, the idiosyncrasies of each trade and human interaction. [more]

How machine learning protects your wallet and identity
October 25, 2017 – Android Authority

Computing is undergoing a major shift regarding the proliferation of Machine Learning and AI technology. Whereas Machine Learning is about making systems that can learn from experience, the goals of artificial intelligence are much broader. AI researchers are trying to create a machine which can mimic a human mind. While ML is a subset of AI, it shouldn’t be thought of as less important. With all the data necessary to Machine Learning being used and analysed there are also dangers-- risks of security breaches, hacking, cyber criminals, and more. Technology companies have a responsibility to guard privacy, security and safety of its user base that is greater than their need to sell products. If a smartphone or a smart IoT device has ML capabilities then it is able to use those capabilities for a multitude of tasks including for security, privacy and fraud prevention. By learning patterns about times, places, accelerometer readings (i.e. how you hold and move your phone), amounts and online habits, then a machine learning algorithm will be able to help protect a user from cyber criminals. These advances in device security and fraud protection need more than just a technical solution; they need a commitment from the tech companies themselves to ensure that they embrace their responsibilities and make security a primary design consideration for all devices. [more]

Cloud Computing / Informatique en nuage

Without better partner skills, Google can’t compete in the cloud
October 26, 2017 – ZDNet

Writer Jason Perlow discusses the future aspirations of Google as it pertains to its overall market strategy for both cloud and mobile. Perlow writes that Google's cloud has excellent technology and has tremendous infrastructure that it is very good at running. It has, according to Google's own claims, a $10 billion per year budget on data center buildout. While one can make architectural decisions about your application and which of these providers to develop a cloud-hosted solution for based on technical merits alone, technical merits aren't everything if you are trying to make money as a cloud-based services provider. Having a good partner relationship with your cloud provider is essential. While Google indeed has an impressive development staff, Perlow believes that they are missing partner program representation. Partner programs are important when selling managed cloud services, as they facilitate a want of technical enablement, increased levels of business support, and sales and marketing enablement. [more]

Les robots du cloud
26 octobre 2017 – ZDNet

Pour parvenir à l’état futur, il faut une solide infrastructure informatique en renfort ; le cloud joue là un rôle crucial en aidant les DSI et leurs homologues dans l'entreprise à tirer le meilleur parti des robots. Selon IDC, les dépenses mondiales dans la robotique et les services afférents feront plus que doubler d'ici 2020, passant de 91,5 milliards de dollars en 2016 à plus de 188 milliards en 2020. Le cabinet d'études indique que les innovateurs dans le secteur de la robotique créent des machines qui peuvent être utilisées pour réaliser un éventail plus large de tâches, ce qui contribue à doper l'adoption des robots dans tous les secteurs. L'informatique à la demande joue un rôle clé dans l'adoption des machines intelligentes. À mesure que le traitement se déplacera vers la périphérie, les entreprises pourront tirer parti de la robotique dans tout un tas de domaines, depuis la fabrication jusqu'aux véhicules autonomes. [suite]

Digital Collaboration Tools / Outils de collaboration numérique

Workplace by Facebook: How collaboration platforms are changing the way we work
October 24, 2017 – Personnel Today

The launch of Workplace by Facebook furthered the integration of social media into the professional setting. CIO Ajai Sehgal shares how the business consultancy Chemistry Group uses Workplace and the impact he believes the collaboration tool and platforms like it will have on working lives. For Chemistry, Workplace has served as a natural platform to facilitate the building of a community, despite a geographically dispersed workforce. It functions very similarly to Facebook, so as integrate naturally into their daily working lives. Some may argue that it blurs the lines between time in and out of the office too much, but the benefits Chemistry has seen include breaking down hierarchies, building more trust across the business, and helping to maintain a positive attitude towards the work. Workplace can also provide insight into engagement that other methods cannot. At Chemistry, data analytics are used to monitor engagement in Workplace which, in turn, echoes overall company-wide engagement. [more]

Team collaboration tools tout cloud messaging services
October 25, 2017 – Tech Target

Collaborative messaging applications can help enterprises manage multiple projects with various contributors. Ideas, concepts and content can be shared easily within a group on any device, whether it's a desktop, tablet or phone. These team collaboration tools don't require the contributors to meet at a specified time. Instead, content relevant to a specific topic or conversation is added at the users' discretion, facilitating remote work. Early adopters of collaboration technologies experienced collaboration overload-- where each tool while useful in its own right becomes disconnected from other team collaboration tools to the point where the message gets lost in the noise. The advent of cloud collaboration is eliminating the difficulties associated with collaboration overload. Organisations are no longer required to buy and maintain on-premises collaboration servers for the various services they want to deploy. Cloud messaging services can be used for group messaging, file sharing, virtual interactive whiteboarding, management and administration options, and more. [more]

Cisco scoops up BroadSoft for $1.9 billion to boost communications tools portfolio
October 23, 2017 – Tech Crunch

Cisco recently acquired BroadSoft, a Maryland company that delivers unified communications via service providers, for $1.9 billion. The purchase gives Cisco a new way to sell its communications tools as it shifts its focus from a pure networking hardware company to one focused on software and services delivered in the cloud. This acquisition comes on the heels of an announcement last week that Cisco intended to purchase Perspica and fold the engineering team into AppDynamics, a company it purchased earlier this year for $3.7 billion. While last week’s purchase was focused on data and machine learning, and understanding how performance affects the overall business, today’s is firmly focused on Cisco’s collaboration side of the house, which includes WebEx and Spark. Alan Pelz-Sharpe, an analyst who is founder at Deep-Analysis, a firm that tracks collaboration tools says it should be a good match. “Broadsoft is a nice fit for Cisco as its products and strategy targets SME’s whereas Cisco targeted enterprises. Together they cover a much bigger addressable market and looks like a pretty sensible matchup,” [more]

Des guides pour appréhender les outils de collaboration
24 octobre 2017 – Le Monde Informatique

Avec le déploiement des outils bureautiques et collaboratifs en SaaS comme Microsoft Office 365 ou la G-Suite de Google, l'identité numérique s'est généralisé parmi les collaborateurs des entreprises. Lecko, spécialisé sur ces outils, publie des guides pour choisir le logiciel le plus adapté en fonction les usages avec, pour les utilisateurs, un objectif de productivitéParmi les transformations induites par l'apparition de ces outils bureautiques et collaboratifs en SaaS tels que Microsoft Office 365 ou Google G-Suite, une des plus importantes est peut-être la généralisation de l'identité numérique pour tous les collaborateurs. Ainsi, des personnels de terrain, qui ne disposaient pas d'e-mail professionnels, se retrouvent avec un profil et souvent une connexion via Smartphone. Pour Lecko, Microsoft a réussi à attirer ses clients vers le cloud et le collaboratif en partant de clients lourds traitant des documents. Ce choix repose sur un débat des acteurs en présence dans l'entreprise pour atteindre une vision globale des usages. Surtout, la transformation concerne bien plus les modalités du travail quotidien voire de l'organisation des entreprises que la technique. Surtout, la transformation concerne bien plus les modalités du travail quotidien voire de l'organisation des entreprises que la technique. Les chevauchements fonctionnels entre produits conçus successivement amènent parfois à hésiter dans l'emploi de tel ou tel outil (Teams, Sharepoint, OneDrive... pour partager un fichier par exemple), même si les Office Groups sont communs. Pour Lecko, il convient d'être guidé par les usages et découvrir par la pratique quel outil est le meilleur dans chaque cas, selon la vision de l'usage partagée entre les utilisateurs. [suite]

L’assistant Google devient une plateforme et s’ouvre aux applications tierces en France
26 octobre 2017 – Blog du Moderateur

Google déploie Actions on Google en France. Dès aujourd’hui, vous pouvez « profiter de vos applications favorites » depuis l’Assistant Google. Pour accéder à ces applications, il suffit de demander à l’Assistant Google de « Parler avec le nom de l’application ». Vous êtes alors mis en relation avec la marque et pouvez interagir avec elles pour accéder à des contenus. L’Assistant Google devient ainsi une plateforme, comparable à Facebook Messenger et ses bots. [suite]

October 20, 2017 / 20 octobre 2017

Machine Learning / Apprentissage automatique

Google’s AI can create better machine-learning code than the researchers who made it
October 17, 2017 – The Next Web
Google’s AutoML machine learning system recently produced a series of codes with higher rates of efficiency than those made by the researchers themselves. In this latest blow to human superiority the robot student has become the self-replicating master. AutoML was developed as a solution to the lack of top-notch talent in AI programming. The system runs thousands of simulations to determine which areas of the code can be improved, makes the changes, and continues the process ad infinitum, or until its goal is reached. AutoML is better at coding machine-learning systems than the researchers who made it. In an image recognition task it reached record a high 82 percent accuracy. Even in some of the most complex AI tasks, its self-created code is superior to humans; it can mark multiple points within an image with 42 percent accuracy compared to human-made software’s 39. [more]

BBC Will Use Machine Learning to Cater to What Audiences Want to Watch

October 19, 2017 – The Verge
BBC’s R&D team announced a five-year initiative to use machine learning to suggest relevant content audiences. To accomplish this, the team is partnering up with data scientists and experts from UK universities as well as media and tech companies based in Europe and internationally. The Data Science Research partnership intends to create “a more personal BBC” that can entertain in new ways. Researchers will analyze user data and apply algorithms to get marketing and media insights about audiences’ preferences. In an effort to modernize its workforce, the BBC also announced that it’s rolling entry-level to advanced master’s degree courses in data science for employees. BBC is attempting to modernize by curating content for the particular niches that interest its audiences and then using machine learning to suggest new shows and films to watch. [more]

Agile Developement / Développement agile

What Is Agile? The Four Essential Elements
October 15, 2017 – Forbes
This article considers how to determine whether a team, a unit or an organization is or is not Agile. Poorly implemented Agile can give Agile a bad name, it is important to be able to articulate the minimum viable requirements of true Agile. In September 2016, a group of large firms came together in New York to tackle this tangle of issues head-on. They set out to see whether they could agree on what Agile stood for in their own organizations. After several days of a lively debate, the firms converged on four elements of the Agile mindset that they saw as representing the essence of Agile for their organizations: delighting customers, descaling work, enterprise-wide Agility, nurturing culture. The firms involved were members of the SD Learning Consortium (SDLC), a nonprofit corporation registered in the state of Virginia. While there is agreement among the SDLC members on these four principles, there is continuing discussion about the use of the word “Agile.” [more]

Social Networking / Réseautage social

Facebook : une campagne de phishing s'appuie sur les contacts de confiance
16 octobre 2017 – ZDNet
Facebook est très régulièrement la cible des pirates. Cette fois, c'est la fonction «Contacts de confiance» qui sert de vecteur à l'attaque. Le réseau social est une nouvelle fois utilisé pour diffuser un phishing dont le but est de récupérer les identifiants de votre compte. Cette fonction de sécurité déployée depuis plusieurs années permet à l'utilisateur de choisir entre 3 à 5 contacts en qui il a confiance pour l'aider à récupérer son compte en cas de problème. Mais elle peut être détournée, selon le site Access Now afin de mener des campagnes de phishing. Des attaques auraient actuellement lieu et le nombre de piégés ne cesserait d'augmenter. [suite]

Open Source / Code source libre

The critics are wrong about AWS’s open source approach
October 18, 2017 – IT World
For example, Iguaz.io CTO Yaron Haviv says that AWS is just “putting up an open source show,” not “real” open source like Google does—even though AWS actively contributes to Apache MXNet, with more than 40 percent of contributions from more than 400 developers to the project). Corporations always use open source as a way to further corporate interest. As Matt Wood, AWS’s general manager of AI and deep learning, described in an interview, AWS has always existed to take technology that was traditionally only in reach of well-funded organizations and make it accessible to a much broader audience. Open source is just one more way that Amazon seeks to democratize technology. Amazon’s open source approach contains three levels. The first level includes “black box” which are geared toward developers with limited amounts of data to train machine learning models, giving them the ability to build things like voice services. The second level offers a collection of services for developers who have adequate data for training machine learning models but still don’t want to bother with the undifferentiated heavy lifting of building everything themselves. The third level is where open source comes into play, because it includes open source packages and libraries to help put neural networks into the hands of non-experts. [more]

DevOps pros and open source: Culturally connected
October 15, 2017 – Tech Target
The DevOps community and the open source community both prioritize similar things, such as speed—DevOps and open source engineers want to deliver continuously. DevOps pros spend a long time optimizing application performance and ensuring that their infrastructure is not over- or underprovisioned. In similar fashion, open source developers share code partly because it's just more efficient. DevOps and open source engineers alike tend to believe that people should be judged on merit alone. DevOps and open source communities both value dissent. The open source (and free software) community in particular is notable for its quarrels and strong opinions. The open source community is not one to hold back its opinions. [more]

Digital Government / Gouvernement numérique

Evolving Government: DevOps is about communication first and technology second
October 17, 2017 – Fedscoop

DevOps, an agile development partnership between software development and IT operations, requires centering communication which makes it a valuable tool for government organisations. When communication breaks down within development teams or between development teams and enterprise technology, projects fail.Organizations new to this mindset often find it difficult to transition their legacy systems using DevOps or understand what methods might work best for them. With the emergence of new resources and strategies, organizations are quickly realizing the value of DevOps. More specifically, the importance of finding new and efficient ways for their teams to communicate and encourage DevOp practices. To better understand DevOps, it’s often helpful to approach it by understanding its benefits, how it impacts teams and internal processes. Organizations with an hierarchical structure often reap the most benefits when integrating DevOps strategies. Implementing DevOps removes the issues associated with knowledge silos and the improvements can be regularly measured. Integrating visuals with your collaboration tools makes the development process and technical content more accessible. [more]

Enterprise Collaboration / Collaboration à l’échelle de l’enterprise

Mobility challenges: How to improve team collaboration when the office can be anywhere
October 19, 2017 – Mobile Business Insight

According to Forbes, mobile companies enjoy improved productivity by replacing long, outdated processes with more effective mobile models. Mobility also increases employee engagement and overall happiness when compared to companies that don’t prioritize mobile. MarketsandMarkets research states that the enterprise collaboration market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 13.2 percent between 2016 and 2021. This growth will come mostly in the form of cloud-based mobile apps. Consumer-facing apps have used push notifications to connect with customers for some time. Enterprises are now beginning to tap into the value of this feature as well. Though push notifications do require employees to opt in, they can provide a highly effective way to communicate if employers can get them to do so. Banners provide another way to alert or inform employees about important changes or to provide useful information. The value of both push notifications and in-app banners is their visibility. Businesses with large campuses or dispersed employees can also use mobile apps to make navigation easier. Employees can now use features within their mobile apps to book meeting rooms, navigate from one place to another in large, multi-building campuses, or even to help find the right conference room. [more]

October 13, 2017 / 13 octobre 2017

Machine Learning / Apprentissage automatique

AWS and Microsoft double down on deep learning with Gluon, a simplified ML model builder
October 12, 2017 – Tech Crunch

Microsoft and Amazon Web Services have announced a new deep learning interface called Gluon, designed for developers of all abilities to build and run machine learning models for their apps and other services. “The potential of machine learning can only be realized if it is accessible to all developers. Today’s reality is that building and training machine learning models requires a great deal of heavy lifting and specialized expertise,” said Swami Sivasubramanian, VP of Amazon AI, in a statement. Gluon was developed by the two as an open-source project and is aimed at prototyping, building, training and deploying machine learning models for the cloud, devices at the edge and mobile apps. [more]

Box Skills applies AI and machine learning to growing multimedia content
October 11, 2017 – TechCrunch

At the BoxWorks customer conference, their new artificial intelligence toolkit called Box Skills was announced, furthering Box CEO Aaron Levie’s vision for the company to move beyond its earliest use as way to transfer files between machines online. The tools are aimed at multimedia — video, audio and photos — and enable customers to mix and match AI and machine learning tools from IBM, Microsoft and Google. The company is managing over 30 billion files and the amount of data under management has been doubling every year. This amount of content presents a challenge and opportunity for Box and its customers. Box Skills is a set of tools designed to give customers options on how to implement artificial intelligence in Box, and has built in flexibility to use algorithms from a variety of companies and the ability for customers to customize and build their own skills and even string them together. [more]

TensorFlow Lattice ensures your machine learning models follow global trends
October 12, 2017 – TechCrunch

Google’s TensorFlow team released TensorFlow Lattice today to help developers ensure that their machine learning models adhere to global trends even when training data is noisy. Lattice draws from the concept of lookup tables to simplify the process of defining macro rules to restrict models. A lookup table is a representation of data that includes inputs (keys) and outputs (values). Roughly speaking, the TensorFlow team’s approach is to train the lookup table values using training data to maximize accuracy given constraints. Operating this way offers a number of benefits, such as simplifying the process to define monotonic relationships— it allows developers to ensure that as inputs move in a single direction, outputs move in the same direction. These constraints utilize prior knowledge to improve outcomes, particularly when models are applied to similar, yet unique, problems. Additionally, computation is expensive and sometimes it’s more efficient to use a reference table and estimate (interpolate) between missing values rather than compute for every input/output pair. Having a lattice table also means that developers have access to greater transparency than alternative approaches traditionally offer. [more]

Why Machine Learning Isn’t as Hard to Learn as You Think
October 12, 2017 – Forbes

John L. Miller, who has machine learning industry experience with video, sensor data, images explains that machine learning is not necessarily any harder than learning any other set of libraries for a programmer. He writes that the key is to focus on using machine learning, not designing the algorithm. Miller gives the example sorting data: you don’t invent a sort algorithm, you pick an appropriate algorithm and use it right. You need to learn what the main choices are (e.g. neural nets, random decision forests…), how to feed them data, and how to use the data produced. [more]

Enterprise Collaboration / Collaboration à l’échelle de l’entreprise

Seeing Collaboration as Competitive Advantage
October 10, 2017 – NoJitter

Enterprise IT professionals say the importance of team collaboration will be increasing in upcoming years. A paradigm shift in workplace communications is well underway and preparation for a more collaborative future is at hand. Businesses need more from collaborative technologies, such as improved bandwidth to improve superior visual communication. To ensure success, designers of collaborative technologies must define collaboration with collaborators in mind, look at the collaboration tools from the perspective of the collaborators, and consider the collaboration tools in the context of organization. When a visual, true collaborative capability is a priority, great gains in engagement and, therefore, productivity are at hand. [more]

Android Founder on VR, Voice & the Future of Human-Machine Collaboration
October 11, 2017 – Xconomy

Android co-founder Rich Miner predicts massive change to human-machine interaction, including keyboards becoming obsolete in the next 20 years.He shared his vision for the future of human-machine “interfaces,” which he thinks will enable people to be more natural and “expressive” in their interactions with computers. Miner and others believe that the way humans communicate with machines is undergoing a fundamental change— the key methods he envisions for communicating with machines will include voice recognition; “digital ink” (stylus pens that enable writing and drawing on screens); and the ability for computers to understand facial expressions and gestures. [more]

Social Networking / Réseautage social

Facebook is Testing a “Slack Killer” Messaging App for the Workplace
October 7, 2017 – High Snobriety

Facebook has quietly soft-launched a Mac and PC WorkPlace desktop chat app. The new desktop app allows the user to screenshot and share all or portions of their display while using a specific app. This is in addition to the standard chat functions and ability to share photos, videos, voice clips, emoji and GIFs. Users can also choose to have notifications pop up over other apps and windows on their desktop so that they won’t miss anything. The desktop app is currently only available for Workplace, Facebook’s enterprise collaboration software that competes with Slack and other similar business apps. [more]

Nouveau panne mondiale pour Facebook et Instagram
12 octobre 2017 – ZDNet

Utiliser Facebook ou Instagram ce mercredi était compliqué en Europe et aux États-Unis. Les deux services ont effet subi d'importants dysfonctionnements pendant plusieurs heures. La panne a commencé à se faire sentir en fin d'après-midi vers 17h. Les utilisateurs déjà connectés à Facebook sur PC pouvaient encore accéder aux précédentes publications, mais ne pouvaient pas en publier de nouvelles, ni actualiser leur fil d’actualité. Selon les estimations du site Down Detector, environ 40 % des utilisateurs de Facebook n'avaient plus accès à la plateforme. [suite]

Digital Collaboration Tools / Outils de collaboration numérique

Facebook Updates Creative Hub With Collaboration Tools, More Placements and Formats
October 11, 2017 – WERSM

Facebook is introducing a new set of tools on its Creative Hub that will help teams organise and share their mockups, and collaborate more effectively on their creative endeavours. In its latest update, Creative Hub is making collaboration easier. Now, more than one person can work on a mock-up, as teams can organise all their work into ‘projects.’ In addition to Creative Hub’s creation and previewing of interactive formats like Carousel and Canvas ads, video formats like 360 video, slideshow ads, video and video link ads, image formats like single image and single image link ads, Instagram ad formats have been added to the mix as well. [more]

ALE Introduces Business Partner Onboarding Programme for Rainbow
October 11, 2017 – Commstrader

ALE, operating under the Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise brand, announced strong momentum for its recently released Alcatel-Lucent Rainbow cloud collaboration platform. Partners are able to unlock new recurring revenue streams by delivering enhanced workplace collaboration tools from the Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise Communications Platform as-a-Service (CPaaS). As more businesses look to embrace a digital transformation, Rainbow offers users access to a scalable, digitally collaborative platform with capabilities such as contact management, presence, chat, audio/video calling, and screen and file sharing. By using Rainbow’s onboarding process, partners have access to specific marketing support, customer success management resources and specific incentives that support the digital workplace transformation enterprises are undergoing. [more]

Digital Government / Gouvernement numérique

As Oracle blasts ‘false narratives’ in federal IT, digital government experts aren’t impressed
October 11, 2017 – FedScoop

The Office of American Innovation and American Technology Council has solicited public comments on the White House draft report on IT modernization. They received over 90 submissions posted to GitHub,which are awaiting White House review. A letter targeting 18F and the U.S. Digital Service written by Kenneth Glueck, senior vice president at Oracle, addresses what the company sees as “three false narratives that have taken the [U.S. Government] off course.” Among these “false narratives” is the concept that, as Oracle puts it, “in-house government IT development know-how is critical for IT modernization.” The company claims that “in-house government procurement and program management expertise is central to successful modernization efforts. Significant IT development expertise is not.” While Oracle seems to see in-house talent as a threat to its business, proponents of digital service say that’s just not the case. 18F and USDS are meant to complement private technology vendors, not replace them. The White House is currently reviewing comments from Oracle and others as the office drafts a final version of the IT modernization report. [more]

October 6, 2017 / 6 octobre 2017

Enterprise Collaboration / Collaboration à l’échelle de l’entreprise

The Microsoft Hustle
September 30, 2017 — Hackernoon

Despite issues with their previous three operating systems, Microsoft’s corporate and technological capabilities cannot be underestimated. Microsoft spends more on marketing than R&D, $14.7 billion vs. 12 billion in 2016. The reason they continue to succeed is their partner network, which consists of consulting firms, software resellers, and the like and is responsible for 95% of Microsoft’s commercial revenue; making them their predominant customer. Most partners offer a wide range of services surrounding the Microsoft stack, including but not limited their implementation, management, and support (IMSs). However, the businesses that are trusting Microsoft partners are paying significantly more than the cost of their IMSs, which are less often than half of the story with regard to IT finance. Unfortunately, what is profitable for a typical consulting firm comes at the expense of their clients and there are few situations where Microsoft offers the most economical or productive solution than their competition. Conversely, as IT solutions become more defective over time, the cost and frequency of their IMSs increases, becoming more profitable for partner firms. Rather than putting their clients first and aligning their business model with their best interests, Microsoft partners seem to be in complete alignment with Microsoft for obvious reasons; hence the designation of “partner”. [more]

Business communication tools -- the best ways to keep in touch
October 4, 2017 – Real Business

Collaboration tools used to communicate with staff and clients is increasingly an expectation rather than a bonus for most organisations. “An ‘always available’ approach to customers may seem resource intensive to a small business, but with the correct technology, the workload can be relieved,” said Tim Patchett, cloud voice product manager, Virgin Media Business. The ways an organisation stays in touch with its clients will differ to the ways it stays in touch with staff. For example, one could offer a live chat box on the website.Texting, Facebook, WhatsApp, and Skype and so on are easy ways to stay in touch with colleagues – even when they’re out of the office. As long as staff remain connected to the internet, they should also be able to access emails remotely, and in theory there’s nothing to prevent a team working together as efficiently. [more]

Les 10 technologies stratégiques en 2018, selon Gartener
5 octobre, 2017 – Blog du Moderateur

l’institut Gartner publie une autre analyse sur les 10 technologies tendance qui seront stratégiques en 2018. Gartner estime que l’intelligence artificielle va jouer un rôle important dans les projets numériques d’ici 2025, mais indique également que les bienfaits de l’AI sont parfois surévalués. L’AI va intégrer des applications existantes pour améliorer leur fonctionnement. La technologie de la blockchain transforme aujourd’hui la finance, mais bien d’autres applications sont expérimentées (gouvernement, santé, distribution du contenu, supply chain…). Aussi, les réalités virtuelle et augmentée sont deux technologies qui continueront à évoluer, en lien avec les plateformes conversationnelles notamment. [suite]

Social Networking / Réseautage social

Facebook contextualise les liens pour lutter contre les fake news
5 octobre, 2017 – Blog du Moderateur

Facebook est régulièrement accusé de permettre la propagation de fausses informations. Le réseau social annonce une nouveauté dans le cadre de la lutte contre le fake news. Les utilisateurs vont accéder à des informations supplémentaires, leur permettant d’évaluer la pertinence des liens sur Facebook. Les liens qui correspondent à des articles auront un nouveau bouton « Information », accessible en bas à droite du lien (« i »). En cliquant dessus, on pourra accéder à du contenu additionnel en provenance de Facebook et d’autres sources : informations sur la source récupérées sur Wikipédia, les articles sur le même sujet provenant d’autres sources (articles connexes), les informations sur la manière dont les utilisateurs partagent cet article, lieux où cet article est le plus populaire et personnes qui ont partagé cet article. [suite]

Artificial Intelligence / Intelligence artificielle

Machine learning: the driving force of Artificial Intelligence
October 4, 2017 – Imperial College

Dr Marc Deisenroth, from the Department of Computing at Imperial College London, and colleagues from across the College are launching the Machine Learning Initiative. Industry leaders from companies such as Microsoft and Twitter, academics and students from Imperial and representatives from the UK’s major funding bodies, will all be in attendance. The Initiative will bring together machine learning researchers from across the College and beyond to provide a collaborative environment for learning, teaching, and research in the field of machine learning. Machine learning can be considered the engine of modern AI. Machine learning is when algorithms and methodologies give computers the ability to automatically learn and improve from experience without human intervention and without being explicitly programmed. For example, Google search results are provided by machine learning algorithms. [more]

Slack and Oracle move to collaborate on business app chatbots
October 5, 2017 – Computer World

Slack is touting a partnership that will allow its team messaging tool to act as the interface for a range of Oracle business applications. The deal has advantages for both companies, offering Oracle a new method of engagement with its sales, HR and ERP apps and handing Slack a chance to boost its presence in large organizations. Slack has made significant efforts to court large corporate customers as the collaboration software market continues to grow. The tie-up with Oracle should is aimed at furthering these ambitions. “If Slack can become the preferred messaging client for Oracle customers (and [is] pushed via Oracle’s sales channels) then it could help seed Slack adoption within Oracle shops,” said Alan Lepofsky, vice president and principal analyst at Constellation Research.After it’s fully launched in the next few months, customers will be able to deploy bots within Slack using Oracle’s Intelligent Bot Service allowing end users to retrieve information without switching applications. [more]

Open Source / Code source libre

Mozilla funds open source projects with half a million in grants
October 3, 2017 – Tech Crunch

Mozilla has announced the latest recipients of its Open Source Support grants, totaling $539,000. The web tech company regularly helps out smaller projects, and this round in particular favored ones aimed at safety and security. Mozilla gave $194K to Ushahidi, a platform used to rapidly collect and disseminate local information to people who may need it quickly: blocked streets in a disaster area, police actions or tear gas in a protest, or voter intimidation during elections. RiseUp was given $100K for its suite of secure communications tools aimed at activists. Webpack, a JavaScript module loader that’s part of the cross-browser WebAssembly format, got $125K. Phaser, an HTML5-based game engine, got $50K, and mod_md, part of a system designed to make HTTPS deployment easier, took home $70K. The next phase of Mozilla’s Open Source Support plan is to focus on individual regions — starting with India. [more]

September 29, 2017 / 29 septembre 2017

Enterprise Collaboration / Collaboration à l’échelle de l’entreprise

Is Digital Collaboration the Missing Link to Your Bottom Line?
September 27, 2017 – CIO Review

Encouraging and enabling employees to pursue their best ideas increases innovation and enhances the organisation’s position in the marketplace. According to Alan G. Robinson, professor at the Isenberg School of Management at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, the average U.S. employee’s ideas, big or small, are implemented only once every six years. A digital collaboration is needed to promote and foster innovation, creating space for nurturing ideas throughout an organization. The results not only keep organizations at the leading edge of their industries, but also boost employee engagement and retention. The article suggests boosting digital collaboration by creating an innovation engine, establishing a workplace hub, and by promoting rapid replication. It is imperative that you ensure you are getting the most out of the internal collaborative platform you are using. This can be done by establishing a concrete vision for the platform, identifying key performance indicators, conducting regular assessments to gauge the platform’s performance, and by letting data drive decision-making. Identify a long-term plan to scale. [more]

Digital Collaboration Tools / Outils de collaboration numérique

Cisco, Microsoft take diverse tacks for virtual reality collaboration
September 26, 2017 – Tech Target

Microsoft's mixed reality looks to create a "digital twin," essentially a virtual model of a physical thing, such as a product, process or service. Information is secured across both devices and services, so that blueprints and other design ideas are protected from leaks. Ford Motor Co. is using Microsoft's mixed-reality services to help design cars. Mixed-reality services, like Microsoft's HoloLens, could potentially streamline that process so teams can speed up decision-making across departments. Microsoft's mixed-reality services also integrate with Microsoft Teams, the vendor's main collaboration service. For example, product design notes made in the mixed-reality environment will appear in Teams so other team members can receive the notification. This type of immersive, visual collaboration echoes the digital collaborative whiteboards that have become popular in the past couple years in UC. Some collaborative whiteboards have been criticized for their high costs, lack of interoperability and applicability to niche vertical markets, such as manufacturing or engineering, where workers need to collaborate specifically around visual elements. [more]

Could Microsoft Teams replace Outlook and Yammer?
September 26, 2017 – Tech Target

Slack and Cisco Spark, two messaging-centric platforms that compete with Teams, have been promoted as email replacements or Outlook replacements. So as Teams competes with Slack and Spark, it's also in a way competing with Outlook. As companies adopt Teams, they would see a significant decline in the amount of internal email, but likely still use external email for messages to people outside the organization. Products like Teams, Slack and HipChat represent a significant change in the way people work and work together, Dan Stevenson, product team leader for Microsoft Teams said. [more]

Social Networking / Réseautage social

Twitter teste une version allégée de son application pour les utilisateurs à faible connexion
25 septembre 2017 – ZDNet

Toujours en quête de nouveaux utilisateurs, Twitter multiplie les leviers pour attirer les utilisateurs des pays peu ou mal couverts en Internet mobile. S'il ne s'agit pas d'une application pour smartphone, son apparence et ses fonctionnalités sont presque identiques à celles des utilisateurs de l'app mobile. L'entreprise estime que ce produit permet de diminuer le transfert de données de 70%. Ce lancement survient alors que des produits similaires sont proposés par d'autres géants de la tech. Facebook a publié Facebook Lite en 2015 et mardi Alphabet a proposé une version spéciale de YouTube sous forme d'application mobile consommant peu de données pour l'Inde. [suite]

Artificial Intelligence / Intelligence artificielle

Microsoft Dynamics 365 now offers service chatbots as part of AI push
September 25, 2017 – Venture Beat

Microsoft is tapping the power of AI to provide customers of its Dynamics 365 business applications suite with new features, including a pre-built chatbot designed to field customer service queries. For clients who don’t want to buy a whole Dynamics 365 bundle, Microsoft has divided its products into modules that can be purchased individually on a subscription basis. The company is starting with Dynamics 365 for Talent, the human capital management suite. It’s spawning two modular apps called Attract and Onboard, which are designed for different parts of the recruiting and hiring process. Microsoft is also strengthening the relationship between LinkedIn and Dynamics 365 for Sales, its CRM product. The company will soon let sales reps send InMail directly through Dynamics 365. [more]

Search / Recherche

Fondamentaux du SEO: Le référencement naturel à la portée de tous
28 septembre 2017 – Journal du Community Management

Le référencement naturel, dimension du SEO signifiant Search Engine Optimization, a pour but d’optimiser ses contenus afin d’obtenir de bonnes positions sur les moteurs de recherche. Le SEO intègre de nombreux domaines avec une dimension technique lorsqu’il s’agit de mettre ses mains dans le code pour optimiser certains points. Il faut savoir que le référencement naturel ne fera pas tout, car dans certains cas où la concurrence sera très forte, sur vos mots-clés notamment, il sera nécessaire de faire appel à une agence éditoriale. Elle pourra travailler plus profondément les positions recherchées, tout en proposant un ensemble de services. [suite]

September 22, 2017 / 22 septembre 2017

Digital Government / Gouvernement numérique

On the verge of true federal IT modernization
September 18, 2017 – GCN

This article argues that improving federal IT is a bi-partisan issue, and that leaders will ensure that IT modernization remains a top priority through the end of 2017. Agencies should focus on replacing existing technology with low-cost alternatives, like open-source and cloud resources. The Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program is making it easier for agencies to make the move and get more reliable, secure, resilient IT infrastructures for less. The cybersecurity threats become bigger and more difficult to thwart, agencies must recognize the benefits of biometrics. As the federal government works through its cyber and IT modernization challenges, it must take advantage of the efficiencies offered by cloud, biometrics and mobility. The key to agencies' success depends on embracing agility, innovation and new technologies that deliver the type of services citizens have come to expect from the private sector. [more]

Enterprise Collaboration / Collaboration à l’échelle de l’entreprise

Three tips for effective business collaboration
September 20, 2017 – IT Pro

Improving the employee experience is a key part of enabling more effective collaboration in the enterprise. The success of collaborative technology is entirely dependent on employees changing the way they think about work in order for it to function. Organisations need to make sure their staff understands the reasons why these tools are being implemented, and what the intended goal is; educating the workforce about the benefits is crucial to get them on board. Reduce the number of tools being used. Adding more tools in an ad hoc way leads to user frustration, siloed work environments and a significant increase in administration costs. Flexible working hours and remote working shouldn’t be an obstacle to effective collaboration. Technology has played an important role in challenging the traditional concept of work, and simple tools like smartphone screen sharing, instant messaging and video conferencing can all support communication and collaboration across the company. [more]

Digital Transformation Depends on UC
September 18, 2017 – no jitter

Solid UC technology provides the necessary foundation for a successful digital transformation. A recent study by Nemertes Research found the companies that have the most success with their digital transformations are those that increase their spending on UC solutions more than any other area in IT. Digital transformation can take many forms, but in essence it's about radically transforming how a business operates in order to take advantage of the wave of digital technologies available today.A modern UC solution should aim to optimize communication and collaboration, and enable workers to easily reach and be reached by others, and therefore be more efficient and productive. A proper UC should allow users to be reachable via the same telephone number over a variety of devices. The fundamental problem for many organizations is that existing network infrastructure isn't prepared for the new demands of digital transformation. What organizations need is a holistic solution that can help them seamlessly monitor, manage, and optimize their multivendor UC environments from the application down to the network layer devices. [more]

Mozilla Announces 15 New Fellows for Science, Advocacy, and Media
September 13, 2017 – Mozilla

Mozilla has announced 15 new Fellows in the fields of science, advocacy, and media. Ceratin Fellows hail from Mexico, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Uganda, the United States, and include multimedia artists and policy analysts, security researchers and ethical hackers. In the past, Mozilla’s Open Web Fellows have helped build open-source whistle-blowing software, and analyzed discriminatory police practice data. [more]

Digital Collaboration Tools / Outils de la collaboration numérique

Gmail : les numéros de téléphone et les adresses enfin cliquables dans les messages
19 septembre 2017 – ZDNet

GMail est certainement une des messageries les plus puissantes et populaires du marché mais elle n'est pas exempte de défauts. Son moteur de recherche est limité. L'impossibilité de classer les messages par taille est très gênante. Jusqu'à présent, il fallait en effet copier ce numéro et le coller ensuite dans l'application téléphone pour lancer un appel. Idem pour les adresses postales avec Maps. Une mise à jour de l'application pour Android et iOS corrige enfin ce souci. Il suffira désormais de tapoter sur un numéro et il sera appelé automatiquement, ou sur une adresse e-mail pour composer un nouveau message, sur une adresse postale, c'est Google Maps qui s'ouvrira automatiquement. [suite]

Social Networking / Réseautage social 

Comment les community managers utilisent les réseaux sociaux en 2017
21 septembre 2017 – Blog du Modérateur

Les réseaux sociaux les plus utilisés par les community managers sont Facebook, Twitter et Instagram, selon un sondage du Blog du Modérateur Facebook domine largement ses concurrents, puisque le réseau social est (très/plutôt) important pour 95% des community managers. Twitter est second (74%).Quand il était demandé aux community managers sur quelles plateformes ils obtenaient les meilleurs résultats organiques (sans publicité). Et malgré tout ce que nous entendons sur “la baisse du reach” ou “la chute du taux d’engagement”, Facebook reste le réseau social le plus efficace pour 56% des community managers. [suite]

Google, Facebook to unveil campaigns against ‘fake news’
September 19, 2017 – The Globe and Mail

Google and Facebook are poised to announce separate measures to fight "fake news" after facing calls from federal governments to protect the political system from the dissemination of misleading information in the media. Google Canada will announce a $500,000 contribution to help educate young Canadians on the importance of news and trustworthy sources of information. The program will be delivered as part of hundreds of mock elections that will be held in schools in Ontario next year and across Canada in 2019. The NewsWise project is being organized jointly by CIVIX, the group that organizes Student Vote, and the Canadian Journalism Foundation. "This is an example of the fact we recognize that fake news is a concern to this government, it is a concern to us, and we saw an opportunity to take action," said Google Canada's head of public affairs, Aaron Brindle. Meanwhile, Facebook is planning an event in the near future to unveil what it calls the Canadian Election Integrity Initiative. Facebook Canada's initiative is a response to a recent federal report that listed key threats to Canada's electoral system, predicting that "multiple hacktivist groups" would use cybercapabilities to influence the 2019 general election. [more]

Open Source / Code source libre

Facebook’s open source React library is increasingly worrying devs
September 19, 2017 – The Next Web

React is a JavaScript library that makes it easier for developers to write sophisticated front-ends. It was built by an engineer at Facebook, and in 2013, Facebook released it to the developer community under an open-source license. Facebook also threw in a few other clauses, which many developers and companies are finding to be problematic. Essentially an individual’s right to use React could be revoked should they take Facebook to court over patent grounds, or if they counter-sue Facebook in a patent suit. If a React user sued Facebook on patent grounds, they could be faced with re-writing their entire web application’s front-end, which could be time-consuming and expensive. However, the likes of Facebook, Google, and LinkedIn benefit massively from sharing their code. Firstly, the code gets better as a wider community of coders works on it. Some companies use open source software as a recruitment tool. It’s a solid way to source potential hires. But in the same respect, it’s obvious that some companies – particularly Facebook – have an issue with the laisez-faire aspect of some open source licenses, and try to craft custom ones in order to maintain some element of control. [more]

September 15, 2017 / 15 septembre 2017

Digital Government / Gouvernement numérique

White House IT modernization plan calls for commercial cloud and shared services
September 5, 2017 – CIO Dive

The American federal government is looking to modernize and secure IT systems by tapping into shared services and consolidating the use of networks, according to an IT modernization plan released last week by the American Technology Council (ATC). The report calls on federal agencies to maximize cloud usage, update government-hosted applications and securely maintain legacy systems in production. The IT modernization plan is a response to a May executive order, which called for upgrading federal IT to better protect national cybersecurity. The ATC wants to rethink how the government sources IT, in particular consolidating network acquisitions and management to avoid duplicate investments. The ATC is looking at shared services that will increase how the federal government uses the cloud and collaboration tools. Though some of the efforts would require changes to the federal IT acquisition process, the report calls for commercial cloud use, improvement of existing shared security services and increased adoption of cloud-based email and collaboration suites. [more]

Enterprise Collaboration / Collaboration à l’échelle de l’entreprise

Creating the Borderless Enterprise with Open APIs and Unified Communications
September 6, 2017 – Data Center Knowledge

Legacy systems are making it hard for all businesses to make the move to mobile work, as most lack the flexibility to adapt to these technologies. Artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud services all promise to transform businesses for the better, but only if they can be integrated properly. Open APIs combined with communications platforms may be the answer to this challenge. Communications platforms as-a-service (CPaaS) with open APIs are making this vision of the future possible. A platform with open APIs makes it much simpler to integrate new technologies and processes while offering a better connection between users and real-time information. For example, integrating with third-party applications could help automate workflows and advance collaboration among teams across enterprise boundaries, including time zones or countries. [more]

Millennials Love Team Collaboration Apps and Huddle Spaces
September 7, 2017 – Commstrader

According to an industry white paper, Millennials actively work better in teams, preferring collaborative environments over siloed offices. In the past, Gen-X workers and baby boomers preferred more face-to-face interaction, while millennials are keen to jump into the future with virtual conferencing and new flexible tech. With 95% of millennials craving the opportunity to telecommute, it’s no surprise that mobile collaboration apps are becoming increasingly popular. With so much demand for new and improved collaboration technology and fewer “in-person” meetings, it makes sense that the millennial generation would also be keen to adopt huddle rooms over larger conference spaces. Huddle rooms give more intimacy to the collaboration space, and also provide users with access to the latest and greatest technology. [more]

Digital Workplace : la révolution numérique du quotidien
5 septembre 2017 – CIO online

Le Mardi 26 septembre 2017, au Centre d'affaires Paris Trocadéro, 112 avenue Kleber, 75016 Paris, CIO organise une Matinée Stratégique sur le thème « Digital Workplace : La révolution de l'expérience salarié à l'ère de l'entreprise hyperconvergée ». Un spécialiste des usages à l'ère numérique viendra ainsi expliquer comment « Concilier collaboration collective et autonomie individuelle ». L'approche de cette ouverture visera à balayer le sujet sur un plan presque sociologique. Elle complétera donc la diffusion des résultats de l'étude Comment mieux travailler à l'heure de la Révolution Numérique ?. Il y aura deux tables rondes. La première portera sur « Quelles technologies pour permettre le Digital Workplace ? » On y abordera des thèmes comme la virtualisation du poste de travail, l acréation d'applications web, le stockage réactif centralisé, le choix des terminaux pertinents, la mobilité et l'ubiquité. La seconde table ronde aura une approche plus managériale, « Quelles règles pour le Digital Workplace ? ». Celle-ci visera en effet à définir le meilleur management à l'époque de la génération Y, pour quelle sécurité et pour quel pilotage des terminaux opter afin de concilier autonomie et collaboration. [suite]

Digital Collaboration Tools / Outils de la collaboration numérique

Google launches Google Drive File Stream retires Google Drive
September 9, 2017 – Daily Tech

Google announced a new feature on Google Drive that allows users to access the files saved on Google Drive easier than before. The company introduced its Drive File Stream in March for limited users, which now the Google Drive File Stream rolled out for all users. This new feature will replace the Google Drive folder that was used by majority of the users in the past. Google states “Drive File Stream is a new desktop application that allows to access quickly to all of your Google Drive Files on demand directly from your computer, meaning you use almost none of your hard drive space and spend less time waiting for files to sync,” [more]

Bye Bye Skype for Business
September 8, 2017 – Life Hacker

Skype for Business is joining the Microsoft Teams family, as the company aspires toward greater enterprise collaboration. Microsoft is in competition with Slack and sees Facebook at Work as a threat as well. While Microsoft has lost the advantage they had in mobile when they completely underestimated the impact of the iPhone and Android, they have been far better at managing threats against their enterprise business. Business is all about collaboration and no-one has yet really nailed this from a technology point of view. [more]

Publishing with Apache Kafka at the New York Times
September 6, 2017 – confluent.io

The New York Times uses a number of different systems to produce content. They use several Content Management Systems, and they use third-party data and wire stories. On the other side there are a wide range of services and applications that need access to this published content — there are search engines, personalization services, feed generators, as well as all the different front-end applications, like the website and the native apps. The article describes a new approach that’s been developed to address this issue, based on a log-based architecture powered by Apache KafkaTM, called the Publishing Pipeline. The fact that all content is coming through the same pipeline is simplifying software development processes, both for front-end applications and back-end systems. Deployments have also become simpler. All assets published through the Gateway are assigned a unique message ID, and this ID is provided back to the publisher as well as passed along through Kafka and to the consuming applications, which allows tracking and monitoring when each individual update is processed in each system, all the way out to the end-user applications. [more]

Slack va permettre le partage des channels avec d’autres entreprises
13 septembre 2017 – Blog du Modérateur

Slack s’apprête à autoriser le partage des « channels » avec d’autres entreprises. Plus besoin de longs échanges de mails procéduriers, les équipes pourront dorénavant collaborer directement via la messagerie sans pour autant créer de comptes invités. A l’heure actuelle, les comptes invités (simples ou multichaînes) ne sont disponibles que pour les équipes abonnées à un forfait payant. Les invités simples ont uniquement accès à une chaîne spécifique contrairement aux autres qui peuvent être ajoutés à un nombre illimité de chaînes. L’accès aux « channels » se fait uniquement sur invitation, chaque utilisateur payant pouvant ainsi permettre à 5 invités simples de rejoindre sa chaîne. [suite]

Artificial Intelligence / Intelligence artificielle

Nu Echo: des robots pour clavarder avec les clients
14 septembre 2017 – La Presse

Fondée il y a 15 ans, en 2002, Nu Echo se consacre à l'amélioration et au déploiement de nouvelles solutions destinées aux « centres de contact clients » pour moyennes et grandes entreprises. Il produit des assistants virtuels intelligents (« chatbots ») qui ont fait la manchette au printemps 2016, quand Facebook les a introduits au sein de sa plateforme Messenger. La différence avec les agents conçus par Nu Echo est que ces derniers peuvent interagir avec les autres canaux de communication utilisés dans les centres de contact clients, notamment le téléphone et le courriel. Quand l'assistant ne comprend pas le client, sa question est acheminée à un humain qui peut, en choisissant parmi un menu déroulant comprenant plusieurs possibilités, en faire comprendre le sens à l'intelligence artificielle, qui peut ensuite reprendre la conversation par elle-même. Nu Echo conçoit des systèmes pouvant interagir tant en français qu'en anglais. [suite]

Social Networking / Réseautage social

Behind the effort to archive Nintendo’s disappearing social network
September 9, 2017 – Ars Technica

On November 7, another piece of Nintendo's Miiverse, the artwork and message sharing service embedded into many Wii U games, will be shutting down because, as Nintendo puts it, "among other reasons, many users are shifting to social networking services." Shortly after Nintendo announced the Miiverse shutdown last week, developer Tim Miller started up an effort to permanently archive the network's public contents, complete with a GitHub page and the support of the Web preservationists at Archive Team. Because Miiverse has no public API, the team is still figuring out how to parse Miiverse URLs to get at all the network's public data through HTML scraping. So far, the team has identified more than 2 million distinct Miiverse users by following the trail of friends lists. Miller says he wants to organize it all into a database and maybe build a public website so people can search through the Miiverse archive at their leisure. [more]

Open Source / Code source libre

Reddit’s Main Source Code Is No Longer Open Source—Here’s Why
September 4, 2017 – Fossbytes

Since its creation in 2008, Reddit has adopted the open source approach. In a recent announcement, the company expressed its future plans to ditch the open source model and restrict the public access to the website’s “monolithic code.” As a result, the company is archiving its reddit/reddit and reddit/reddit-mobile GitHub repositories. According to their statement, it’s becoming tougher for the company to develop features, strategize, and keep them a secret as everyone can see what code is being committed. Its internal production code and the open source code have been moving further apart from each other. The company notes that as Reddit is becoming more service-oriented, it’s being divided into many small repositories. This division is making it difficult for the people to run a functional installation of Reddit. [more]

September 1, 2017 / 1 septembre 2017

Digital Government / Gouvernement numérique

APIs, shared services can reshape, modernize government technology
August 28, 2017 – Federal News Radio

In the American Federal Chief Information Officers Council’s latest study, the current state of government IT is described as monolithic. While the CIO Council acknowledged that the government lags behind the private sector in terms of adoption and utilization of technology, a shared services model applied by the public sector since the 1980s provides a hopeful foundation for the adoption of APIs. The government turned to shared services to reduce the number of technology silos being built. However, these shared services are only broadly used across agencies if they present a familiar and consistent mode of interaction. APIs provide that consistent mode of interaction. Agencies have become tied into inflexible systems that are expensive to maintain and are ill-suited to support mission critical requirements. APIs are critical in helping to upgrade the federal government’s existing base of legacy IT applications. [more]

Enterprise Collaboration / Collaboration à l’échelle de l’entreprise

Defining a collaborative canvas to channel digital teamwork
August 30, 2017 – Diginomica

Technologists have long aspired to build a universal, collaborative canvas as the ideal platform for digital teamwork. Now, the rise of conversational computing is providing the tools needed to complete this vision. The eight major characteristics of collaborative canvas include messaging, content, sync, applications, people, permissions, and workflow. The use of Kanban to organize workflow in digitally connected teams factors into the quest to create a collaborative canvas. Kanban is a system that displays the work a team needs to do as a picklist of atomic tasks. The structure is not a document, but a noticeboard organized into sets of cards, giving team members visibility of work in progress and what needs to be done next. The second factor has been the rise of conversational computing, a new way of interacting with computers in natural language, whether by speech or messaging, enabled by artificial intelligence. [more]

Creating the right space for employee collaboration
August 28, 2017 – Human Resources Director

A current trend that’s increasing in popularity is the replacement of traditional workplace silos with collaborative spaces, making room for better employee creativity, innovation and productivity. According to research conducted by Deloitte, “Employees who collaborate are 10 times more likely to be satisfied with their job”. The articles provides advice for organisations looking to create collaborative spaces, such as looking at existing spaces where staff frequent and think about how these can be furbished to create a comfortable, welcoming place to engage. Consider the need for acoustic and or visual barriers, depending on the proximity of the collaborative space to other work areas and how exposed the space is. Accessibility and connectivity to technology is imperative for the space to be effective. Ultimately collaborative spaces are part of developing a supportive and flourishing business environment that integrates with the flow of work and they have the potential to benefit employees and organisations. [more]

Digital Collaboration Tools / Outils de la collaboration numérique

Android : un logo PlayProtect pour indentifier les “bons” terminaux
29 août 2017 – ZDNet

Google lance une certification pour les fabricants de mobiles Android qui intègrent des applications officielles et respectent les règles de son app store Google Play. Désormais, un logo “Play Protect” figurera sur les emballages des terminaux mobiles respectant un certain nombre de préceptes comme l’intégration d’applications Google d’origine, l’absence de malware préinstallés et la présence de Google Play Protect qui inclut un scan automatique contre les virus et l’application Find My Device. [suite]

Dropbox Paper hérite de nouvelles fonctionnalités
31 août 2017 – ZDNet

Dropbox vient d’ajouter toute une série de nouvelles fonctionnalités à son éditeur en ligne collaboratif Paper. Désormais, les utilisateurs vont pouvoir créer des dossiers depuis leurs mobiles et y déplacer des documents Paper qu’ils pourront par ailleurs supprimer ou archiver. Autre grande nouveauté bienvenue, la possibilité de prévisualiser les documents avant de les ouvrir. La mise à jour concerne également la page d’accueil web du service qui réunit pour la première fois les documents Paper et Dropbox. [suite]

LinkedIn announces open source tool to keep Kafka clusters running
August 28, 2017 – Tech Crunch

LinkedIn announced a new load balancing tool called Cruise Control, which has been developed to help keep Kafka clusters up and running. Kafka is an open source message streaming tool to help make it easier to move massive amounts of data around a network from application to application. Based on a set of predefined rules, Cruise Control will auto configure the cluster to use the correct number of resources, fix itself and keep running. To make sure it’s on track, it’s possible to put a human check in the workflow where Cruise Control asks an engineer to review the optimization plan before continuing. [more]

August 25, 2017 / 25 août 2017

Digital Government / Gouvernement numérique

Why digital work hubs are the key to citywide collaboration
August 21, 2017 – Smart Cities Dive

As smart city initiatives gain popularity, local governments are looking at ways that they can use technology to help improve their citizens’ quality of life. With the implementation of each new process or technology, officials must ensure that communication is in sync with internal and external stakeholders so that all involved can truly benefit. Government collaboration requires technology that allows all of these groups to communicate and share files and resources in one place. Without the proper collaboration tools, information, conversations and files remain in silos and actually add unnecessary time and admin to manage and locate information quickly. Using collaboration or digital work hub tools such as Slack, Sharepoint or Bolste, city members can join their city’s "smart" initiative and provide channels or forums where all ideas, projects, documents and data sharing can live. Cloud, artificial intelligence, machine learning and IoT technologies are all part of the broader discussion for providing access to the data that cities are managing, such as crime reports, air quality, traffic, utilities, lights, meters and more. [more]

Enterprise Collaboration / Collaboration à l’échelle de l’entreprise

Can the public sector learn from IBM’s Agile working practices gambit?
August 22, 2017 – Diginomica

Earlier this year, IBM, one of the pioneers of remote working and a major supplier to government in both Europe and the US, allegedly called for thousands of its North American employees to start working in-house again or lose their jobs. Months later, the company’s vice president of human resources Sam Ladah posted a blog attesting that the media was incorrect and what IBM was actually doing in certain areas of the business (marketing, design, procurement and large parts of the IT department) was restructuring itself into “small, self-managed, multi-disciplinary teams working together in physical spaces”. In other words, the company’s teams would use Agile approaches not just as a methodology for developing software but as “an engine for business transformation” and has since set up six agile hubs in major cities across the US.If implemented properly, the methodology’s ‘Fail Fast, Fail Often’ philosophy encourages experimentation and innovation in an increasingly digital world. [more]

A New Practical Guide to a successful Digital Transformation
August 21, 2017 – Forbes

Isaac Sacolick, author of Driving Digital: The Leader’s Guide to Business Transformation through Technology and founder of consulting firm StarCIO detail four key steps of a successful digital transformation.First, ensure that the IT team grounded in digital practices such as Agile, DevOps, and the tools creating new digital platforms. Then, enable practices that capture ideas from employees, feedback from customers, and digital insights from other sources, with the goal of developing a pipeline of digital initiatives. Next, developing the foundations for successful digital execution—data science skills and digital product management practices. Lastly, an organisation must drive digital growth and culture—gaining early adopters and leading the organization to think digital first and become smarter and faster. [more]

Why Choosing Agile Methodology Matters For Mobile App Development Practice
August 22, 2017 – Bdaily

Adaptation of the innovative methods is important to add more to the user experience.In order to implement these changes successfully, the article suggests the adoption of agile app development methodology. The Agile methodology allows developers, designers, app-owners and the top mobile app development companies to be on the same page. This method is being referred to as the ideal environment for collaboration for similar reasons. Agile method suits the project development environment in a number of ways. The benefits of opting for these development methods include access to streamlined project development methods, transparency and flexibility, ease of testing at different stages, easy modifications as per the end users’ demand, and rapid development approach. [more]

Laying the foundation for hyper-collaboration
August 23, 2017 – Enterprise Innovation

A key factor to achieving agile innovation is collaboration, according to the Ovum report Building a Hyper-Collaborative Enterprise to Deliver Business Process Excellence. To help facilitate collaboration, firms are using digital solutions to transform their processes and business environment. An additional benefit of collaboration is the ability to expand beyond economic and geographic borders. Through collaboration with peer organizations, partners and even customers, firms can enter new markets to increase their revenue, explore new opportunities and help sustain growth when their home market faces a downturn. According to the Ovum report, new investments in collaboration are increasingly being delivered via the cloud, which highlights the important role of cloud in delivering collaboration services. “You need to have a strategy for enabling collaboration that is responsive to the changing needs of the modern workforce,” stated Marjet Andriesse, Head of Enterprise in Asia for the telecommunications firm Telstra. [more]

Boost business collaboration with enterprise management tools
August 22, 2017 – Mobile Business Insights

A range of tools exists to support collaboration and manage communication throughout organisations, but for all the potential value these tools offer, implementation and management are key to realizing the benefits collaboration has to offer an organisation. A collaboration management solution, for example, works within the context of your existing enterprise mobility management (EMM) or managed mobility services (MMS) platform, giving an organisation control over the ways collaboration is facilitated and managed across mobile network. As the network adopts different collaboration tools — from enterprise-focused communications apps such as Slack to collaboration suites from enterprise software providers — collaboration management will allow control of adoption apps, provision devices and efficiently manage content and activity across the organisation’s mobile network. The benefits of this management are most evident when workers are collaborating remotely. Even with the right collaboration management service in place, execution is imperative. The most effective collaboration management services should integrate easily into existing networks. The harder collaboration tools are to deploy for an enterprise, the greater the burden on IT and the greater the risk for error. [more]

Cyber Security / Cyber-sécurité

L’entreprise doit se protéger contre l’IoT, sans attendre les fabricants
23 août 2017 – ZDNet

Se protéger de l'Internet des Objets ne relève pas seulement de la responsabilité des fabricants, c'est la position défendue par le fournisseur de sécurité Fortinet. L'Internet des objets s’agit d'un tout nouveau domaine dont l'entreprise est responsable de la sécurisation. L'IoT ne consiste pas à protéger de nouveaux terminaux du monde extérieur, mais à connecter ces nouveaux terminaux à des terminaux existants ou anciens qui exécutent très probablement du code daté, et à protéger l'ensemble du réseau sur lequel de tels périphériques fonctionnent. "L'un des problèmes de l'IoT est qu'on trouve beaucoup de systèmes legacy et de terminaux qui lorsqu'ils ont été conçus à l'origine l'ont été sans que quiconque ne pense à l'aspect sécurité", dit Toan Trinh ingénieur en systèmes pour Fortinet à l'occasion de la conférence Gartner Security and Risk Management Summit. [suite]

August 18, 2017 / 18 août 2017

Digital Collaboration Tools / Outils de collaboration numérique

BlackBerry announces new partnership with enterprise messaging apps
August 8, 2017 – MobileSyrup

BlackBerry’s involvement with the AppConfig, a community of industry leading EMM solution providers and app developers, has led to a partnership with enterprise messaging app Slack. The company plans on integrating its enterprise management software (BlackBerry UEM) with Slack. This partnership will allow BlackBerry’s enterprise clients to integrate Slack across a large suite of applications, including BlackBerry Work, more than 80 independent software vendor apps, as well as more than 4,000 custom apps developed through BlackBerry software development kits. Slack’s new updates will provide increased enterprise mobility management support; directory-synced profiles for more comprehensive corporate directories; and customized default status options to allow employees to better communicate. [more]

Task Pigeon, un outil pratique pour gérer ses tâches en équipe
17 août 2017 – Blog du modérateur

Si vous êtes à la recherche d’un autre outil, conçu pour une gestion collaborative des tâches, vous pourriez être intéressé par Task Pigeon. Vous pouvez utiliser Task Pigeon individuellement, mais l’outil est vraiment pensé pour une gestion des tâches en équipe. Vous pouvez ainsi afficher l’ensemble des tâches des membres de votre équipe, assigner facilement des tâches et spécifier certains détails comme une deadline ou une catégorie de tâche. Vous pouvez également télécharger des documents sur chaque tâche, représentée par une carte. [suite]

Ghost, the open source blogging system, is ready for prime time
August 16, 2017 – Tech Crunch

Funded by Kickstarter, John O’Nolan released a content management system for bloggers and has recently updated the platform with the best of modern blogging tools. Platform, called Ghost, has been called “web’s next great open source blogging platform,” said O’Nolan. The platform uses a traditional Markdown editor and a new block-based editor called Koenig. The new editor lets you edit posts more cleanly within blocks, a feature that uses something called MobileDoc and Ember.js to render complex pages quickly and easily. The team also started a journalism program to support content providers. [more]

Codeless security integrations by Blackberry and Appdome announced
August 15, 2017 – App Developer Magazine

BlackBerry Limited and Appdome, a cloud hub for mobile app integration, announced they are enabling codeless integration of secure voice, video and messaging capabilities. Secure Messaging, the BBM Enterprise SDK (software development kit) offers a growing set of secure communications capabilities that mobile app developers and integrators can use to realize faster time-to-market, enhanced scalability, performance security and reduced costs. “With BBM Enterprise SDK, app developers no longer have to focus on the nuances and complexities of securing communications; instead they can focus on building solutions for enterprises, clients and customers,” explains Appdome CEO Tom Tovar. These new integrations include protection of chats, secure organizational data and regulatory compliance, and enterprise-grade encryption to protect messages. [more]

Google updates its cloud collaboration tools
August 17, 2017 – IT Pro Portal

Google has just announced a couple of cool new features for its Docs, Sheets and Slides to help users easier and more efficiently. There are three new features included in the latest update: an upgrade to the Track Changes functionality, new templates as well as a template builder, and a new Cloud Search feature. All suggestions can now be accepted or rejected at once, and new suggestions can be made via mobile devices. With templates, users can now save time on formatting, while developers can build add-ons to customise functionality. Google Cloud Search will integrate with Docs and Slides via the Explore feature. Using Machine Intelligence, Cloud Search surfaces relevant information to increase productivity. [more]

Enterprise Collaboration / Collaboration à l’échelle de l’entreprise

Not even remotely possible
August 13, 2017 – Tech Crunch

Jon Evans, principal software engineer at the product engineering firm HappyFunCorp discusses his experience building software with both all-remote and partly-remote teams over a seven year period. Evans dismisses the idea that remote work’s failure modes are worse than those of office work as an assumption based on office work’s history as the default. He lists companies like Automattic, Gitlab, InVision, and Zapier, all of which thrive as fully remote companies. Evans states that the change in modes of communication is the main issue with the transition from office to remote work-- methods of communication goes from default-synchronous (walk over to your colleague’s desk) to default-asynchronous (PM them on Slack.) While certain forms of work are better suited to synchronous communications, many forms of technological work are much better suited to asynchronous communication. [more]

Have we reached an inflection point in online collaboration?
August 17, 2017 – Research Information

Online collaboration has evolved rapidly over the years – as have users. Successful online collaboration addresses a need or interest of the user. For example, LinkedIn provides the ability to network the user’s professional identity. There are two aspects of successful collaboration tools – putting collaboration tools immediately adjacent to actual content, and addressing a need or interest of the user – which have led to the success of scholarly collaboration networks (SCNs) like ResearchGate and Academia.edu. These SCNs recruit users and papers from publishers’ sites into a central repository, and then put collaboration and measurement tools against these papers. The recent emergence of annotations tools like Genius on certain sites also shows how layers of meaning are becoming more mainstream – a layer of primary content and a useful layer of commentary or expanded content. An inflection point for online collaboration is now being reached, with more and more services becoming decentralized, and bandwidth, browser technologies, standards, and user expectations aligning around these decentralised approaches. Users are more comfortable with collaboration overall, in the right environment. [more]

Comment la transition numérique encouragera la collaboration en ligne
August 17, 2017 – Journal du Net

La transformation digitale n’est pas une option, mais un processus obligatoire que toutes les entreprises doivent mener, si elles entendent survivre. Le résultat est l’optimisation des coûts et l’augmentation de la productivité. Une des conséquences directes de la numérisation, se manifeste par un environnement entrepreneurial devenu plus volatile. Dans ce nouveau scenario du changement numérique, où la compétition s’accroît de façon intensive et imprévisible, les entreprises doivent prendre des mesures dans l’objectif d’optimiser leurs modèles de gestion, augmenter leurs recettes et accompagner les ressources humaines. Les nouvelles options offertes par la technologie (chats, vidéoconférence, partage d’écran, etc.) contribuent à réduire les distances géographiques et renforcer les relations commerciales. Dit autrement, les canaux de communication digitale favorisent la collaboration entre les professionnels de différents services, filiales, ou entreprises, en temps réel et n’importe où, et les avantages sont nombreux. [suite]

3 lessons for collaboration
August 15, 2017 – Computer World

The article offers several lessons on facilitating workplace collaboration:

Lesson 1: Collaboration cannot exist without the desire to collaborate. The challenge for leaders is to inspire to non-collaborators to change their habits. The benefits of collaboration must be made clear, and a desire to collaborate on the part of the entire workforce should be created.

Lesson 2: Understand the collaboration tools. To apply technology and realize its full potential, one must understand the technology. There are at least two components of understanding technology: how to use it, and where or when to use.

Lesson 3: Listen to everyone in the collaboration network. In environments suffering from groupthink, the desire to be collegial gets in the way of critical thinking. To overcome groupthink, group members have to consider the dissenters among them. [more]

August 11, 2017 / 11 août 2017

Digital Collaboration Tools / Outils de collaboration numérique

8 ways of using collaborative tools to effectively manage remote teams
August 7, 2017 – Search Engine Watch

Through the use of remote labour, American Express saves $10 to $15 million annually in real estate costs alone. As remote work gains traction among organisations, there is a fair amount emerging tech that facilitates the management of remote teams. There are numerous emerging technologies available online to make managing remote teams easier, such as enterprise messaging platform Slack and their remote team apps or the document collaboration app Glip. Hubstaff is referenced as one of the best remote management tools on the market. The user can monitor specific team member, or entire teams in just one app to ensure productivity is at its highest. The key is to find the ones that work best for the organisation and its teams. Overall, remote work is most productive when an organisation has developed and agreed upon a plan ahead of time, including the best technology to use. [more]

Digital Workplace App Beekeeper Launches Inline Translation Feature for Inclusive Collaboration
August 8, 2017 – PR Web

The newest addition to collaboration suite Beekeeper’s rapidly growing feature lineup, inline translation, brings next-level connectivity to diverse workforces. Available on both web and mobile versions of their award-winning digital workplace application, inline translation allows Beekeeper users to translate any post or comment into their preferred language. The new feature supports 30 languages including Spanish, French, German, Chinese, Italian, and Arabic. This feature will help teams elevate diversity standards, develop greater agility, and better manage remote workforces. Beekeeper stresses that in addition to developing a more inclusive, connected culture, inline translation will yield immense company growth. [more]

Cyber Security / Cyber-sécurité

Changer de mot de passe ? Pardon, mais ce n’est pas nécessaire
10 août 2017 – ZDNet

Les règles strictes définissant la composition des mots de passe et imposant des changements fréquents ne sont plus d'actualité. En 2003, il avait établi des règles régissant la création et la gestion des mots de passe au nom du NIST, le National Institute of Standards and Technology. L'utilisateur était aussi encouragé à mêler majuscules et minuscules, caractères spéciaux, sans oublier des chiffres. Mais ce n'était pas une bonne idée dans la pratique; ces contraintes qui au final s'avéreraient contre-productives. Les utilisateurs avaient par exemple tendance, pour se simplifier l'existence, à procéder uniquement à des ajustements, souvent faciles à anticiper, par exemple en remplaçant le 1 par 2. Le NIST a défini de nouvelles règles - au sujet desquelles on espère que son auteur n'exprimera pas de vifs regrets dans quelques années. Comme le résume Business Insider, "les mots de passe doivent être longs et faciles à retenir". On doit le modifier seulement après des signes de compromission. [suite]

Artificial Intelligence / Intelligence artificielle

Here’s Why Insight Engines Are the Next Big Thing
August 8, 2017 – CMSWiRE

Gartner defines insight engines as enterprise search that provides “more-natural access to information for knowledge workers and other constituents in ways that enterprise search has not.” It’s becoming evident that enterprises can benefit from question answering systems or insight engines in the workplace, particularly as emerging technologies such as natural language processing (NLP) and chatbots become increasingly common in today’s workplace—the demand for NLP currently exceeds the supply. As each organisation uses its own language, acronyms, metrics and processes, each organisation requires its insight engine to understand its unique needs and context in order to answer questions or execute actions. Chatbots specifically can improve productivity by helping employees do basic tasks like reserving conference rooms, processing timesheets and submitting expenses and by providing automated responses to common user support questions. As enterprises embark upon building their own insight engines, this will fuel additional information discovery and collaboration in the workplace. [more]

IBM touts improved distributed training time for visual recognition models
August 7, 2017 – Tech Crunch

In competition with Facebook’s AI research labs, IBM’s research group were able to train ResNet-50 for 1k classes in 50 minutes across 256 GPUs (Graphic Processing Units). Computing jobs are often so big for deep learning problems that they are most efficiently handled across a large number of GPUs instead of just a single GPU. But as more GPUs are added, training time doesn’t naturally scale down—there is some cost to splitting up and recombining complex quantitative operations. What IBM is promising is the most efficient distributed deep learning library for breaking up a giant deep learning problem into hundreds of smaller deep learning problems. The company continued the work testing distributed training on ResNet-101, a much larger and more complex visual recognition model. The team says that it was able to train ResNet-101 on the ImageNet-22k data set with 256 GPUs in seven hours. [more]

AI Seen Better Suited to IoT Than Big Data
August 7, 2017 – Datanami

A new survey found that AI branches such as machine learning are perceived as being more useful for applications such as Internet of Things deployments where automation tools can be used to streamline business operations. The survey of over a thousand IT professionals by market research firm GlobalData found continuing “heavy reliance” on business intelligence tools, with 40 percent ranking BI (business intelligence) above all other tools for analyzing data. The research concludes, AI is likely to play a larger role on IoT deployment than data analytics. However, the survey also finds that “with the broad market trend toward the democratization of data now well-established, such BI software platforms have already given way to numerous smaller, more discrete ways of deriving value from enterprise data,” The research concludes that much of the misalignment between AI and data analytics stems from centralization, which is seen as the basis of traditional BI analysis and reporting along with predictive modeling. Other branches of AI such as deep learning may prove more broadly applicable to analytics as well as IoT. [more]

Digital Government / Gouvernement numérique

Forms are the worst and they need to go away
August 9, 2017 – Medium

The form has been the dominant way that states have taken information from populations since the beginning of professional civil service. Forms require significant concentration and analysis, and often cause the applicant to feel like it’s not worth the trouble of filling it out. This is why effective form design is so important. Placing related form fields near each other makes them more engaging. Forms that are designed to maximize the amount of information collected on a sheet are bad because they work against human neurology. However, a well-designed virtual agent can improve and humanize the experience of interacting with an organization. Working with the assumption that people use government services at critical points in their lives, it’s critical to find an information collection method that is both efficient and compassionate. The agent doesn’t need to be a personified system (though it might help) but accepting small groups of related information from users might be a more pleasing way to accept information. [more]

Social Networking / Réseautage social

Facebook discontinues Groups app, but says it still loves Groups
August 9, 2017 – The Verge

Facebook announced that iOS and Android users will no longer be able to access the Groups app after September 1st. Instead, they'll have to use the Groups feature on the Facebook mobile app or in their browser. The company revised its mission statement earlier this year with a specific emphasis placed on Groups. The new driving Facebook message is: "To give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together." Facebook values the idea that these people rely on Facebook to build a community. As such, it's developing tools specifically for them. Now, for example, group admins have more access to metrics, like growth and engagement, so they can better sort through membership requests, schedule posts, and remove abusive users and their comments. [more]

Facebook ne facturera plus les clics accidentels sur son Audience Network
August 9, 2017 – Blog du Moderateur

l’Audience Network (une espace publicitaire proposée par Facebook) permet d’élargir la portée de ses publicités crées sur Facebook en les diffusant sur des sites ou apps tierces partenaires de Facebook. Les ads sont affichées au lancement de l’app (le plus souvent) ou au cours de la navigation sur le contenu. Mais ces publicités sont particulièrement sensibles aux clics accidentels… notamment quand vous cherchez à fermer la publicité. Facebook vient d’annoncer des mesures pour ne plus prendre en compte ces clics accidentels. Les clics avec rebond en moins de 2 secondes (temps estimé par Facebook pour démontrer qu’un clic est accidentel) ne seront plus comptabilisés et plus facturés. Ces nouveautés vont évidemment dans le bon sens et clarifient la facturation et la délivrabilité des publicités. [suite]

August 4, 2017 / 4 août 2017

Enterprise Collaboration / Collaboration à l’échelle de l’entreprise

Great Digital Companies Build Great Recommendation Engines
August 1, 2017 – Harvard Business Review

Recommendation engines force organizations to fundamentally rethink how to get greater value from their data while creating greater value for their customers. They’re a terrific medium and mechanism for transitioning traditional managements to platform perspectives. Recommendation engines make it easier to gain better insight into users while they’re getting better information about the organisation. Prioritizing recommendation as an organizing principle for digital design distinguishes organisations. The article stresses the importance of virtuous business cycles-- the more people use an engine, the more valuable it becomes; the more valuable it becomes, the more people use it. Customer focus is key; every effort should be made to personalize the recommendations. For organizations aspiring to leap across digital divides, the article recommends drawing inspiration from existing recommendation engines, setting quantifiable goals, and not to confine recommendation engines to specific domains. [more]

The Unchained Enterprise: Welcome To Wireless Collaboration
July 31, 2017 – Business Computing World

The ‘wireless office’, much like the ‘paperless’ equivalent, is something that organisations continuously aspire to and work towards. The term “five-minute meeting tax” refers to the time spent before a meeting while looking for wires, adaptors and connect to in-room screens—eliminating the wires from the workplace increases productivity. As flexible working gains popularity (63% of UK employees now work from home according Polycom’s latest study), employees clearly want to be free from wires wherever they work. The next generation of content collaboration tools are hitting the market, eliminating the need for cables so users can crack on with their meetings and share content swiftly, securely and easily. [more]

Digital Collaboration Tools / Outils de collaboration numérique

Mozilla lance Send : un service gratuit et sécurisé d’envoi de fichiers
1 août 2017 – Blog du Moderateur

Mozilla vient de lancer un tout nouveau service en Beta qui s’avère déjà très pratique : Send. Sur le modèle d’un WeTransfer le service permet de s’envoyer des fichiers volumineux (jusqu’à 1GB). Le partage est confidentiel et les liens de partages ne sont valables que 24 heures, donc Send garantit une véritable sécurité dans l’envoi des fichiers. Au niveau de l’utilisation, Send est simple: il suffit de faire un « Drag&Drop »du fichier à partager pour générer un lien de téléchargement. Précisons que Send fonctionne sur tous les navigateurs, pas uniquement sur Firefox. [suite]

Artificial Intelligence / Intelligence artificielle

Machine learning and AI: Can it be the butler that can change user experience?
July 29, 2017 – Economic Times

As companies seriously consider the role of AI (Artificial Intelligence) and machine learning in the workplace, one must consider the fundamental shift in user experience (UX) these emerging technologies propose. Research on emerging technologies reveals three main benefits to developing smart UX— the automation of tasks to increase efficiency, the ability to advise users on the best course of action to meet their objectives, and the continuous discovery of relevant, actionable information. Two concepts are particularly important in building a smart UX—how an organisation leverages technology and design to anticipate what a user needs and how much users have to go through before they get value out of their experience. Chatbots, a way of interacting with enterprise systems via text-based messages, are one way to make simple transactions even easier and more accessible. [more]

10 Companies Using Machine Learning in Cools Ways
July 29, 2017 – Wordstream

This article discusses companies, organisations, and website making creative use of new machine learning technology. Yelp, for example, is leveraging machine learning to improve users’ experience, as their machine learning algorithms help the company’s human staff to compile, categorize, and label images more efficiently. Pinterest acquired Kosei, a machine learning company that specialized in the commercial applications of machine learning tech and uses their services for spam moderation, content discovery, advertising monetization and reducing churn rate of email newsletter subscribers. Google’s neural network research has led to the DeepMind network, the “machine that dreams”, which incorporates “virtually all aspects of machine learning”. Salesforce’s Einstein allows businesses that use Salesforce’s CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software to analyze every aspect of a customer’s relationship – from initial contact to ongoing engagement touch points – to build much more detailed profiles of customers and identify crucial moments in the sales process. [more]

Facebook shuts down robots after they invent their own language
August 1, 2017 – The Telegraph

Facebook was forced to terminate their AI bots after they invented their own language. Researchers at Facebook Artificial Intelligence Research built a chatbot earlier this year that was meant to learn how to negotiate by mimicking human trading and bartering. However, when the social network paired two of the programs (nicknamed Alice and Bob) to trade against each other, their conversation "led to divergence from human language as the agents developed their own language for negotiating," the researchers said. Since Facebook's team assigned no reward for conducting the trades in English, the chatbots quickly developed their own terms for deals. [more]

Agile Developement / Développement agile

Agile Enterprise are Built on Data Science—and Data Scientists
August 2, 2017 – Virtual Strategy

In many cases, data collection and analysis will be the foundation to organisations’ digital transformations. While analytics and the use of data science will be the driving force to these new frontiers, they will also be a source of agility whereby the opportunities can be identified, tested, and rejected or accepted quickly. Data science can help enterprises fail fast—a philosophy incremental development and extensive customer testing to determine whether an opportunity or idea has value. Data scientists can map the statistical significance of key problems, and visualize and translate data quickly. The resulting data analysis may suggest drastic changes to the business that could drive very different infrastructure investments, so to understand data and fail fast, data science and data scientists are critical. [more]

Agile can’t succeed as an island
July 31, 2017 – SD Times

Agile ROI (Return on Investment) is falling short of expectations because it involves much more teamwork than organizations realize. “Agile software development alone can’t solve all your problems,” said Doug Dockery, global sales engineering leader for CA Technologies (CA). A change in workplace culture is necessary for agile development to succeed; there’s a disconnect between development teams and the organizations they serve. Dockery states that “companies haven’t created an environment of alignment, autonomy and trust.” Alignment ensures that the teams build what matters most to the business. Once the business and development teams are aligned, the development teams have the autonomy to decide the best way to build the product. The best way to bridge the gap between the business and its development teams is to decompose initiatives into smaller parts so teams can adapt to changing priorities. Metrics should drive continuous improvement. [more]

July 28, 2017 / 28 juillet 2017

Enterprise Collaboration / Collaboration à l’échelle de l’entreprise

Comment la numérique redone de l’air au collaborateur
24 juillet 2017 – Les Echos

Dans cette transition vers une économie collaborative et numérique, la planification et la gestion des actifs des entreprises vont s'appuyer de façon croissante sur des "points de données" numériques, sortes de marqueurs contextuels permettant de prendre des décisions, souvent en temps réel, adaptées à tous les types de situations. Par exemple, les candidats apposent leurs "twitter handle" ou profils LinkedIn sur leurs CV, facilitant ainsi la tâche des responsables de ressources humaines devenus conscients de l'importance d'appréhender les personnalités dans leur ensemble. Qu'il s'agisse de nouveaux candidats ou personnels expérimentés, les systèmes de gestion des ressources des entreprises doivent aujourd'hui plus que jamais s'ouvrir pour proposer une lecture transversale des données et ainsi, multiplier les chances de remettre dans la mécanique du business l'huile dont elle a besoin pour poursuivre sur la voie de la performance. La transformation numérique n'a peut-être finalement qu'un seul but : la contextualisation des données et l'augmentation des interactions, de la collaboration, entre toutes les parties prenantes de l'entreprise, internes et externes. [suite]

Changing Patterns: How Unify Sees New Work Models Driving Cloud Adoption
July 26, 2017 – CommsTrader

Software solutions company Unify’s VP Circuit marketing and CEO of blueKiwi software Philipp Bonn believes much of the fundamental architecture and infrastructure for the immediate future of business communications is now in place. Bonn states that demand from end users, not new technologies, will drive adoption as new work models create a need for collaboration and cloud communications. According to Bonn, Unify is focused on innovating as much in how it packages and delivers its products to market as on technology as focusing on the needs of end users is key to the continued relevance of their technology. “New collaboration tools provide a new mix of capabilities and new interfaces, so to ensure adoption enterprises need to train their users and provide some change management before, during and after the deployment process,” states Bonn. [more]

The Different Modes of Collaboration (and Why They Matter to Your Business)
July 26, 2017 – CMSWiRE

Enterprise collaboration is not a singular behaviour; innovation consulting firm Innosis has identified two distinct modes of collaboration— passive and active collaboration— that should be used in tandem. Passive collaboration refers to pulling in knowledge from a network when it is needed. It is an individual-focused and task-centric approach. Active collaboration is driven by vision as opposed to task, and involves sharing knowledge across networks and platforms. Whereas as the scope of passive collaboration is too narrow, passive and active collaboration together can create an environment where there are many opportunities to move and build knowledge organically. Once entrepreneurs recognize these two modes, formulating an overall collaboration strategy becomes less intimidating. [more]

We Still Work Like It’s 1995
July 25, 2017 – Huffington Post

The workplace is in the midst of a major transformation in terms of digital technology, collaboration, talent acquisition, yet mainstream work practices remain quite outdated. The convergence of the social, mobile, the cloud and data has enabled new tools and new architectures to emerge. However, these innovations are often trapped within specific communities that are predisposed to these types of innovation. These workplace cultures are starting to change— they are moving from expertise to collaboration; from keep the knowledge to share the knowledge. [more]

Digital Collaboration Tools / Outils de la collaboration numérique

EasilyDo Mail gets Gmail-like smart replies and a new name
July 26, 2017 – The Verge

Email by EasilyDo has undergone some recent additions, such as a Smart Reply feature, similar to Google’s. This feature uses deep learning, but unlike other apps with smart reply, the entirety of the feature runs solely on the user’s device order to ensure security. Additionally, the company is adding a new “Security Assistant” feature that claims to be able to help identify if an email account has been compromised in a data leak or hack. Along with the new updates, the company announced a name change from “EasilyDo” to “Edison”. [more]

New LinkedIn tool tells businesses about who’s visiting their websites
July 26, 2017 – Tech Crunch

LinkedIn introduced their Websites Demographics tool, which allows businesses to break down their website visitors across eight categories including job title, industry, company and location. To connect that data to website visits, the company is using the same conversation tracking technology that powers its Matched Audiences ad targeting. Users can use the information gleaned from this tool to adjust its marketing efforts to target a specific audience. Users can also be more particular, looking at the professional breakdown of specific sections of their website, not just the site as a whole. [more]

6 common misconceptions about enterprise messaging apps
July 26, 2017 – IT Pro Portal

This article discusses several myths surrounding enterprise messaging apps, starting with the idea that these apps are only used for chatting and are therefore not productive. Accurate and real-time communication facilitated by messaging apps is an important driver of optimal business efficiency. The article also addresses security concerns and states that most team communication platforms provide BCP (business continuity process), through cloud. Messaging apps for businesses provide return on investment by driving collaboration by collecting resources from across the dispersed organization to make effective decisions. Enterprise messaging apps have been developed keeping business collaboration and communication in mind by including features like unlimited users and groups, sharing of all file types, missed conversation alerts, unlimited message search history, video conferencing, and app integration. [more]

Artificial Intelligence / Intelligence artificielle

IA : Google crée une structure de mentorat pour les start-up
27 juillet 2017 – ZDNet

Avec son Developers Launchpad Studio, Google entend fournir des ressources techniques et du conseil aux jeunes pousses qui travaillent sur des projets d’intelligence artificielle qui s’appelle Gradient Ventures. Google étoffe sa panoplie d’outils en direction des start-up évoluant sur ce créneau. Il s’agit d’un programme de mentorat baptisé Developers Launchpad Studio qui fournira aux jeunes pousses une aide au prototypage de leurs concepts ainsi que des jeux de données spécialisées pour entraîner leurs IA. Aussi, les candidats sélectionnés bénéficieront d’une mise en relation avec des investisseurs ainsi que du conseil auprès d’ingénieurs, de spécialistes produits et d’experts en propriété intellectuelle travaillant chez Google. [suite]

Digital Government / Gouvernement numérique

Immigration Agency Wants to Blend Data Science, Agile and Security
July 24, 2017 – Nextgov
The American Department of Homeland Security is integrating their security teams into the DevOps management approach by blending the software development and the operations staff to encourage closer collaboration. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is investigating the aptly named “DevSecOps” services, as well as agile development. The department's request for information asks vendors to explain how they apply DevSecOps to fields like big data, analytics and machine learning, including neural networks and artificial intelligence. The request noted vendors would eventually be tasked with applying that technology and management approach to systems in cloud environments, including those provided by Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. [more]

July 21, 2017 / 21 juillet 2017

Digital Workplace / L’espace de travail numérique

An Enterprise Without Borders: Solving the Disconnect With Connected Platforms
July 17, 2017 – Data Center Journal
As shared workplaces, high levels of mobility and remote workers become increasingly integral to cross-enterprise collaboration, the ability to offer a fully searchable archive of messages and files becomes critical for businesses. Yet often, legacy enterprise communications solutions lack the flexibility to adapt to new business goals and technologies. A digitally collaborative future is possible however, using communications platforms where open APIs take that essential next step to expand capabilities. Open-architecture platforms make it easier to integrate new business processes and technology into collaboration tools. CPaaS APIs also enable developers to extend connections to standalone infrastructures, providing a simple and secure way to bring communication and collaboration capabilities to systems and processes both inside and outside the company borders. [more]

L’impact du digital sur la formation professionnelle
17 juillet 2017 – Blog du modérateur
Les outils et méthodes du digital impactent de nombreux secteurs, dont celui de la formation. Pour Dai Shen, Directeur général de de L’organisme spécialisé dans la formation professionnelle Demos, le digital a véritablement “transformé” les formations : « les internautes sont de plus en plus demandeurs et habitués aux nouvelles méthodes d’apprentissage. Ils consultent de nouveaux médias, notamment via les réseaux sociaux, et accèdent à une information de plus en plus fragmentée, moins centralisée qu’auparavant. » Les évolutions technologiques permettent aussi aux apprentis d’acquérir des compétences plus facilement en utilisant la réalité virtuelle, par exemple. Dai Shen insiste aussi sur le rôle croissant des outils mobiles, qui complètent parfois des contenus disponibles sur desktop. [suite]

Corporate culture – A barrier to digital transformation or stimulus?
July 18, 2017 – IT Pro Portal
One of the main issues in regards to digital transformation is that leadership often underestimates the importance of nurturing a strong culture before implementing these vast changes in the workplace. Without laying a strong foundational culture and aligning employee vision, getting staff on board and making concrete progress can prove extremely challenging. More often than not, there is a disparity between leadership’s digital vision and their employees’. As with any new project, there are simple steps you can take to approach transformation in a practical way. Consider the following:

1. Empower your employees to drive a digital culture

2. Focus on behaviours instead of successes and failures with digital KPIs

3. Make digital culture change tangible

4. Clearly communicate a digital vision and have visible leadership involvement

5. Increase transparency

6. Take a systems thinking approach to culture change [more]

Les employés virtuels accélèrent la transformation numérique de l’espace de travail
19 juillet 2017 – HR One
Selon une étude de Dimension Data, L’avantage compétitif et l'amélioration des processus sont les principaux objectifs de la stratégie de transformation numérique pour 40% des entreprises. L'espace de travail numérique compte de plus en plus d’ « employés virtuels », qui n'existent pas au sens physique, mais qui jouent néanmoins un rôle important dans l'organisation. Alors que l'intelligence artificielle (IA) n'en est qu'à ses balbutiements, elle est déjà suffisamment avancée pour se frayer un chemin au sein des entreprises, sous la forme d'assistants virtuels. Selon Pierre Dumont, Managing Director Dimension Data Belgique, la culture d'une entreprise pourrait être un des obstacles au déploiement d'un espace de travail numérique. [suite]

Digital Collaboration Tools / Outils de collaboration numérique

Accountable Anonymity in Achieving Collaboration: GitHub’s Promise?
July, 2017 – Canadian Government Executive
Collaboration in organizations is based on the idea that they would work more efficiently if they are able to use all knowledge embedded within them. However, interorganizational collaboration within the government has not gotten off the ground completely. Research has shown over the years that a misalignment of incentives makes people hesitant to share knowledge proactively. Despite these challenges, open collaboration platforms have been very successful across the government. In particular, the GCTools are “shining examples of the power of open collaboration”. Article author Justin Longo writes that the best collaboration systems provide “accountable anonymity”—contributions which are anonymous at the point of entry with long term accountability as to ensure the reward of good ideas and responsible speech. Longo argues that software project hosting service GitHub has a model of accountable anonymity that government digital services should emulate. [more]

Google launches Hire, a recruitment app that integrates with Gmail and other G Suite services
July 18, 2017 – Venture Beat
Google has announced a new app designed to help small and medium-sized businesses find and recruit employees more effectively. With Hire, the internet giant is targeting existing G Suite users with a tool that extends G Suite’s functionality into the recruitment realm. Hire will allow recruiters to manage job postings, receive application forms, interview and screen candidates, and more. It’s pitched as an “end-to-end” tool that caters to a specific common use case among G Suite users who already use the likes of Gmail and Calendar to schedule and manage job interviews. Hire also lets users schedule interviews with access to a direct pipeline into the interviewers’ schedule, through Calendar. Hire is currently available to U.S. businesses that have 1,000 employees or less and use G Suite. [more]

Boost Employee Engagement With Employee Communication Tools
July 17, 2017 – Business.com
It's important to find new and exciting ways to not only increase employee productivity but also to improve their performance as an engaged team. Having a proper communications solution in place is imperative for the overall success of an organization. One must focus on more than just having the employees all on the same page or working on a universal project. Today, it's more about ease of use and encouraging collaboration. The article mentions collaboration platform Slack as an example as it is intuitive, inviting, and well-organized. Smarp can be used for internal discussions, polls, content-sharing and workflows, much like Slack, but the primary focus is employee advocacy. In addition to its company-only posts and comment threads, Smarp's core functionality focuses on content suggestions for employee advocacy purposes. Overall, the most important thing you can do to improve collaboration and team engagement is to let your team connect with a common collaboration app. [more]

July 14, 2017 / 14 juillet 2017

Digital Collaboration Tools / Outils de collaboration numérique

Integrated Cisco Spark Boosts BT Cloud Collaboration
July 10, 2017 – Commstrader
BT announced the arrival of their “BT One Collaborate Spark” solution, a new collaboration service for businesses that should help teams to work together with more productivity – regardless of device or location. The new service combines the collaboration tools from Cisco Spark, with the BT One Cloud voice services. The combination of the BT One Cloud Cisco platform’s voice services and Cisco Spark is intended to reduce clients’ costs by automatically routing calls through the One Cloud network thereby reducing or avoiding international call charges. Andrew Small, VP for UC&C at BT, says that the latest research suggests that improving collaboration throughout business environments is crucial to digital transformation. The hope is that BT One Collaborate Spark will help design more productive environments for employees, while decreasing costs. Employees will be able to collaborate more intuitively, regardless of their device or whereabouts. [more]

Slack Moves Its App Store Front and Center, Backs Seven More Startups in Platform Push
July 11, 2017 – Forbes
To ensure their long-term success via coalition-building, enterprise collaborative platform Slack continues to push to serve as a platform that works closely with other company’s work apps. Slack took its next steps in the effort, moving its version of an app store right into a more prominent position, announcing a new feature in its partnership with Google as well as revealing seven more startups in which they have invested directly. The latest product of this partnership is a better integration for Google Drive’s file sharing service. Clients who drop a link to a shared file into Slack now receive a prompt from a Drive bot to grant access to their colleagues in that Slack group or channel, meaning they access the document without going through an email prompt or back and forth between the apps. Eventually the companies plan to announce unified notifications that will allow users in each product to know what their counterparts are saying about a document in the other app. [more]

Open Source / Code source libre

Possibilities with Open-Source Community Software
July 12, 2017 – Feverbee
Most websites using open source community software either end up simply displaying a lengthy list of discussions or focus near exclusively on development work. Sites like these miss the opportunity to develop something as visually appealing and intuitive as most enterprise platforms. Most enterprise communities (e.g. Dropbox and Square below) focus on ensuring the community is clean, easy to participate, and easy to navigate. This ease of navigation is facilitated by having a landing page. Overall, a strong focus on collaboration and integration allows an organisation to maximize their open source potential. [more]

Digital Government / Gouvernement numérique

‘I don’t know how to use a computer! : the stories of our most dangerous public servants
July 11 – Medium
This article stresses the importance of digital tools and services for intragovernmental collaboration. Author Leah Lockhart argues that the public service sector often create an environment that neglect technical skill development by providing outdated browsers, outdated operating systems and messy IT infrastructures. Without the use of digital collaboration tools and other technological developments, policy makers are unable to keep up with the pace of technological change being issues of national security. Lockhart also stresses the importance of social media use, as it is necessary to understanding how an increasing number of citizens get information or choose to interact. Social media and collaborative technologies is a crucial part of maintaining open, transparent and accountable public service. [more]

Enterprise Digital Collaboration / Collaboration numérique à l’échelle de l’entreprise

IBM and Automation Anywhere Team up to Help Businesses Streamline Operations

July 13, 2017 – PR Newswire IBM and Automation Anywhere announced a collaboration to help organisations become more efficient by delivering solutions that assist employees with routine, data-intensive tasks. The collaboration is intended to make it easier for companies to improve processes across their enterprises and to give employees to focus their time on more creative and customer-facing aspects of their jobs. As part of the agreement, the two companies plan to integrate Automation Anywhere's Robotic Process Automation (RPA) platform, used to create software bots to handle repetitive, task-based business processes, with IBM's portfolio of digital process automation software. The new offering will be particularly relevant to companies where employees routinely have to manually complete tasks within business processes. [more]

Huddle doubles down on document collaboration for enterprise
July 11, 2017 – Diginomica
Cloud-based collaboration vendor Huddle has stated its new, more focused mission to bring its vision of the networked enterprise to government, audit and accountancy firms, and organizations that need to add digitally networked smarts to their document-centric collaboration processes. Rather than selling collaboration as a thing in itself, Huddle now wants to focus on the outcomes clients want to achieve, says Huddle’s VP of Marketing Tim Deluca-Smith. The company is therefore investing in playing well with the various other collaboration tools such organizations are likely to use — witness the introduction of more seamless integration with Microsoft Office Online last month. Growth opportunities will come from identifying common business needs that customers are solving using Huddle, and then productizing the solution. [more]

Study: Proximity Still Matters to Collaboration
July 11, 2017 – Inside Higher Ed
According to a new study in PLOS ONE, face-to-face interaction is still an essential part of organisational collaboration. “If you work near someone, you’re more likely to have substantive conversations more frequently,” lead author Matthew Claudel, a Ph.D. candidate in urban studies and planning, told MIT News. Claudel and his co-authors used network analysis, mapping out of a network of MIT collaborators to find that spatial relations when collaborating on projects mattered more than departmental and institutional structures. [more]

Les nouveaux réseaux d’échange de compétences à l’ère du digital
14 juillet 2017 – Journal du CM
La transformation digitale des entreprises a donné naissance à la création de réseaux d’entraide et d’échange de compétences. Les réseaux d’échange de savoir se multiplient. Des associations, espaces collaboratifs au sein des entreprises et en ligne se développent et donnent sens à l’intelligence collective. Ces réseaux s’inscrivent dans la réciprocité du partage de savoir à titre gratuit. Ces réseaux d’échange de savoir à l’ère du digital peuvent inclure des forums de discussion, des wikis, des plateformes collaboratives, ou des vidéos. Dans le cadre de l’entreprise, on demande de plus en plus à un salarié d’être multi-compétent. Le troc de compétences se présente donc comme une alternative pour répondre aux exigences de la hiérarchie professionnelle. [suite]

July 7, 2017 / 7 juillet 2017

Digital Collaboration Tools / Outils de la collaboration numérique

Java DevOps provides Agile path to continuous delivery success
July 4, 2017 – The Server Side

Continuous delivery – a software engineering approach in which teams produce software in short cycles to ensure agility – cannot be applied to code by simply changing the way you collaboration, integration, or deployment. With Java DevOps specifically, continuous delivery demands software architecture discipline to be fully effective. To make continuous delivery and Java DevOps work, one has to be able to atomize feature development so that incremental improvements in software can be generated quickly and then integrated into a form that can be released. Vendors like IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle all offer a complete continuous integration and delivery solution, but even with these tools, it’s still essential to keep the progression from development to delivery in mind. [more]

Is 2017 the year employees get the right tools for ultimate efficiency?
July 5, 2017 – Information Age

Organisations are facing numerous challenges, it is essential that the right tools be readily available to enable the mobility and utmost efficiency of employees in the digital age. Enterprises must equip their employees with the adequate tools that establish seamless collaboration and unified communications. The article suggests multi-device integration, chat capabilities, and apps that can host project content and to-do lists as necessary collaboration tools for modern organisations. It is fundamental that enterprises start to recognise employees’ workloads and start making a conscious effort to try and deliver solutions that aid them, such as remote and flexible work practices that make it easier for people to work from home. [more]

How to Avoid the Threat of Collaboration Tool Overload
July 6, 2017 – Commstrader

As a result of digital transformation, everything from productivity and efficiency, to security and compliance is changing, and IT teams must take on more responsibilities – this can often lead to collaboration tool overload. According to a survey conducted by Frost & Sullivan, 80% of respondents admitted using non-approved and non-secure SaaS solutions in the workplace. In order to avoid the problems associated with collaboration tool overload, the article recommends staying informed about new technologies, recognize and prioritise employee needs, and centre integration in one’s organisational strategy. [more]

Google beefs up G Suite security with OAuth apps whitelisting
July 6, 2017 – Venture Beat

Google today unveiled a new G Suite security feature to improve data access controls and enhance phishing prevention: OAuth apps whitelisting – a feature designed to help organisations control how third-party applications are using enterprise user data. OAuth apps whitelisting is likely a response to the widespread “Google Docs” phishing email that affected many Google users in May. “This is just another example of the innovations we are bringing to the table to ensure our customers’ data is secure and protected and can combat new threats as they arise,” a Google spokesperson told Venture Beat. The feature provides administrators with fine-grained visibility into the third-party apps that are accessing G Suite data and access to only trusted and vetted third-party OAuth apps. [more]

Enterprise Collaboration / Collaboration à l’échelle de l’entreprise

73% des PDG estiment que l’IA va jouer un « rôle clé » dans leur business
7 juillet 2017 – ZDnet

Les résultats d'une enquête IBM indiquent que 73% des PDG estiment que l'Intelligence Artificielle (IA) jouera « un rôle clé » dans le futur de leur entreprise. En ce qui concerne là où l'IA aura le plus d'impact, les répondants énumèrent les technologies de l'information, la ventes et la sécurité de l'information comme les trois principales priorités de cette technologie. En ce qui concerne l'informatique, les technologies de l’IA peuvent améliorer le développement et les tests de logiciels, conduisent à une meilleure efficacité et agilité, et améliorent la conception de la solution affirme IBM. IBM recommande de mettre en place une planification pour adopter ces technologies, avec d'aborder les étapes d'idéation, d'incubation, et de mise à l'échelle. [suite]

Le SaaS perce en France dans les moyennes et grandes organisations
4 juillet 2017 – Journal du Net

Selon un sondage conduit par le Journal du net, 19% des moyennes et grandes entreprises françaises se disent désormais prêtes à basculer l'ensemble de leur système d'information vers des applications en mode SaaS. Le GRC (gestion de la relation client) arrive en tête des domaines où le SaaS est le plus souvent utilisé par les répondants. Ce n'est pas étonnant au vu des avantages que le cloud peut apporter aux applications et services digitalisés de gestion de la relation client, notamment sur le plan de l'agilité et de l'orchestration du multicanal. Un gros quart des sondés affirme en outre que leur organisation utilise une application SaaS de« business intelligence ». [suite]

Social Networking / Réseautage social

What to expect from social media in future
July 3, 2017 – Know Techie

Trends shaping the future of social media are expected to drastically affect other elements in the digital world. Today, social media is fast becoming an integral part of the work environment, thanks to several emerging tools such as Slack. These tools are taking this same connectedness and using it to provide a productive workplace. Niche platforms exist in various forms and are increasingly used as they allow for laser-focused targeting and are continually diversifying. While targeting tools are available on virtually all social media platforms, social networks specifically geared to particular professional communities benefit organisations by offering highly specialised information that is specifically targeted towards them. [more]

Cloud Computing / Infonuagique

Cast Your Cloud Communications Vote Wisely
July 5, 2017 – No Jitter

The wildfire-rate adoption of cloud-based communications and collaboration platforms like WhatsApp, Slack, Snapchat has led to a lack of regulation of cloud-based platforms. Businesses seeking control of and visibility into these solutions for security and compliance purposes have tried to restrict the use of these tools, but those measures quickly become self-defeating, undermining the ability of IT teams to drive technology strategy. To avoid the traps and enjoy t cloudification, organisations must guard against the lack of open standards, digital solutions that don’t properly take into account mobile devices, and cloud systems that don’t properly consider the organisation or user’s needs. The ideal cloud solution must fully embrace the collaborative instincts of human communication. [more]

June 30, 2017 / 30 juin 2017

Artificial Intelligence / Intelligence artificielle

Bonsai now lets customers bring their own AI models
June 27, 2017 — Venture Beat
Artificial Intelligence (AI) firm Bonsai announced a new feature that’s aimed at helping data scientists run machine learning models created outside its platform. Called Gears, the system is supposed to take independently developed models and bring them onto Bonsai’s platform for easier execution and monitoring. When users upload a model that includes a Gear to Bonsai’s platform, the system will analyze the network specified by TensorFlow or another language and integrate it into the rest of the system that Bonsai creates and executes. Bonsai allows developers to lay out what they want to teach a machine learning system using a language called Inkling. Users upload that code, along with training data and other assets, to Bonsai, which then generates a machine learning system to solve the problem laid out in the Inkling code. “It really is a mechanism to enable those teams to make use of their existing investments, put it all under one platform for ease of management and building more sophisticated solutions,” said Bonsai CEO Mark Hammond. [more]

Enterprise Collaboration / Collaboration à l’échelle de l’entreprise

The Dos of Don’t of Collaboration
June 26, 2017 — IT Pro

This article assembles a list of dos and don’t for work place collaboration. Do contribute as much as possible: collaboration’s substantial flattening of traditional management only works if everyone contributes as much as possible. Otherwise, the team or project’s overall direction still ends up being dominated by a small group of individuals. Do be open to new ways of working: It can be tempting to stop after you’ve set up tools like Slack and Google Docs, but you should ensure that you’re always on the lookout for new ways to help you communicate better as a business. This can be a large, IT-led change, or it can be as simple as cutting back on the number of large meetings you have in favour of smaller, more regular stand-ups. Don’t default back to old processes: The longer you leave it to learn how to use new collaboration tools, the harder it will be when you do eventually need to. This can sometimes lead to skill gaps within the workplace, as digital natives adapt quickly to new technologies, while less confident staff put it off - one reason why strong onboarding programs are so important. Don’t rely exclusively on technology’: Building the right culture is a hugely important and often-overlooked part of enterprise collaboration, and most of it involves no technology at all. Instead, it’s focused around fostering an atmosphere of openness and communication within the organisation, ensuring not employees have not just the means to collaborate, but also the desire. [more]

What is DevOps? Tackling some frequently asked questions
June 27, 2017 — Mobile Business Insights

DevOps is a philosophy that marries the concept of agile development with the idea that there should be a highly emphasized partnership between the developers and the operations staff. DevOps benefits developers in a few ways. When their code goes live in production, they see exactly how errors and bugs affect their code and are able to fix them faster with a better root-cause analysis. Developers can understand how runtime environments affect their coding and adjust it for better performance and fault tolerance. DevOps-based tools include configuration and release management, orchestration, and virtualization. [more]

We’re undervaluing collaboration
June 28, 2017 — Computer World

Collaboration, collaborators and the technologies they choose to use are the key drivers of modern enterprise success. Organizational success depends on effective collaboration — both internal and external to the enterprise — and yet collaboration is, in most instances, unmeasured and unmanaged. As critically important as collaboration is to success in this increasingly digitized world, it is essentially invisible. Nowhere on an enterprise’s systematically produced documents (e.g., the balance sheet or a 10K) is collaboration measured. University of California Los Angeles’ Karen Stephenson is credited with creating the field of social network analysis (the ability to map which humans are collaborating with which other humans with an eye toward achieving certain objectives). Stephenson has used the techniques of social network analysis to optimize the placement of physical offices following mergers, to analyze the composition of product development teams, and to make visible the series of collaborations that underpin networks. An organization’s capacity to collaborate is a reasonable proxy for the levels of trust it inspires — how much employees trust the enterprise, how much the enterprise trusts employees and how much employees trust one another— this metric in turn impacts the organisation’s performance. [more]

Open Source / Code Source Libre

10 Most important open source networking projects
June 27, 2017 — Network World

The article reviews some of the most influential ongoing open source projects. As well as others, the article discusses FD.io, Mano, ONAP, and OpenFlow. FD.io (Fast Data – input/output) is an open source project made up of various open source libraries all with the goal of accelerating data efficiency in networking. FD.io focuses on ensuring open source networking deployments have the highest throughput, lowest latency and most efficient IO services. Mano is meant to be an open source software project for management and orchestration of software-defined networks and network function virtualization. It focuses on core areas such as supporting multi-site deployments, onboarding of NFVs, and virtual network funcntions packaging.The Open Networking Automation Platform, or ONAP, is the combination of ECOMP, which was donated by AT&T, and the Open-O Orchestration platform. ONAP is primarily targeted at providing an open source automation and orchestration platform for service providers, particularly telecommunication vendors, to run SDNs and offer virtual network functions. The Stanford developed OpenFlow has communications standards which dictate how the control plane can communicate with the forwarding data plane in SDN environments. While OpenFlow itself is not an open source project, the standards developed by OpenFlow and its organizer the Open Networking Foundation are some of the most important standards in the SDN market. [more]

Search / Recherche

What Happens When Text Mining and Search Analysis Converge? Document Analysis
June 27, 2017 — CMSWiRE

Search applications — which act as signposts to a link in a website or to a document on a server in answer to a person's query — and text mining — which analyzes collections of documents, identifying relationships between terms in order to extract topics — are merging. This is beneficial as many profession require individuals to sift through multiple, lengthy documents, a process which is not only time consuming but prone to “error through boredom”. Using a search-based application speeds up the process considerably. Many vendors offer applications that work across multiple documents, in multiple formats, and and deconstruct the document and present the query terms in a sentence, paragraph or page, completing the analysis and displaying an exception report within seconds. [more]

Cloud Computing / Infonuagique

Cloud computing : quels sont les obstacles qui vous font trébucher ?
27 juin, 2017 — ZDNet

Près de neuf entreprises sur dix utilisent désormais des applications ou services hébergés dans le cloud, chiffre qui n'a cessé d'augmenté ces dernières années : en 2010, moins de la moitié disaient utiliser ces services. Bien que 88% des entreprises interrogées par un examen plus attentif des données du Cloud Industry Forum utilisent des technologies de cloud computing, leur portée a tendance à être limitée aux plateformes comme Microsoft Office 365 et Google Docs. Pour les trois quarts des personnes interrogées, ces difficultés de migration ont eu des conséquences, notamment des retards dans le développement de produits et de services. La plupart des entreprises (58%) définissent leur stratégie comme « hybride ». [suite]

June 23, 2017 / 23 juin 2017

Artificial Intelligence / Intelligence artificielle

Talla raises $8.3 million to make its HR bot a better listener
June 19, 2017 – Venture Beat
Artificial Intelligence (AI) firm Talla has raised $8.3 million to expand its operations and to further develop its human resources bot’s language comprehension abilities. Talla’s Service Desk bot uses natural language processing (NLP) to answer questions in a conversational manner, and learns through observing the questions asked by employees. “If you answer a question one time, Talla should know if from then on out. We focus a lot of paraphrase detection, or the academic term in NLP would be sentence similarity,” explains Talla CEO Rob May. Talla is one of a small group of companies making bots for enterprise customers for team collaboration apps like Slack or Microsoft Teams who have raised millions of dollars for their bots. [more]

Could AI Improve Collaboration Technology?
June 19, 2017 – Commstrader
Cisco is looking to implement the recently acquired MindMeld AI (Artificial Intelligence) platform within its collection of collaboration services, which will allow users to build intelligent conversational interfaces for various applications. The proprietary machine learning technology introduced by MindMeld will improve the accuracy of chat and voice assistants, allowing users to interact with them in a more natural way. The MindMeld AI technology will improve the ease of use and allow for new cognitive capabilities. MindMeld can aggregate information from its customers in order to make the bot more intelligent and accurate. It provides organisations with a base of data that gets them around that “cold start” time when AIs need to learn before they can become useful. [more]

Google launches its AI-powered jobs search engine
June 20, 2017 – Tech Crunch
Google recently launched a new feature on its search result pages that lets the user search for jobs across virtually all of the major online job boards like LinkedIn, Monster, WayUp, DirectEmployers, CareerBuilder, Facebook and others. The tool permits the user to filter jobs by industry, location, date posted, and employer. Upon clicking through to get more information about a specific job, the user can see Glassdoor and Indeed ratings for a company. To create this comprehensive list, Google first has to remove all of the duplicate listings that employers post to all of these job sites. Then, its machine learning-trained algorithms sift through and categorize them. It currently has no plans to let employers post jobs directly to its jobs search engine, as to avoid direct competition with job compilation sites like Monster. [more]

Enterprise Collaboration / Collaboration à l’échelle de l’entreprise

The role of collaboration in digital transformation
June 19, 2017 – IT Pro
The traditional office practices are generally phased out when a business is transformed digitally and siloes give way to a more collaborative way of working. To make digital transformation a success, collaboration is necessary. Possibly the biggest contributor to the success of digital transformation projects is collaboration between not just those who work for an organisation, but also partner firms and other third parties. According to a survey by electronics manufacturer Sharp, almost half of respondents (46%) said their colleagues had at some point forgotten to share important information or documents with them. “If your business isn’t set-up to promote teamwork and the sharing of information, you will be losing opportunities to grow,” says Sharp CEO Stuart Sykes. Greater collaboration is needed to access the information required in digital transformation projects. For many organisations, data still exists in siloes and proprietary technologies can still limit how it's shared within an organisation. Digital transformation can help by creating standardised platforms to share data seamlessly and increase collaboration. [more]

World Wide Technology Announces New Resources for Enterprise Collaboration and Decision Making
June 19, 2017 – KM World
World Wide Technology (WWT), an integrator that provides technology and supply chain solutions to large public and private organizations, has announced WWT Collaboration Labs, a dedicated environment for testing and validating enterprise collaboration tools and services within WWT’s Advanced Technology Center (ATC) for collaboration technology. Their aim is to give enterprises a controlled environment to test disruptive technology in a way that does not actually disrupt their business. Organisations can also use the labs to evaluate “what if” scenarios to find the solution that is right for them without any overhead risks or the need of building out a testing environment on their own. As a fully scalable environment with pre-configured components, WWT Collaboration Labs can mimic any real or proposed sandbox scenario within seconds. [more]

Industrie 4.0 : comment les entreprise peuvent-elles en tirer le meilleur parti ?
19 juin, 2017 – Journal du Net
La quatrième révolution industrielle révolutionne de plein fouet les entreprises. Les entreprises espèrent ainsi optimiser leur productivité et leur chiffre d’affaires, sans savoir nécessairement comment apprivoiser ces évolutions. Avant d’investir des sommes conséquentes dans la digitalisation, l’entreprise doit s’assurer qu’elle lui apportera de véritables bénéfices commerciaux. Pour implémenter correctement le concept d’industrie 4.0 dans une entreprise, il faut analyser les besoins actuels, revoir les analyses antérieures, et déterminer étape par étape les domaines à fort potentiel d’amélioration. Le frein majeur à l’implantation d’une nouvelle technologie réside dans le manque de formation des intervenants, notamment à l’industrie 4.0, qui transforme un modèle d’affaires déjà établi sur d’autres bases. Pour savoir si une entreprise doit se lancer dans l’industrie 4.0, la première étape consiste à procéder à une évaluation. L’Académie allemande des sciences et de technologies (acatech) a d’ailleurs mis en place un indice de maturité concernant l’industrie 4.0.Il s’agit d’un standard solide pour servir aux entreprises du monde entier. [more]

3 Trends Shaping Today’s Digital Workplace
June 20, 2017 – CMSWiRE
The article identifies three major trends that are currently affecting digital workplaces:

1. Exploiting information: the exploitation of information involves using algorithms and behaviour tracking to customize content and to deliver necessary information directly to users—a practice vital considering the massive quantity of data now available. The challenge then becomes figuring out how to use that data to gain practical insights in ways that will drive decisions that deliver actual value.

2. Enablement: enablement in a digital sense can involve micro-learning, in which digital technologies are used to deliver the user the necessary, at the time they need it, through their preferred channel. The digital workplace is focused on delivering smaller bits of knowledge as required.

3.Mobile productivity: mobile productivity is the merging of the workspace into the personal space through the use of social platforms, as well as use of personal devices such as smartphones, tablets and personal laptops for company business. This trend underscores that the digital workplace is becoming a fluid environment both inside and outside the traditional office space. [more]

Social Networking / Réseautage social

Done with Facebook, Twitter? User-owned social networks hear you
June 17, 2017 – San Francisco Chronicle
Facebook and Twitter users tired of vague and controversial company policies are pushing for change. A group of Twitter users and investors who believe the company would be better off as a user-owned cooperative made progress last month when the #BuyTwitter push gained enough attention and support among shareholders to resubmit its proposal at next year’s investor meeting. Twitter’s refusal to listen to the requests of its users, its nonexistent relationship with third-party developers is what lead Mastodon founder Eugen Rochko to develop his own user-owned open source social network. Instead of one social network, Mastodon runs on what is known as a “federated network,” a disjointed group of different networks that can talk to each other and transmit information seamlessly. Users on Mastodon can join instances, servers owned and run by Mastodon users, or start their own. Mastodon takes pride in being “less brand-oriented and more person-oriented.” [more]

Dropbox announces massive network expansion
June 20, 2017 – Tech Crunch
File-sharing network Dropbox recently announced their plan to greatly expand their network. Dropbox’s expansion includes custom-built infrastructure similar to other web-scale companies like Google, Amazon and Facebook, but the company recognized it would take more than building hardware for its own unique needs. The company is focusing on providing services as close to the user as possible. “In doing so, we’ve added hundreds of gigabits of Internet connectivity with transit providers (regional and global ISPs), and hundreds of new peering partners (where we exchange traffic directly rather than through an ISP),” says Dropbox’s Raghav Bhargava. Dropbox also built a custom proxy based on open source software to power the entire project. Building its own hardware and software, the company can control costs much more easily, and they are claiming the new approach greatly reduces costs. [more]

June 16, 2017 /16 juin 2017

Artificial Intelligence / Intelligence artificielle

How artificial intelligence is revolutionizing customer management
June 12, 2017 – The Next Web
As there is now more information available than limited human resources and tools can handle, businesses are using artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms that help automate customer outreach and make optimal use of data. These assistants free up staff time for more critical and complicated tasks. AI is becoming increasingly proficient at making sense of both structured and unstructured data,. Machine learning algorithms, computer vision, natural language processing and generation (NLG/NLP), and other forms of narrow artificial intelligence are proving to be the best complement for human activity. Powered by AI algorithms, bots are becoming much more efficient at independently identifying and resolving customer problems through natural conversation. [more]

Astro’s AI-infused email app adds Slack and Alexa integrations
June 13, 2017 – The Verge
The application Astro launched with the goal of managing inboxes using an AI assistant, and is now adding features that allow for integration with Slack and Alexa. Once Astro has been linked to Slack, any searches will show results from both the user’s inbox and Slack channels. This feature also allows the user to take emails and embed them in new Slack posts, enabling conversations to move into Slack. Astro is also bringing its AI assistant, Astrobot, into Slack itself: the bot will notify the user with items that might need attention. Alexa will be able to read the user’s recent emails and even respond to them with quick replies. [more]

Facebook’s AI crosses language barrier to assist in Spanish
June 13, 2017 – Tech Crunch
With Facebook’s global user base, its features that work only in English neglect a large percentage of their users. For example, Facebook Messenger’s AI assistant “M” can now make recommendations of Messenger features in Spanish if it detects that the user writes in Spanish. The feature scans the words and intent of messages, then offers optional suggestions from Messenger’s many features. M Suggestions are now available to all Facebook users with their language set to Spanish in the US, and the feature will soon be introduced in Mexico. [more]

Rainforest QA taps AI to augment human-powered app testing
June 14, 2017 – Venture Beat
Rainforest QA (quality assurance) launched a new service that aims to use machine learning and crowdsourcing to help developers make better apps. The company uses machine learning in addition to human testers to augment the employees’ efforts, as they believe humans and machines are often best when augmenting one another’s capabilities. One Rainforest QA system is used to determine how well testers perform based on their speed, accuracy and consistency. The company then uses that information to programmatically determine the difficulty of tasks testers should be assigned. [more]

Open Source / Code source libre

CTO Praises Open Source, Offers Modernization Guidance
June 12, 2017 – IT Jungle
Open source development is now being widely discussed and practiced. Brendan Kay, chief technology officer (CTO) at Fresche Solutions states that there’s been an increase in open source technologies in the development of Fresche products, particularly AngularJS, which allows Fresche to create continuous integration environments through data-binding. Data-binding is an automatic way of updating the view whenever the model changes, as well as updating the model whenever the view changes. Kay looks at modernization as a three-level project involving the database, the business logic and the user experience. All three are equally important. Fresche’s development tools are used for creating multi-platform, Web and mobile applications on IBM i, integrates with RPG and supports Windows, Unix and Linux platforms. Making an educated guess, Kay estimates 80 percent of modernization projects begin with user experience and/or integration as the starting point. Changes in the interface or in improved integration allow people to quickly see the benefit. [more]

It’s time open source focused on usability
June 13, 2017 – Jaxenter
Yaron Haviv, the CTO and founder of iguaz.io, explains why the open source community needs to work towards collaboration and standardization. While open-source is a key ingredient, the public cloud is proving that usability and integration are more important to most users than access to an endless variety of disjointed open source projects. Collaboration, standardization and full stack integration must be prioritized over hundreds of overlapping open source projects. The focus use to be on creating modular architectures; there were always open source implementations of the standard, but developers also built commercial variations to extend functionality or durability. Today, we see a wide range of overlapping implementations where projects are not interchangeable, causing a much worse lock-in than commercial products which conform to a common standard. Prioritizing collaboration and standardization is the only way to get back to a decent user experience, says Haviv, one in which we can easily build, secure and operate integrated stacks from independent components, with the ability to swap parts if need be and without getting locked into project-specific or cloud provider APIs. [more]

Digital Collaboration / Collaboration numérique

Moving beyond margins: the evolution and future of collaborative tools
June 12, 2017 – Medium
Collaborative tools can be a barrier to success if they are not optimized for the right things. Few solutions are in sync with the way people create, or the way teams collaborate. Software Engineer and Tech Lead for Dropbox Paper Justin Hileman claims that most of the attempts of innovation of collaborative tools simply translate this technology to the next medium, to the web, to mobile devices. Hileman suggests instead that programmers begin with ideas as opposed to the format or presentation, stating that implementing design conventions from the outset can constrain development. Collaborative tool developers should focus how their ideas and content is organized as opposed to how they look. [more]

Le système SaaS, une évolution à adopter pour toutes les entreprises
12 juin 2017 – Journal du Community Manager
Pour évoluer dans le bon sens, une entreprise doit utiliser les nouveaux outils collaboratifs mis à sa disposition, grâce aux nouvelles technologies et notamment le système Saas (« software as a service »). Le Saas signifie la possibilité d’accéder à une application grâce à une connexion internet, par le biais d’un fournisseur. Les grandes sociétés ont déjà dématérialisé la plupart des activités et partagent les données par le biais d’applications sur le web. Pour les entreprises, opter pour un logiciel Saas permet de se décharger des maintenances et des mises à jour diverses. En général, le mode Saas réduit les besoins en matériel grâce à l’externalisation. La gestion du temps des salariés est simplifiée grâce à l’avancement numérique, particulièrement les salariés des ressources humaines. [suite]

June 9, 2017 / 9 juin 2017

Digital Collaboration Tools / Outils de collaboration numérique

5 mobile collaboration apps top developers can’t live without
June 4, 2017 – The Next Web
This article evaluates five developer-nominated mobile apps that drive collaboration: 1Password , Postman, Slack, Assembla, and InVision. 1Password is an app that allows approved teams to utilize passwords anywhere from any device as opposed to sharing credentials over email. Postman is a platform for collaborative Application Programming Interface (API) development that facilitates the sharing of collections of endpoints and the onboarding of new developers. The Slack mobile app offers a comprehensive system for real-time communication “which enables all sorts of productivity”. Assembla is an issue tracking and task management application with agile development tools built into the platform. InVision is a prototyping platform with a collaborative nature. [more]

Automation for All: Connecting Internet Services Into Workflows
June 5, 2017 – CMSWiRE
Three of the most common workflow products, IFTTT, Microsoft Flow and Zapier, create information flows by connecting the unstructured information found in common cloud services in one unified interface. Most cloud services work better when they work collaboratively, and automated workflows greatly simplify the process tying together multiple applications. These workflow services enable that form of sharing by making it easy to push information out to several applications at once, allowing people to consume information using vastly different applications. Two technologies have made these services possible: Public cloud computing, which makes software more accessible to other software, and APIs. [more]

Internet of Things (IoT) as a Service : quelle offre est faite pour vous ?
8 juin 2017 – Journal du Net
Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google, IBM et Microsoft proposent des services de PaaS (« platform as a service ») dédiées à l'IoT (« Internet of Thing »). Pour traiter les données collectées, ces services combinent ces bus de connexion à des composants de stockage, d'analyse, voire de visualisation des données. L’article estime que l’offre IoT d’IBM est le choix meilleur pour les solutions de l’analytique et d’intelligence artificielle, qu’AWS a les capacités de sécurité supérieures, et que l’arme fatale du service de Microsoft est son outil de l’IoT en mode SaaS (« software as a service »). Les services de Microsoft et d’AWS sont plus exhaustifs; ils offrent des choses comme l’intégration au poste de travail, le protocole de connexion MQTT et les composants à intégrer aux appareils simplifiant l’intégration. Comparativement, le service de Google offre seulement du protocole de connexion MQTT. [suite]

Enterprise Digital Collaboration / Collaboration numérique à l’échelle de l’entreprise

What a digital organisation looks like
June 6, 2017 – Medium
Digital organisation is guided by how the organizers think—it’s about “applying the culture, practices, processes & technologies of the Internet-era to respond to people’s raised expectations”. “Digital” doesn’t just refer to organisations that deliver primarily digital products and services: a digital organisation is one that can operate effectively in this digital age. Digital organisations are able to both understand and respond to people’s rapidly changing needs, habits and expectations. The whole leadership team of an organisation needs to take responsibility for making changes to the organisation’s structure, culture and working practices. To be fully responsive, the entire staff needs to work in an open way, both collectively and as individuals. To ensure a digital organisation’s success and efficiency, one must understand the technological environment that it operates in, place users at the heart of the organisation, ensure open and experimental leadership and a skilled, empowered workforce, and maintain technology, data and processes that serve the organisation’s goals. [more]

Digital transformation harder than it looks
June 6, 2017 – IT Pro Portal
Digital transformation is generally seen as positive, propelling businesses forward into a safer, better future. However, according to Wipro Digital, companies are struggling to get there. The article identifies three key factors which can make or break digital transformation efforts: leadership, definition & terminology, and strategy. “Digital transformation efforts are coming up short on intended ROI [return on investments], in part because digital transformation is as much a leadership issue as it is a strategy, technology, culture, and talent issue,” says Rajan Kohli, Senior Vice President and Global Head, Wipro Digital. “Real digital transformation occurs when courageous leaders align goals in practice as well as theory, manage opportunity more than risk, and prioritize the future vs. retrofit the present.” [more]

Seven Ways to Determine the Impact of Collaboration Software
June 7, 2017 – CommsTrader
There is still a significant gap between the most effective forms of communication available and what employers and employees choose to adopt in their day-to-day roles. Simon Skellon, the UK Vice President of Mitel Networks, provides criteria to gauge the positive impact of collaboration software. Skellon insists the necessity of a consistent onboarding process for maximizing efficient use of collaborative tools. He also suggests analysis to ensure whether the right collaboration tools are used for the correct purpose. The amount of external applications used by employees is another indicator of the software’s efficiency. Skellon also suggests keeping track of IT requests, taking into account users outside of the organisation, and implementing a unified communications strategy. [more]

Digital Government / Gouvernement numérique

DevOps driving digital government
June 5, 2017 – ITP
At a strategic level, the digitisation of government requires organisational changes, restructuring, new collaborative tools and workspaces and more opportunities for brainstorming and interdepartmental co-ordination. DevOps is the close integration of software development and IT operations, potentially quality assurance as well, to create an environment of fast, agile and responsive software development. In government, progress towards DevOps has generally been more cautious than in the private sector, despite there being many benefits for the public sector. Government organisations are facing the same IT challenges as the private sector, albeit on a larger scale, so government is becoming more conscious of the need to respond to their citizens’ digital lifestyles. Asif Javed, managing director and technology lead for Accenture Middle East and North Africa explained that government organisations should embrace multi-speed delivery models that can accommodate both the rapid delivery of customer facing applications and the more traditional software development lifecycle targeted at sensitive applications. [more]

Facebook now lets you find and contact your government reps right from your posts
June 5, 2017 – Tech Crunch
Facebook has launched a new feature that makes it easier for American users to communicate with their elected government officials directly from Facebook posts. This is the latest addition to Facebook’s Town Hall platform – a recent initiative designed to make it easier for Facebook users to locate, follow and contact their local, state and federal government representatives via the social network. This feature is available to both individual users as well as Facebook page owners. As may people use Facebook to express their political opinions, the integration of governmental contact is a fairly reasonable tool for the platform to implement. [more]

Artificial Intelligence / Intelligence artificielle

Career site Workey raises $8m to replace headhunters with artificial intelligence
June 6, 2017 – Tech Crunch
A Tel Aviv-based startup called Workey uses artificial intelligence to streamline the hiring process by matching companies with potential candidates. Workey targets people who are interested in potential opportunities, but don’t want to publicize this interest. Once they sign up for the site, they create an anonymous profile that is used to find positions that their background and skills qualify them for. Workey lets candidates track the status of their application, so they don’t spend weeks in limbo waiting for an offer or rejection. The startup’s founders claim that they potentially save thousands of dollars by using Workey’s AI instead of headhunters or recruitment agencies. Workey’s founders also insist that “one of the most exciting aspects of business today is that there is no future-proofing. Workey will continue to evolve and grow, with a continued investment in R&D to ensure that we provide users with the best possible matches enhancing their careers.” [more]

Search / Recherche

Pourquoi le Search Engine Optimization (SEO) est encore incompris en 2017 ?
6 juin 2017 – Journal du Net
En 2017, le search engine optimization (SEO) demeure une discipline incomprise mais agences et annonceurs sont prêts à dépenser sans compter pour ce levier mystérieux. Selon le cabinet d’étude Borrell, le SEO représente, rien qu’aux Etats-Unis, un investissement de 65,26 milliards de dollars en 2016 et projette qu’il atteigne 79,27 milliards de dollars en 2020. Le SEO est très efficace pour ceux qui se positionnent en tête des résultats de recherche sur des requêtes transactionnelles à fort volume de recherche. Encore faut-il, pour les annonceurs et les agences, accepter de prendre le risque d’optimiser des pages sans avoir la certitude d’atteindre un résultat ni la garantie d’obtenir telle ou telle position. Bref, en plus d’être complexe, le SEO rend le quotidien souvent difficile pour ceux qui s’en sont fait les portes parole. [suite]

June 2, 2017 / 2 juin 2017

Content and communication / Contenu et communication

Notifications: a Tragedy of the Digital Commons
May 28, 2017 – Medium
Writer Scott Belsky discusses the ineffectiveness of mobile application notifications in the current technological landscape. Individual app developers subject users to push notifications in an attempt to increase engagement, and ultimately disrupt the out-of-app state of a user’s device. Belsky proposes an intelligent “notification layer” API (application programming interface) – the creation of single notification management system used across all apps—as a long term solution to this problem. This would render notifications less intrusive and more effective. [more]

Flock makes enterprise communication, collaboration effortless
May 29, 2017 – Business Standard
Flock is a messaging and collaboration application for enterprises that can be easily linked to Google Drive, Asana, and other commonly used enterprising applications to enhance productivity. The app offers both direct and group messaging that allows one-on-one discussion or team communication within the same window, both in office or remotely. Additionally, Flock automatically adds members from company directory, including newly added members. The app administrator can manage organisation-wide security settings for all employees. Overall, Flock facilitates digital collaboration in the workplace. [more]

IBM Acquires XCC Digital Work Hub to Strengthen IBM Connections
May 31, 2017 – CMSWiRE
IBM has acquired the digital workplace hub XCC in a move to strengthen their enterprise collaboration. IBM officials say that XCC—which is to be renamed the IBM Connections Engagement Center— will create a "single destination" personalized homepage for employees. It will be a hub for employee communication, news sharing, embedded applications and other peer-to-peer collaboration, IBM representatives say. The hub is designed to deliver content to and from employees of all levels, create landing pages that can be integrated into one view, and facilitate the creation and maintenance of user-generated content. IBM Connections Engagement Center is expected to be available in the third quarter of 2017. [more]

Préparer son environnement de travail à la transformation digitale
1 juin 2017 – Journal du Net
Les stratégies pour améliorer l’environnement de travail digital cherchent à fournir des outils agiles et sécurisés afin de gérer le contenu d’entreprise sans limite institutionnelle, géographique, ou liée aux services de l’organisation. La transformation digitale décrit un phénomène où une entreprise restructure son organisation en utilisant les technologies pour améliorer son rendement ou les services qu’elle propose à ses utilisateurs. L’article donne quelques recommandations pour une transformation digitale. Premièrement, arrêter de penser en termes de fichiers; la gestion simple de fichiers a ses limites et crée des barrières qui vont entraver la transformation de l’entreprise et la réalisation de futurs objectifs. De plus, englober l’ensemble de ses efficaces numériques et rester agile en adoptant une stratégie de gestion des actifs numériques qui permettra l’entreprise de s’adapter. Finalement, il suggère d’évoluer ses systèmes plutôt que les remplacer et d’adopter la souplesse de l’infonuagique (Cloud). [suite]

Chat bots / Agents conversationnels

Les chatbots remplaceront-ils la messagerie instantanée ?
29 mai 2017 – Journal du Community Manager
Les « chatbots » ou agents conversationnels sont des petits logiciels dotés d’une intelligence artificielle capables de tenir une conversation en temps réel avec un internaute et de s’adapter à ses réponses. Ces bots ont la capacité de répondre à un humain, de comprendre son langage de façon naturelle et d’apprendre de leurs erreurs. Les chatbots représentent une formidable opportunité pour les organisations car ils offrent une communication en temps réel auprès de leurs utilisateurs. Les bénéfices des chatbots pour les entreprises incluent la convergence des échanges personnels et commerciaux, l’optimisation du service client et le gain de temps et d’efficacité. [suite]

Demystifying Chat Bots -- how they are changing Collaboration and Enterprise Social Networks
May 27, 2017 – LinkedIn
Microsoft partner channel lead Ragnar Heil dispels a few misconceptions surrounding bots and gives examples of how bots can be used for social networking. Heil discusses the use of bots as collaboration tools as opposed to their solitary use— bots can be used to reduce the amount of email and phone calls a user receives because they facilitate communication when integrated into applications. Heil also promotes bots ease of use, saying a user wouldn’t even necessarily need coding skills to integrate a bot into their platform. He argues that if a user uses the correct framework, it would not be necessary to rewrite code to use a bot across multiple platforms. Heil claims that bots make human labour more effective. For example, community managers of social networks would have more time for advanced questions, user guidance and complex discussions if a bot were to answer the basic questions. [more]

How data analytics will help us understand chatbots
May 29, 2017 – Venture Beat
Industry leaders like Facebook, Twitter, and IBM are making great efforts to incorporate bots into their programs to enable more personalized customer interactions. Enterprise uses for bots touch on communication, customer service, and ecommerce. The increasingly high amounts of data generated by these digital enterprises raises the question of how organisations can use bots to automate new data sets and provide faster access to analytics. Human to machine interaction via natural language processing can allow immediate analytics responses, the ability for users to instantly interact with data via a bot interface and automated data collection—all of which can add significant value in a short period. However, bots are not infallible as they are subject to human bias during development. [more]

Search / Recherche

Google Personal will make people use Google even more than they already do
May 29, 2017 – The Independent
Google has introduced a new Personal tab on its search page to make it easier for a the user to find his or her own content. The service is only available when logged into Google, as results are taken from other Google services such as Gmail and Google photos. Google Personal integrates the user’s personal content into their search feature by creating an additional search page gathering items involving the user that are related to the search query. While Personal is certainly useful, it could stoke existing privacy fears. The feature is not yet available to the public: Google plans on rolling it out gradually. [more]

When Is Machine Learning Right for Enterprise Search?
May 31, 2017 – CMSWiRE
Machine Learning (ML) offers significant benefits as a component of cognitive online search capabilities as it can provide employees with valuable insights from massive amounts of structured and unstructured data. For example, Google uses ML to refine results based on user behaviour. While machine learning is not appropriate in every scenario, there are two general areas where ML for cognitive search can boost organizational efficiency. First, machine learning for cognitive search is useful where tasks cannot be solved using simple rule-based solutions as too many factors may influence the outcome. Additionally, machine learning for cognitive search is also appropriate in situations where scale is needed, as it is an effective method for handling large-scale problems concerning millions of documents. Key criteria for success in machine learning include diversity of the training set, the quality of the target data set, and effective solutions. [more]

May 26, 2017 / 26 mai 2017

Community Management / Gestion de communautés

Doit-on utiliser les personas en community management ?
May 21, 201 7– Journal du Community Manager
Il peut être utile en community management d’aborder les personas pour définir finement ses cibles. Une persona est utilisée en interne pour améliorer l’utilisation d’un site-web, mieux définir la stratégie de promotion et de distribution des produits et services, ou pour définir sa ligne éditoriale. Les portraits-robots représentant ces personas sont construits sur des données concrètes à propos du groupe cible, et non plus sur une représentation imaginaire et floue. L’avantage principal est que les collaborateurs de l’entreprise, qui ne sont pas en conversation directe avec ses utilisateurs régulièrement sur les médias sociaux, peuvent ainsi travailler avec des représentations humaines et réalistes de leurs utilisateurs ou clients. L’article résume les étapes pour concevoir les personas— recueillir des données pour créer des profils réalistes, désigner une persona primaire, rendre les personas humains, définir des objectifs, et finalement mettre en application les personas. [suite]

Community Breaks Through to New Levels of Effectiveness
May 23, 2017 – CMSWiRE
A recent report from the Community Roundtable suggests that the processes of building and managing communities has matured to the point of standardization. The report notes the widening gap between best-in-class players and others— the best-in-class actors know with certainty how to build functional community programs. Community Roundtable founder Rachel Happe cites the H&R Block customer community as an example of a best-in-class community. Best-in-class communities focus on value metrics (desired behaviours from community members that create strategic value for the organization, such as ease of access to user-generated content) over vanity metrics (such as volume). Successful communities recognize the importance of increasing community return on investment (ROI) and are able to measure it to demonstrate value and drive investment. Happe emphasized that to sustain, mature and grow communities, ongoing investment must be made budget, resources, people, and training. [more]

Artificial Intelligence / Intelligence artificielle

Cisco on AI: The ‘Future of Collaboration'
May 22, 2017 –No Jitter
Cisco recently acquired AI start-up MindMeld, a platform for building “human-like” conversational interfaces for voice, messaging, and video in applications and devices, which they believe to be imperative to the success of their Cognitive Collaboration group. The company will leverage the technology to make teams more efficient and successful by advancing Spark, its team collaboration platform, specifically in the area of ambient listening — for example, using Cisco Spark to summarize messages and identify items which require immediate attention. [more]

Why AI won’t replace all human data analysts
May 23, 2017 – Venture Beat
With the rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) for the purpose of data analysis, many have speculated that AI might soon replace human analysts. Author David Crawford, director of software engineering at Alation, a data catalog company, argues that AI will not be able to completely fill the role of data analysts as the human perspective on data analysis is an irreplaceable asset. AI algorithms have become much better at pattern recognition and therefore act more biologically, meaning they make decisions based on experience as opposed to pure logic. However, AI can only do what humans can described to it in code— it can only function in a closed environment, whereas human analysts are aware of the exterior context that will influence their analysis. Crawford concludes: “While machine learning is instrumental in making the analysis process more efficient, algorithms cannot choose the human goals — that job requires a level of empathy that is out of the grasp of AI,” and therefore there will continually be a need for human data analysts regardless of AI development. [more]

Enterprise Collaboration / Collaboration à l’échelle de l’entreprise

Aragon Research Sees Digital Work Hubs as Solution to Collaboration Tool Overload
May 23, 2017 – CMSWiRE
The California-based firm Aragon Research released a report saying that the overwhelming amount of content and collaboration applications interferes with workplace productivity. Aragon researchers suggest organizations turn instead to digital work hubs—“a single interface through which employees can create, curate, and communicate business content.” The report argues that these hubs embrace how knowledge workers want to communicate and work, and commit to mobile collaboration capabilities. Digital work hubs address what Aragon refers to as the “isolated-app problem”, where workers are made to switch rapidly between apps in order to perform related tasks. The report classifies four capabilities of an effective digital work hub: it must facilitate the creation and sharing of different forms of content, it must allow for content curation and management, it must provide channels of communication to facilitate collaboration, and it must permit for all tasks to be managed in the same environment to ensure consistency. [more]

To cut costs and boost collaboration, IBM forces some remote workers back into the office
May 23, 2017 – Tech Republic
IBM, once thought to be a leader in allowing employees to work remotely, is now requiring many of their remote workers to return to in-office work or face losing their jobs. IBM’s rationale is to encourage collaboration, although there has been outside speculation that the decision was intended to reduce the company’s operating costs. Additionally, there is concern that IBM has not addressed the emotional impact that such a significant policy change will have on their employees who work remotely. Analyst David Johnson says although task-driven workers are more efficient while working in office, creative employees are more productive working at home or in a secondary location. "To be most productive, knowledge workers need the flexibility to choose what works best for the kind of work they need to get done," Johnson said. [more]

Communication

Twitter is making it easier for businesses to reach people with direct messages
May 23, 2017 – The Verge
Twitter has developed a new form of advertisement called a Direct Message Card where businesses are able to reach users through direct messaging. This feature is designed to prompt the user to click on an automated reply, triggering a one-on-one conversation by Direct Message. Twitter states that this feature “will help businesses drive discovery of such experiences both through promoted tweets and organic sharing.” While Direct Message Cards have mainly been used so far as a means of automated, bot-driven marketing, they also offer the opportunity for companies to perform genuine, personalized customer support. [more]

Facebook offre davantage de sources pour ses sujets «tendance»
May 24, 2017 – La Presse
Facebook a annoncé une mise à jour de sa fonctionnalité des « sujets tendance » pour offrir à ses utilisateurs une plus grande variété de sources sur des événements majeurs. « [N]ous avons redessiné la page pour faciliter la découverte d'autres publications qui ont couvert l'histoire, et ce que vos amis et les personnalités en disent », a déclaré Facebook dans un billet. Le réseau social avait rendu automatique la publication des « sujets tendances », baissant la part humaine de cette sélection après avoir été accusé d'avoir omis délibérément des histoires couvertes par des médias conservateurs. Cette nouvelle mise à jour va travailler en tandem avec les mesures précédentes pour renforcer la lutte contre les fausses informations (« fake news »). [suite]

May 19, 2017 / 19 mai 2017

Enterprise Collaboration Platforms and the Elephants in the Room
May 18, 2017 – CMSWiRE
Some of the key issues hampering the enterprise collaboration space include the lack of features available to community managers. “Collaboration solutions need better community management tools. I should be able to pull up data that’s CRM-level sophisticated [in order to see user data, evaluate progress and ascertain engagement levels]. There should also be more ways for community managers to automate certain tasks and messages. But instead, they’re left to do all the heavy lifting.” Happe continued by lamenting the lack of adequate analytical tools found in social software, which once again impacts the performance of community managers. “Because [the built in] analytics tools are so poor, community managers can’t make the smart calls, and then they have to report back to their demanding executives.” [more]

Collaboration, compliance and security in the face of digital transformation
May 16, 2017 - ITProPortal
Businesses need to remain aware that while an evolution in digitalisation can offer greater opportunities, so too can it bring greater risk to their most sensitive information. For example, an organisation’s employees, partners and wider stakeholders would find it virtually impossible to securely share digitised data if it’s being stored and processed on outmoded Enterprise Content Management (ECM) systems (a strong majority of companies still use traditional file folder arrangements to organise and share content). Another example is many of the information-sharing systems currently in use do not communicate effectively, which can lead to unnecessary infrastructure management and associated costs. The recent rise in the adoption of cloud computing has led to this problem becoming more apparent although, by the very nature of its use, it has also offered a potential solution. [more]

How is Unified Communications Driving Digital Transformation?
May 16, 2017 - CommsTrader
While it’s fair to suggest that some companies are making the move to the cloud simply because most other companies are doing, it’s also important to note that Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) is becoming crucial for digital transformation. Millennials are overtaking the workplace, and constant communication has become a foundation of business collaboration. Messaging needs to blend with other collaboration tools to support teamwork that’s mobile and flexible. That means that chat, video, and voice need to work perfectly to allow people to interact. If you want to boost the long-term benefits of your digital solutions, then you need to keep User Experience (UX) at the centre of your ambitions, and communication needs to stay streamlined. [more]

TM Forum Tool Targets Slow Digital Adoption by Operators
May 16, 2017 - SDxCentral
TM Forum launched a digital maturity tool designed to allow telecommunication operators to gauge their progress toward adoption of digital technologies. The aptly named Digital Maturity Model (DMM) is touted as a guide for operators with an end-goal of digital transformation, which TM Forum said continues to stymie companies. The DMM takes into account five metrics companies can input into an application, which then spits out a maturity score. The metrics include the use of digital platforms to support customers, strategy, technology, operations, and a company’s internal culture. Furthering its digital focus, TM Forum unveiled its cloud-based CurateFx platform targeted at facilitating collaboration on digital business models. [more]

Les assistants vocaux feront bientôt partie du paysage des entreprises
18 mai 2017 – Journal du Net
Chez IBM, on en est sûr, le vocal va se démocratiser pour devenir une interface universelle d'accès aux applications au même titre que l'écran tactile ou le couple clavier-souris. "Pour faire en sorte que ces bots deviennent audio, avec tous les avantages que cela apporte en termes de fluidité et de réactivité, il était nécessaire de pouvoir les intégrer à des assistants vocaux (fournissant les interfaces de "speech to text" et "text to speech" nécessaires, ndlr). C'est désormais possible depuis peu", Thomas Sabatier, CEO et cofondateur de la Chatbot Factory. "Dans le cas des ressources humaines, il s'agit de services taillés pour répondre aux questions des salariés en matière de congés à prendre, de mobilité interne, ou encore de procédures - liées par exemple au dépôt de notes de frais ou à la politique de voyages." [suite]

May 12, 2017 / 12 mai 2017

The Digital World is Changing Thanks to Enterprise Collaboration
May 7, 2017 - CommsTrader
Ideally, the development of enterprise collaboration tools should be used on a holistic level by organisations to create stronger businesses. It’s important for enterprise-level groups to realise that digital transformation isn’t just defined by what customers experience, but also by the re-imagining of internal processes, where businesses adapt their cultures and structures to match changes in customer behaviour. It’s about transforming with a purpose. Technology is an enabler in the new world of digital transformation – not necessarily the answer to everything. [more]

Atlassian on transparency as the secret sauce of collaboration
May 8, 2017 – Dispatch Weekly
Connected digital technology is enabling the development of new patterns of collaboration in the enterprise. Some of these new ways of working have arisen because cloud and mobile technologies allow us to connect and collaborate even when we’re out of the office. But others apply even to teams that spend pretty much all their time sitting at the same desktop day after day. The traditional approach treats collaboration as an optional add-on to the core process. The DevOps approach — which embodies the agile, iterative, cross-functional, atomic structures that are likely to spread throughout the digital enterprise — treats collaboration as a fundamental element. [more]

Cisco Pays $125 Million For This Artificial Intelligence Startup
May 11, 2017 – Fortune.com
Cisco, the networking technology company, said Thursday that it plans to buy MindMeld, a startup specializing in artificial intelligence, for $125 million. The deal is expected to close in early 2017. MindMeld, founded in 2011, builds software tools for coders to create chat bots that can recognize and respond to human voices. Music-streaming service Spotify, for example, has experimented with MindMeld’s technology for people to search and play songs by talking to their smartphones. [more]

ECM's role in enterprise digital transformation
May 12, 2017 - EnterpriseINNOVATION
Enterprise content management (ECM) has a bigger role to play in digital transformation, according to Melissa Webster, International Data Corporation (IDC) Program VP, Content & Digital Media Technologies. "One of the big things we see in the ECM market is enterprises embracing the vision of moving away from having little silos of information scattered everywhere and tucked in proprietary document stores in the human resource management (HRM) system, in the customer relationship management (CRM) system, in the Enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, or in the supply chain system," she said. "This makes sense because these business processes cut across all functional areas." [more]

Le blockchain pour les nuls
11 mai 2017 – Infopresse
Une chaîne de blocs, ou blockchain, consiste en une banque de données qui contient l’historique de tous les échanges effectués en son sein. Sécurisée et distribuée, elle est partagée par ses différents utilisateurs, sans intermédiaire. Son meilleur exemple? Bitcoin. Mark Mueller-Eberstein, PDG et fondateur d'Adgetec Corporation, fait le point pour Infopresse sur le phénomène des blockchains et ses applications potentielles. [suite]

Qu’est-ce qu’un réseau social d'entreprise ou RSE représente en 2017 ?
9 mai 2017 – Journal du Community Manager
Les réseaux sociaux s’invitent également au sein des entreprises. Une forte majorité des entreprises dans le monde ont mis en place un réseau social d’entreprise « Le réseau social d’entreprise » s’inscrit donc au cœur de la transformation digitale et bouscule les codes de la communication interne. Cet article fait état des bénéfices, risques, usages et principaux outils disponibles en 2017. [suite]

May 5, 2017 / 5 mai 2017

Digital Collaboration Tools / Outils de collaboration numérique

How popular tech tools are transforming the workplace May 2, 2017 - Financial Times
Staff use collaboration tools such as Slack, Trello, Confluence and Google Drive to work on projects together wherever they happen to be. Philip Lacor, vice-president for the Emea region at file-sharing company Dropbox, says that globalisation and technology have redefined the world of work, shifting it away from traditional hierarchies. The next big things transforming working lives are likely to be artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. Some humans may see their working days transformed through applications such as instant transcription and the ability to search voice notes held in the cloud…[more]

Survey Says Students Find University Tech Lacking May 4, 2017 Ed Tech Magazine
One-third of college students say they think less of their universities because of their digital strategies or lack thereof, a new report from DJS. About 40 percent of these students say their schools’ administration systems are so clunky it is causing them to spend less time studying, and 7 in 10 students recommend their schools update their digital offerings. The survey indicated that students would like to interact more with their colleges through digital tools, and 87 percent said they want a more simplified solution — like single sign-on — for all the apps, tools and administration systems they use. The University of Mary Hardin-Baylor in central Texas has made use of OneLogin to help everyone on campus keep apps straight. They are using a single sign-on tool with two-factor authentication, so security is not an issue. OneLogin uses security assertion markup language (SAML) to exchange authentication and authorization data…[more]

Network visualization / Visualisation du réseau

Jive CEO Champions 'Human Factor' In Digital Collaboration Software May 3, 2017 - Forbes
Jive WorkGraph is a piece of software designed to capture what Jive labels ‘work signals’. These signals are pieces of data denoting work events, reports, jobs status updates, employee knowledge (or even employee opinions) or any other 'thing' that happens inside a company. “Collecting and analyzing information and opinions from employees, customers and partners delivers real business value [and allows firms] to increase engagement and gain insight into their customers and employees,” said Jeff Lautenbach, president of worldwide field operations at Jive Software...[more]

Human Resources / Ressources humaines

Digital Collaboration Enhances Candidate Experience May 4, 2017 Business Grapevine
Digital technologies and the ability to digitally collaborate with candidates offers an opportunity to enhance and enrich the key relationships between a candidate and their trusted consultant. In addition, digital technologies improve communication, which will ensure you provide a streamlined and efficient hiring process. Moreover, the ability to provide candidates with instant access to information on their device of choice, will further enhance the candidate experience. There is little doubt that the use of digital technologies should be a key consideration for the executive search profession…[more]

Civic Tech / Technologie civique

Citoyen hackeur : Enjeux politiques des civic tech 2 mai 2017 - La vie des idées
Le dernier remède en date pour « mettre à jour » la démocratie serait-il les outils numériques? La culture de l’expression publique qui caractérise le web, bouillonnante, plurielle et inclusive, est notamment observée avec attention par le monde de la participation qui de son côté peine souvent à mobiliser les citoyens. Cet article se propose de montrer que malgré les discours enthousiastes, non, en soi on ne peut pas véritablement transformer la démocratie et ses institutions par le seul biais des outils numériques, et que la question de l’équipement ne doit pas faire passer au second plan la réflexion sur la nature du projet politique embarqué par ces dispositifs…[suite]

Software Development / Développement de logiciels

Il n’est jamais trop tard pour se lancer dans le DevOps, mais le temps presse ! 4 mai 2017 - Journal du Net
Quelles sont les clés de la réussite pour répondre à la demande moderne ? L’expérience client, la commodité et la communication. Et qu’est-ce qui différencie une bonne application d’une mauvaise application ? Un développement rapide, un déploiement efficace, une grande fiabilité et des mises à jour régulières. Dans le jargon du développement moderne, la stratégie gagnante s’appelle le DevOps…[suite]

April 28, 2017 / 28 avril 2017

Facebook Messenger Bots Help Corporation's Expansion Into Enterprise Collaboration - April 26, 2017 - The Boss Magazine

Facebook Messenger bots can provide anything ranging from weather updates, to receipts, and even shipping information. Through Facebook’s flexible application program interface (API) for each integration system, developers are able to tailor every experience to their customer’s specific needs. Facebook Messenger’s platform gives businesses the tools to instantly communicate and establish lasting relationships with a community of customers that is over 900 million strong. It’s most alluring perk is that it brings a conversational approach to businesses and developers, making for a more casual interaction between consumer and provider… read more

LinkedIn productivity bots included in updated privacy policy - April 18, 2017 - TechCrunch

The social network has a new version of its Terms of Service going into effect on June 7, 2017, and the changes include a new privacy policy that covers new and upcoming LinkedIn features including productivity bots, a relatively recent addition to the LinkedIn arsenal. This is actually one of the opt-in items on the list, and if you do choose to participate, LinkedIn will offer to help your with messages by auto-generating simple responses, handling meeting scheduling or even breaking the ice. More interesting than its ability to support virtual connections, LinkedIn’s new policy covers an “upcoming feature” that will help LinkedIn members meet up IRL (In Real Life), at conferences, events and meetings where they’re already in relative proximity to one another… read more

Intercom : l'app de gestion de la communication client qui explose - 27 avril, 2017 - Journal du net

C'est l'une des start-up digitales à la plus forte croissance aux US. En trois ans, son chiffre d'affaires annuel récurrent est passé de 1 à 50 millions de dollars. Portrait. Ce que propose Intercom ? Une offre SaaS taillée pour unifier les canaux digitaux de communication client d'une entreprise. Basée à San Francisco, la jeune pousse revendique quelque 17 000 organisations clientes, représentant un total de 100 000 utilisateurs actifs mensuels. Comptant un peu plus de 300 salariés, Intercom a levé 116 millions de dollars depuis sa création en 2011…en lire plus

SAP Learning Hub Exceeds Half Million Subscribers With Over 5 Million Assignments Accessed - April 27, 2017 - SAP News

SAP Learning Hub has grown to over 500,000 users and is helping companies cut costs and time to train employees. With more than 5 million learning assignments accessed by the end of the first quarter of 2017, SAP Learning Hub is a comprehensive enablement program that offers a wide range of collaborative tools and educational content designed to provide SAP software users with the tools for success. Launched as a full-scale cloud-based offering, SAP Learning Hub is the largest learning platform used worldwide to learn about SAP software… read more

Collaborative Authoring Tools: All You Want To Know! - April 26, 2017 - eLearningIndustry Web-based authoring tools (Cloud) have a collaborative dimension. In a nutshell, ‘collaborative authoring tools’ allow multiple stakeholders on an eLearning project such as course developers, Subject Matter Experts, and reviewers to collaborate and interact with each other simultaneously while working on a project. Users of the authoring tools can access and track progress of the course, communicate, give feedback, implement revisions, and seamlessly review their peers’ contribution, their course’s progress and evolution from a central point, whether team members physically work together as a team or work remotely. Some key benefits: 1. Flexibility 2. Ease of Access 3. Safer Storage 4. Cost Effective … read more

April 21, 2017 / 21 avril 2017

Facebook Debuts New Workplace Integrations with Salesforce, Microsoft, Box - April 18, 2017 - CMSWire

Workplace, which debuted last fall, will now integrate with Microsoft, Salesforce, Quip and Box "to make it easier for our customers to access and complete their work," Facebook officials announced. "The real value of a collaboration tools comes when people can get real work done inside them, not just chat and have conversations," Alan Lepofsky, vice president and principal analyst for Future of Work at Cupertino, Calif.-based Constellation Research, told CMSWire last week when Facebook announced its free edition of Workplace. "To do that, you need to integrate with the business tools people use to get work done."…read more

Facebook updates Workplace as enterprise collaboration gets hot again - April 19, 2017 - Computer World

Facebook released its collaboration tool in the fall of 2016 in an effort to tap into the lucrative enterprise market. Today, there are 14,000 organizations using Workplace in 77 different languages, according to the company. Collaboration tools -- including Microsoft's SharePoint and Cisco's Quad -- were big talking points about five years ago. There was a lot of talk about helping employees collaborate. Then interest fell off. Ezra Gottheil, an analyst with Technology Business Research, said business and IT managers simply didn't know what they wanted and many pushed the entire issue to the back burner, letting workers focus on instant messaging tools, like Slack. Now he sees companies coming back around to looking at adopting collaboration tools again… read more

Facebook travaille sur une interface neuronale pour créer une langue universelle - 20 avril 2017 – l’Usine digitale

L'équipe de recherche Building 8 de Facebook, c'est à dire sa nouvelle unité de recherche de pointe dédiée à la création de produits à vocation sociale, veut créer une interface homme-machine qui remplacerait souris, clavier et autres écrans tactiles par une connexion directe au cerveau. L'objectif que se sont fixés les chercheurs est de permettre aux gens d'écrire par la pensée…en lire plus

Social Collaboration Tools - Helping or Hindering Productivity? - April 18, 2017 - cadcam-e

With 41% of employees citing they spend more time away from their desks than they did two years ago, it’s becoming more and more important for employees to be able to communicate while on the go. Social collaboration tools at the workplace is not an outlier in that sense.

• First, as with any new technology, there’s always push back from people comfortable with status quo, which dare I say, would include most of us.
• Secondly, if you try to implement too many different collaboration tools you can get to the point where you’re losing productivity. Constant chatter can add to the “noise” and be distracting

…read more

Optimizely acquires Experiment Engine to offer more collaboration tools for big companies - April 17, 2017 - Tech Crunch

Co-founder and CEO Dan Siroker said today is the first time it’s acquiring a startup built on Optimizely’s developer platform — namely, Experiment Engine. Experiment Engine describes itself as “the most comprehensive, easy-to-use conversion optimization platform,” which might make it sound similar to Optimizely itself. But Siroker (pictured above) explained that the startup has actually built collaboration and project management tools to support Optimizely’s core features (which allow marketers and developers to test out different variations in a website or app)… read more

Microsoft adds Groups collaboration tool to the Android Outlook app - April 18, 2017 - Android Police

Outlook Groups has had its own distinct app for a while, but after introducing the smart collaboration tool to the desktop email client it was just a matter of time before it was included in the Android Outlook app proper. Outlook Groups is designed to streamline email in the workplace, replacing lengthy email threads with dynamic group conversations. It can also be used to easily share calendars, notes, and files with a certain selection of colleagues. Think of it as sort of a Slack competitor, but built right into your email rather than as part of another separate interface. This functionality first surfaced as part of Office 365 and has impressed ever since… read more

April 13, 2017 / 13 avril 2017

How To Be A Collaborative Partner (And An Independent Pioneer) - April 12, 2017 - Medium

Being a collaborative partner doesn’t mean you have to give up being an independent pioneer. It means that you have the skills, knowledge and experience that will improve any team effort. The following are four ways you can increase your level of collaboration.

1. Listen to your gut
2. Go the extra mile
3. Keep your creativity
4. Ask for help

Read more

Why Platforms are the New Stacks - April 13, 2017 - Hackernoon

Generally speaking, a platform is anywhere software is executed (like an operating system or browser). Basically an application “runs on” a stack, and a stack “runs on” a platform. The stack provides everything for the application to run, while the platform provides the environment for the stack. This has worked well for many years, but with the recent improvements to virtualization and containerization with things like Docker, we have the ability to again change the status quo… read more

The Era of “Starchitects” May Be Over, as Dream Teams Evolve the Field - April 12, 2017 - Redshift

The manner of which architecture is taught is becoming a more collaborative process. “The model of collaboration in architecture is greater now than in the past,” Thorne says. “This is partly because the flow of information is much greater. There are almost no barriers to collaboration, even with people in different parts of the world. And with new technology like BIM, information is less segmented between the architect, the engineer, and the contractor.” … read more

Facebook Workplace Free Model Could Drive Adoption, But At A Cost - April 10, 2017 - CMSwire

Facebook revealed a new free model for its Workplace enterprise collaboration tool last week which some speculate will open the door to a “deeper pipeline of customers.” But like many free enterprise software tools, the model lacks crucial features such as administrative controls and analytics… read more

Microsoft Enhances External User Collaboration with Azure AD B2B - April 12, 2017 - Eweek

Azure AD B2B Collaboration is now generally available, allowing enterprises and their partner organizations to get on the same page while minimizing risks. Azure AD B2B Collaboration enables customers to extend the platform's secure identity management services to vendors, consultants and other partner organizations. Instead of creating a new locally-managed account for external users, businesses can invite them using their own email addresses and provide access to applications, shared documents and other resources… read more

Collaboration fuels the next wave of enterprise mobility - April 13, 2017 - IT News Africa

South African organisations are realising the power of mobility for every staff member. From field engineers, to roving salespeople, or operations staff on the ground, an increasing percentage of the workforce is partly or fully-remote. And as more and more staff becomes remotely-enabled in this manner, we usher in the next era of enterprise mobility: where the focus will be on heightened collaboration. We’re learning to work with each other in new, interesting ways, and the result is that we become more creative and productive… read more

Could Amazon become an enterprise collaboration contender? - April 10, 2017 - CIO from IDG

“The lines are blurring between business communications and enterprise collaboration and productivity -- and their convergence is defining a new segment which some vendors are calling ‘collaborative communications’ or ‘workflow communications,’” he says. “Amazon, Google and Microsoft are each approaching the market from different angles. Google and Microsoft are strong contenders when it comes to productivity tools, while Amazon is focusing on business communications and team meetings. All three overlap with it comes to collaboration.” … read more

Test de Microsoft Teams : insuffisant mais peut mieux faire - 11 avril, 2017 – Journal du net

« Teams étant désormais disponible en version finale, nous avons pu le tester. Premier constat : il s'agit bel et bien d'une messagerie collaborative d'entreprise. Si on veut le comparer à Slack, il faudra par conséquent confronter Teams à Slack Enterprise Grid, l'édition de Slack taillée pour les grandes organisations. Côté fonctionnalités, plusieurs éléments clés d'un outil de team messaging manquent encore à l'appel.» … lire en plus

April 7, 2017 / 7 avril 2017

Why Collaboration Tools Matter More Than Ever - April 4, 2017 - GitLab

As the build/ship/learn cycle speeds up, the team will naturally be working together throughout more of the cycle because they can and need to stay involved… and this benefits everyone. Enterprise teams need tools that can mirror their new cross-functional way of working, acknowledging that while the new enterprise team is distributed, they are more collaborative than ever before… read more

Twitter Adds Location-Sharing Tools to Customer Service via DM Options - April 4, 2017 - Social Media Today

And while Twitter’s focus is on combating trolls, simplifying the platform for new users and streaming live sports, they have also been making some effort to evolve their customer service offerings and provide new options in line with wider trends. Their latest upgrade on this front comes in the form of location sharing via DM, which will enable businesses to provide more relevant advice based on the requestor’s physical proximity… read more

Developing in the Now: The 3 Benefits of Real-Time Collaborative Tools - April 4, 2017 - Gutenberg Blog

Real-time has transformed industries with up-to-date data analytics and collaborative tools. With so many new digital development features out there, educational publishers finally have a chance to evolve, shorten their development and production timelines, and recoup a greater ROI. For digital content producers considering the shift, three of the key benefits to joining the collaborative development trend include

1. Less email, more synergy
2. Death to versioning
3. The restoration of accountability and trust

… read more

Open Networking Summit expands collaboration around SDN and NFV - April 4, 2017 - Computer Weekly

At the Open Networking Summit (ONS), the annual open source networking and orchestration show run by the Linux Foundation, a number of collaborative initiatives around software defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualisation (NFV) have been beefed up to support future development of the closely intertwined technologies… read more

The butterfly effect of collaboration - March 28, 2017 – BeBee

The "I" mentality in humans may be the main barrier to adapting to the environment by all individuals so that the effort of collaboration may show the butterfly effect - where a small change in one areas can result in unexpected and overwhelming outcomes in other areas. Transparency is following simple rules by all individuals so that new structures may emerge. Ants build varieties of colony structures by following same rules and by adapting to the soil and climate requirements. Are humans less able to do so? … read more

Cracking the Collaboration Conundrum - February 23, 2017 - Forbes

The conundrum: collaboration, working together to produce a shared outcome, is key to business success – but it’s often more effective in theory than in practice. Time spent in collaborative activities has grown by 50% or more over the past 20 years. Yet only 14% of leaders are completely satisfied with their organization’s current ability to communicate and collaborate… read more

Collaboration infonuagique entre Red Hat et IBM - March 21, 2017 – Direction informatique

Les deux entreprises soutiennent que cette collaboration vise à permettre à des clients « d’étendre leurs charges de travail Red Hat en mode sur les lieux vers la plateforme OpenStack et le stockage Ceph de Red Hat dans le nuage informatique privé IBM »… lire en plus

The value of collaboration within the digital workplace - Fujitsu

In Fujitsu’s latest Digital Workplace research report, the value of collaboration is assessed in effecting real change in the workpalce, increasing workplace productivity, supporting strategic business goals and improving the lives of workers. Some key report findings:

• Collaboration is a major priority for UK businesses.
• Through digitalisation, employees are enabled to work anywhere and at any time, and IT departments must provide the collaboration tools necessary to meet changing workplace needs.
• Within organisations, IT departments must move away from being just a resource, to being an enabler to support business requirements.
• Collaboration links isolated workplace silos to increase communication, improve employee engagement, and remove wasteful duplication… read more

March 31, 2017 / 31 mars 2017

Digital workplace update: Why enterprise collaboration is exciting again - March 29, 2017 - ZDNet

In short, the collaboration world is exciting again. It also underscores the point that when the next new innovations are hard to determine, their arrival tends to be punctuated. We've not seen a new wave of collaboration offerings like this from major vendors since enterprise social software first arrived over a half-decade ago… read more

Comment le numérique peut révéler les talents - March 29, 2017 - Journal du Net

Deux dispositifs numériques complémentaires d'accompagnement et de développement des talents peuvent être mis en œuvre pour révéler les talents au sein d'une entreprise. D'un côté une plateforme de microlearning et de l'autre un réseau de gestion participative des communautés autour des projets. Ces dispositifs ont aussi leurs propres avantages, ils permettent de contribuer au développement d'une culture numérique au sein de l'organisation et donc d'aider à la conduite du changement… lire en plus

Reskilling for the age of digital work: what do we need from a modern employee? - January 26, 2017 - Training Zone

The modern employee will need to develop their analytical skills. The technologies that are becoming increasingly widespread will still depend on the way they are exploited and how the new systems that use them are actually designed. As a result, there will be an increasing need for employees to truly understand problems in order to configure technology appropriately. Employees will need to grasp the likely benefits and implications of the various options open to them, as well as the best way to deliver and then execute the solution… read more

IBM Helps Advance Collaboration Methods in Education Practices Around the World - March 31, 2017 - PR News Wire

Recently, IBM showcased how the education industry across the globe is implementing IBM Connections to help transform working methods and accelerate productivity. Enterprises and universities using this technology include: USC Marshall School of Business, Deltagruppen, University of Koblenz-Landau .. read more

March 24, 2017 / 24 mars 2017

Employees prefer effective workplace technology to wacky office design - February 16, 2017 - Workplace Insight

In a survey by Kiwi Movers, the majority (79 percent) of workers say reliable and modern technology is more important to them than office aesthetics, while accessories such as ping pong tables, slides, hammocks and wacky office designs may look good in pictures, but they don’t necessarily make employees any happier or productive. Occupational health expert, Sir Cary Cooper CBE, professor of organizational psychology & health at the ALLIANCE Manchester Business School, University of Manchester believes some companies are missing the point when it comes to offering office perks adding “cool furniture is nothing more than a nice-to-have bonus and businesses should be wary of focusing on it at the expense of genuine culture.” … read more

80% of IT and Security Professionals Admit Company is Using Antiquated Collaboration Tools - February 21, 2017 - Digital Journal

To stay relevant in an increasingly digital world, companies are either starting to or are currently in the process of transforming their digital environment to improve collaboration and information sharing. The report sheds light on these barriers, as well as content sharing and data privacy trends. Key takeaways from the survey results include:

• Of the IT and security professionals surveyed, a full 80% admit that their company is still using traditional file folders to organize and share content
• 57% of respondents think their company’s content tools like ECM, cloud storage and SharePoint are siloed and difficult to connect
• 74% of respondents are either not very confident or not confident at all that they will meet the compliance deadline for the GDPR in 2018 … read more

Three Signs your Digital Collaboration is Failing to Meet the Mark - March 23, 2017 - Compare The Cloud

• You have too many tools
• Your existing tools aren’t being used
• You need to be in the office to get anything done

While most companies are trying to improve performance by investing in a variety of new technologies, the results tend to fall short. The reality is, despite these shiny new technologies, many employees are still battling with mundane tasks: waiting for approvals, working on an outdate version of a file, or even the vast amounts of information and specialised knowledge that is still solely stored within an individual’s emails. The only real solution is a single collaboration tool that is sufficiently flexible to accommodate any style of working… read more

How Trello Works - March 24, 2017 - Small Business Trends

Trello is a project management and collaboration platform that utilizes the concepts of boards, cards and lists for efficient task management. The tool allows users to discuss a task or a project in real-time while keeping all team members informed through activity logs, task assignments and email notifications… Read more to get the basics of Trello

How IT Uses Collaboration for Digital Transformation - March 22, 2017 - Toolbox

Jon Arnold, Principal of J Arnold & Associates, explores how collaboration can help each group adapt and ultimately benefit with 4 IT-specific business objectives.

1. Extend legacy infrastructure: People have higher expectations now about technology in the workplace, and if you can’t meet them, they’ll soon move on to competitors that can.
2. Maintain business continuity: When the demands of digital transformation require continuous connectivity with workers, cloud-based Unified Communication (UC) overcomes traditional obstacles such as inclement weather that prevents people from getting to the office, or local power outages that can interrupt workflows.
3. Manage mobility: In terms of what really drives digital transformation, being mobile-centric is just as important as being Web-centric. BYOD is one manifestation of this.
4. Keep digital assets secure: To ensure this data remains secure, IT will need a holistic approach that includes all endpoints and devices that connect to the LAN.… read more

Opinion: Collaborative tools can unlock the power of creative teams - February 7, 2017 - CIPD UK

Gazi Islam, Nada Endrissat and Claus Noppeney unpack the research they've conducted into how managers can draw diverse tools to manage creative teams effectively, identifying strategies that managers employ to support good team-working practice. In short, collaborative objects use aesthetic, emotional and interpersonal aspects of physical artefacts to lay the bases of team creativity. They provide a new way to approach an old dilemma in management – that of managing the ineffable and diffuse processes of creativity… read more

Facebook se lance dans les offres d'emploi - 15 février 2017 – LaPresse.ca

Concrètement, les entreprises à la recherche de candidats pourront publier des offres sur leur page Facebook. Les intéressés pourront les apercevoir soit directement sur cette page, soit dans leur fil de nouvelles s'ils sont abonnés à celle-ci, soit encore dans un onglet particulier pour cet outil, qui regroupera toutes les offres d'emplois actives dans les environs géographiques. Les candidats pourront appliquer directement en cliquant sur un lien…Lire la suite

March 17, 2017 / 17 mars 2017

Putting Collaboration At The Center Of Workplace Design - March 16, 2017 - Orange Business

Forward-thinking companies recognize the importance of targeting Generation Y workers to recruit the best talent and create the business leaders of tomorrow. These digital-savvy workers want to have workplaces that support the way they want to work. Some new office designs follow the ‘Corporate Campus’ route, similar to Google’s new place in London, with spaces tailored to prioritizing workers’ desire for flexibility and changing needs. But Google’s approach will not work for all organizations. There is no one size fits all approach to maximizing your workspace, it really depends on your organization, its priorities and its goals… read more

Grassroots Coalition Seeks to Improve Digital Collaboration Starting with PDF Drawings - March 16, 2017 - Engineering News-Record

As a project engineer for Skanska USA in 2012, Kyle Hughes sought to promote awareness and adoption of project-level PDF standards through partnerships with other industry organizations, after having experienced first-hand the benefits of managing a “paperless jobsite.” Traditional document control duties often took him an entire Saturday to “slip-sheet” the current paper sets of full-size drawings. But after discovering the batch tool workflows that PDF-based document management system Bluebeam Revu had recently released, Hughes found he could automate both the slip-sheet and detail hyperlinking process with a single, click of a mouse. Yet, it was while sharing his newfound PDF drawing management process with other project teams inside Skanska, that Hughes found that not all PDF drawing sets behaved the same way. Frustrated and confused, Hughes reached out to Sasha Reed, then director of account services at Bluebeam, to look for a solution… read more

Collaboration, digital: qu'attendent les millennials? - March 17, 2017 - Journal du net

Les digital natives, experts des outils de communication, arrivent sur leur lieu de travail avec une idée précise du type de technologie qu'ils veulent utiliser: les mêmes que dans leur vie personnelle. Face à ces exigences, les technologies digitales sont appelées à s’imposer dans les entreprises grâce à leurs capacités à favoriser des communications fluides et rapides, n’importe quand et sur n’importe quel périphérique… lire la suite

Why Technology Alone Will Not Solve Poor Collaboration - March 15, 2017 - Digital List Mag

There is little doubt that a range of digital and social trends are influencing how people share information, sharpen ideas, and leverage expertise. The problem is not a lack of collaboration technologies in the marketplace. What’s really happening is a misunderstanding of what collaboration is: an intensely human activity. No tool – no matter how ground-breaking and well-adopted – can resolve poor collaboration on its own… read more

Collaboration Leads to Success in Digital Workplaces, SAP Survey Finds - March 16, 2017 - CMS Wire

Rather positive, effective and efficient collaboration policies should be incorporated into the workplace through technology, processes and organizational culture — goals most companies still haven't mastered. Those are key findings from a new study on collaboration by SAP and Oxford Economics, a global advisory firm founded in 1981 as a joint venture with Oxford University's Templeton College… read more

Beware Collaboration-Tool Overload - March 12, 2017 - Wall Street Journal

Research shows that workers often resist using multiple services, often because they don’t want to open one more window on their computer or launch one more app on their mobile device. In response, the makers of collaboration apps and services (Slack, Microsoft, Workplace by Facbook etc.) are tweaking their offerings to enable people to do more work within their suite of products, so there’s less of a need to jump around… read more

Enhance Productivity With Collaboration Tools - March 9, 2017 - Minute Hack

The latest collaboration tools also maximize employee engagement — after all, a happy employee is more likely to be more productive. More and more staff want these tools, and business owners need to ensure they provide the right infrastructure. The question for many of these business decision makers, however, remains how to ensure that they are adopting the right technology that will truly meet the intuitive needs of the business and the employees. It seems complex, but it really need not be… read more

March 10, 2017 / 10 mars 2017

Automated Wikipedia Edit-Bots Have Been Fighting Each Other For A Decade - February 27, 2017 - Huffington Post

Researchers at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom released a report on Thursday that shows that bot software studied between 2001 and 2010 -- which is designed to "undo vandalism, enforce bans, check spelling, create inter-language links... [and] identify copyright violations," has been reverting changes made by other Wikipedia-created-bots far more often than those made by humans … read more

Why Security is a Must for an Enterprise-Grade File Collaboration Solution? - March 7, 2017 - Medium

“Data security is a crucial aspect when considering an enterprise file sync and share solution. It is important you decide who is in control of your files. The question you need to ask yourself is “are you or your employees deciding on what file sync and share solution your company uses?”” … read more

Cisco gives $1 million more to the enterprise startup accelerator Alchemist - March 3, 2017 - Venture Beat

Cisco is making a $1 million investment in startup incubator Alchemist Accelerator to support a track focused on enterprise collaboration. The money comes from the Cisco Spark Innovation Fund, a $150 million commitment to support collaboration around the messaging app, Cisco VP Jason Goecke told VentureBeat in a conversation on Cisco Spark. The app was built to interact with Cisco hardware, like the Spark board, and video endpoints in meetings … read more

MoD ditches spreadsheets for Saas-based collaboration tool - March 2, 2017 - Computer Weekly

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) is managing some of its activities around the world through a cloud-based collaboration tool that was designed by a former Royal Navy IT expert. The deal also demonstrates the financial advantages of software as a service (SaaS) that does not require upfront development… read more

Elisa Steele Positions Jive For Enterprise Collaboration and Communications Platform - March 6, 2017 - Forbes

Steele hopes to grow the business by positioning Jive as a centralized platform to incorporate these tools under one operating system that will serve to simplify enterprise collocation and communication. And she has been working to create the product roadmap that will fully leverage that vision …read more

Using GRID to Discover and Analyze Global Research Trends - March 2, 2017 - Digital Science

Digital Science recently published their latest Digital Research Report, Discovery and Analysis of Global Research Trends Using GRID. The report demonstrates the use of the Global Research Identifier Database (GRID) as a platform for data consolidation, and as an essential component for sector and geographic analysis. The report presents an analysis of how author affiliation strings vary, using 1.4 million examples from a 10 year period, shows how GRID can be used to measure, compare and track collaboration patterns, includes a visualization of the global collaboration network, highlighting the activity in key research institutions, maps the world’s research intensity at a regional level, and compares US State collaboration patterns to those in Europe and Asia, and Identifies healthcare collaboration precincts where Universities and local hospitals collaborate intensively… read more

What True Collaboration in Digital Marketing Looks Like (And How I Learned It) - February 22, 2017 - Simply Measured

Colin Zalwski of “The Simply Measured Blog” analyses the metrics where channels connect and channel language barriers fall. Leads, customer acquisition, revenue, and ultimately ROI, are what connect marketers… read more

February 28, 2017 / 28 février 2017

Collaboration

Computer Weekly: GDS, HMRC and Verify: so much for cross-government digital collaboration - February 14, 2017 - Computer Weekly

The UK’s new government transformation strategy draws controversy with its central premise in question after one of the core systems at the heart of the digital plan are rejected… read more

Nimble: 43 Online Collaboration Tools to Help Your Team Be More Productive - January 13, 2017 - Nimble

Time Doctor makes a list of tools that they have found to help remote teams to collaborate and be more efficient… read more

The Tech Portal: WhatsApp hopes to contribute more in India's futuristic digital initiatives, says co-founder Brian Acton - February 23, 2017 - The Tech Portal

WhatsApp Co-founder, Brian Acton, briefed ways through which the messaging app can contribute to India’s vision for digital commerce. The vision was described in a meeting with India’s IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad. Brian mentioned country’s significance in the global market and how the company plans to connect citizens further with their friends, family and communities… read more

Culture Change

Office Snapshots: On Collaboration: An Interview with Perkins+Will Principal Jeannine Campbell - February 10, 2017 - Office Snapshots

Jeannine Campbell, Principal at Perkins+Will’s Boston office shares what collaboration in the contemporary office landscape looks alike and how the firm works to help clients create an environment which matches the unique needs of each organization… read more

Data Society: Why America is Self-Segregating - January 5, 2017 - Data Society

The dream in the tech world was to allow for building bridges and healing wounds through the internet. However, many of these dreamers today find it unsettling how these tools that were once imagined to unite are used to magnify divisions and promote segregation… read more

Communication

IT Pro Portal: Defining successful enterprise collaboration and communication - February 10, 2017 - IT Pro Portal

Collaboration means different things to different people. IT Pro Portal’s Nicole Fuselier analyses how these definitions differ in an age where true collaboration is more mission critical than ever before… read more

Exoplatform: 4 ways to boost your internal communications with digital collaboration - February 23, 2017 - Exoplatform

Digital collaboration tools connect people, information, application and communications to transform an enterprise into a unified business force. Four key points that digital collaboration platforms can bring to internal communications … read more

Enterprise Collaboration Tools

DisplayNote: 5 Ways that Collaboration Tools can Increase Company Success - February 13, 2017 - Display Note

Collaboration, in its essence, means bringing people together to work on and achieve a shared outcome. The top five ways collaboration tools can improve business performance and increase success … read more

Fedscoop: GSA deal with HPE could save $50 million - February 23, 2017 - Fedscoop

February 23, 2017 - The General Services Administration has negotiated a deal for agencies to more easily purchase Hewlett Packard Enterprise products. The new software agreement could save the federal government $50 million over five years… read more

LibreOffice arrive enfin en mode cloud - le 2 février, 2017 - Journal dunet

« A l'occasion de la sortie de sa version 5.3, la suite bureautique open source introduit une déclinaison taillée pour le cloud. Elle se destine avant tout aux fournisseurs informatiques et hébergeurs souhaitant proposer un tel service. » … lire la suite

February 20, 2017 / 20 février 2017

Collaboration

Humanity: Digital collaboration's missing ingredient- January 23, 2017 - Microsoft

“All this connectivity, however, has given rise to a new phenomenon called Virtual Distance, which was first observed by Karen Sobel Lojeski, an organizational behaviorist. Virtual Distance is best described as the unavoidable perception of distance between individuals, team members and organizations, due to the pervasive and persistent use of communications and information technologies to facilitate the work we do. The greater this perceived separation, the greater the chance that projects based on collaborative efforts will fail.”

Cisco starts patching critical flaw in WebEx browser extension - January 27, 2017 - PCworld

A recently discovered vulnerability could allow for attackers to remotely execute malicious code on computers. The company released a new version of the extension – 1.0.7 – for Google Chrome and is working on similar patches for Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox.

Culture Change

The internet is 'ok' - January 20, 2017 - gov.uk

As different parts of government share services and data, it is integral that we can rely on the security of the technology we use, to ensure the clear layer of trust between everyone involved in the transactions. For the past few years, the Australian public sector has relied on the Public Services Network (PSN) to provide this assurance. Moving forward, with an increasing number of systems to public cloud services, this expectation of continued communication adds a level of complexity and difficulty.

How I led Change in the U.S. State Department Bureaucracy - January 4, 2017 - Harvard Business Review

Tom Cochran analyses, through his experience in leading change in large organizations, how three common elements required to realize positive organizational change emerge: establishing credibility with humility, reducing risk and demonstrating its value, and enabling people with technology.

Canada's Headed For A Healthcare.gov Disaster Of Its Own - December 22, 2016 - Huffington Post

Tom Cochran analyses how the Canadian government’s initiative to consolidate more than 1500 government websites into a single site, Canada.ca, fails and begins to resemble the infamous and ill-fated American Healthcare.gov.

CIOs: Unified communication and collaboration tools essential to digital transformation- January 31, 2017 - computing.co.uk

Unified communications and online collaboration tools are essential to digital transformation projects, according to CIOs at Computing’s IT Leaders’ Club event this week. The so-called "digital workplace" had started to redefine IT's interpretation of "the user", said Ben O'Reilly, head of managed infrastructure management at Fujitsu UK & Ireland. "Ten years ago we followed the devices. Now, the context needs to follow you." That means that the office is really anywhere in which "the user" can be identified and the IT services they need to do their job delivered to them, regardless of their location.

The open enterprise: why companies need to learn to share - January 31, 2017 - Digital Pulse

Nick Spooner analyzes the gaps in knowledge sharing that is still prevalent in large companies, arguing that opening up to collaboration and data-sharing can fuel agility, spark new revenue streams and ignite innovative solutions.

Enterprise Collaboration Tools

Forrester's 2016 Enterprise Collaboration Wave report is out and Microsoft is a leader! - January 18, 2017 - Office Blogs

One of the most influential advisory and research firms recently released a report evaluating enterprise collaboration providers. Focusing on collaboration with an emphasis on enterprise-wide knowledge sharing, Microsoft and Yammer are both in the Leaders designation of the report – as part of the Office 365 suite.

Netskope integrates with Slack to safely enable enterprise collaboration- January 31, 2017 - Netskope

After integrating with Slack, Netskope for Slack enables users to collaborate in Slack while giving IT and security teams the visibility and control to securely enable the collaboration service, while also offering surgical visibility into usage of Slack and its integrated ecosystem apps, granular access controls, data loss prevention, and threat and malware protection.

Office Insiders get outlook collaboration in January 2017 Slow Ring update - January 31, 2017 - Digital Trends

Recently Microsoft provided the availability for the newest January 2017 update for Office Insiders in the Slow Ring – a community of members who test out the newest products before they go live. The new update version adds in a few additional micro-updates that contribute to the larger update for Outlook 2016.

Dropbox Unveils New Tools Designed for Enterprise Teams - January 30, 2017 - eweek.com

Now having reached 500 million users and surpassing a $1 billion run rate for its fiscal year, Dropbox unveiled a number of new features and improvements to applications for its product line - centered mainly around the trend for enterprises to organize themselves into a number of project teams that then report to a division head.

Slack Enterprise Edition Aims for Microsoft, Other Big Collaboration Competitors- January 31, 2017 - CMSwire

After failing to make the Forrester Wave for Enterprise Collaboration, Slack took aim at larger businesses in the unveiling of a new enterprise edition. At a live event in its hometown of San Francisco, representatives from the team collaboration tool demonstrated Slack Enterprise Grid, which allows global teams of up to 500,000 employees to collaborate on one platform.

AeroFS Focuses on Content-Centric Collaboration- January 11, 2017 - CMSwire

A comprehensive analysis of AeroFS, and enterprise file, sync and share (EFSS) and collaboration provider which some compare to Dropbox with more security. AeroFS is deployed on the customer’s infrastructure, "allowing the company to keep control of its data and enabling employees to securely collaborate both inside and outside the organization," the company explained.

Elcom Promises “Effortless” Enterprise Collaboration in Version 10.5- January 31, 2017 - CMSwire

Sydney-based Elcom's latest version of its digital transformation platform includes added collaboration features, extensibility points and API resources. Josh Anstey, customer solutions director for Elcom, said the most recent update will help teams collaborate and "build an effective digital workplace experience."