Blog Directory

10 Monstrous Lies About Artificial Intelligence

The world of Artificial intelligence is full of mystery and misconception that spreads faster than reality. Most of the silly notions suggesting AI will outpace human intelligence are based on human fear rather than reason. And not surprisingly, the people who are clueless about the pros of machine learning and deep learning neural nets often envision the apocalyptic images from iRobot in their minds.

In reality Ai is taking work that has been automated in the past in order to improve results.

Well its time to do some myth busting about some prominent misconceptions on AI because there is a clear difference between perceptions and reality.

Arpatech Website

Mar 9, 2018

Competitive Mobile Marketing Strategies Nailed By Brand...

Emerging and established brands have a special advantage to influence consumers via mobile. Yet mobile advertising appears to be in its infancy. While there are various obstacles to overcome before mobile marketing goes mainstream, there are certain brands that have taken a leap.

Participating in offline using QR codes

One of top tactics reinforced by retailers aim to bridge the gap between offline retail store and the online available digital content. The adoption for QR codes is rapidly improving for smartphone owners as it commands less commitment from the customers in comparison to SMS.

Nike free ID

An interesting collaboration between Nike and WeChat resulted in a QR campaign. This campaign invites the user to scan a QR code to begin following Nike via an app. They have share a colorful image via the app and then the user gets a reply with the customized shoe that closely matches the color of the photo they shared. It was an interesting engagement campaign that generated 30,000 submissions in one month.

Check-in and location-based marketing

Location based marketing tactics are key elements for people who like to brag about their brand loyalty to their friends and in social networking circles. The central idea here is to drive customers who are brands loyals. The brand can reward them in return for check-ins. Some customers like tagging other friends under it increasing a brand’s chances of exposure.

Zarraffa’s Coffee complimentary upsize

It was a smart way to motivate customer who weren’t necessarily aiming for an upsize. All you had to do was show a staff member a check- in into their location from their device to get a complimentary upsized coffee.

Augmented reality

AR combines real landscape with virtual objects via your cell phone camera and GPS systems. With the help of software generated graphics blended with real time background, a whole new augmented experience can be created. Not surprisingly, marketers are keen keep to leverage augmented reality to presented engagement opportunities for the brand. Let’s explore how McDonalds applied this arsenal of mobile marketing.

Arpatech Website

Mar 6, 2018

5 Best On-page SEO Practices to Boost Your Rankings!

When it comes to good on-page SEO practices, you might have heard about a lot of stuff that might boggle your mind and leaves you confused. But we have listed some really simple and effective SEO on-page practices that are simple and will surely give you a good heads-up in the search results.

So, there are several on-page factors that greatly affects search engine rankings and below we have mentioned the 5 best on-page SEO practices that you need to know. So, let’s get started:

1: Meta Title Tags

Now, before you start writing your Meta Tags, make sure that your keyword research is complete, because keyword research is the most important part in on-page optimization, and you have to make sure that you are targeting the right audience through your keywords. So, if you have done your keyword research, then you can proceed further.

Title tags are the second most important factor in on-page SEO as it tells search engine and visitors what the page is all about. Title tag must be unique for every page.

Code Sample

<head>
<title>Example Title</title>
</head>

Best Practices:

Suggested format: Your Keyword Base Title | Brand Name
Use dash or pipe at the end before your brand name
Keep title tags length between 55 to 60 including spaces
Do not Repeat Words
Avoid using duplicate title tags
Avoid using stop words

Example of a title tag in SERP:

2: Meta Description

Meta Description is the short paragraph or summary of your page. Its content is placed in the head tag of your website. The Meta Description appears under your page’s URL in the search engine results page (SERP).

Example of a Meta Description tag in SERP:

Code Sample

<head>
<meta name="description" content="This is an example of a meta description. That show up in search results.">
</head>

Best Practices:

Use your most important keywords in the Meta description. Often search engines will highlight in bold where it finds the search query on SERP
300 characters is the recommended length, including spaces
Avoid using duplicate meta descriptions
Do not use quotes or non-alphanumeric characters (Google cuts off the description)

3: URL

URL or Uniform Resource Locator is human-readable text that was designed to replace the numbers (IP addresses).

Example of a URL in SERP:

Best Practices:

Recommended Format: http://www.example.com/category-keyword/subcategory-keyword/primary-keyword
Use Keyword in URL
Use 80 to 90 characters or try to keep them as short as possible, because research shows that shorter URLs have a higher click-through-rate (CTR)

4: Content with Targeted Keywords

Your page’s content must follow the guidelines laid down by Google. It’s essential that your content is unique and informative for the users and you have to make sure that your content must not repeat in your other pages or is copied from other websites because plagiarism can lead to a serious penalty by Google.

Best Practices:

Create unique and relevant content
Use keywords in your content but make sure do not stuff keywords
Use internal Linking
Avoid repeating content

5: Internal Page Linking

Internal Links are hyperlinks that lead to other pages in the same domain. In simple words, internal linking is when you link your own website pages in your content.

Internal linking is an important part of on-page SEO because it provides your audience with further reading options and tells the search engines that the page is relevant for that keyword phrases too.

Best Practices:

Select good anchor text (keywords) rather than Click here.
Use links that are natural for the reader.

So, we hope that by optimizing your web pages on these parameters, you can surely boost your search engine rankings. If you have any questions, feedback or suggestions, you can comment in the comment sections below:

Arpatech Website

Feb 27, 2018

Inspecting the Augmented Age with Ted Talks on AI

In essence, the human existence can be divided into 5 eras. The hunters and gatherers age that lasted for millions of years, the agricultural age lasted for thousands of years, the industrial age lasted for hundreds of years and then the information age lasted for a few decades. But today we are entering the augmented age – an epitome of human endeavor.

We don’t know if AI is going to scare us or prepare us for the future. But there are people who can give us a glimpse of how artificial intelligence is going to affect our lives and if there is any escape from it? Let’s sneak a look at some enlightening sessions in TED Talks covering the topic of Artificial Intelligence .

What AI is and isn’t

To be honest, we know very little about what AI is and what its not. This discussion brings clarity about artificial intelligence. It points out that computers can process more data than humans ever could, so they can be utilized for repetitive and tedious task. But that’s old news. An interesting aspect under debate these days is possibility of these systems over-riding human smartness. Now the computers are super smart because they can find their own rules through deep learning. It is to say that the computer programs have a brain of their own and they learn through patterns which closely emulate human thinking. Get a glimpse of how systems learn and tend to exceed human agility and precision.

Machine intelligence makes human morals more important

The machines can now be programmed to judge human emotions from their expressions. We are in a world where software engineers are enabling all sorts of computations and decisions. They can build driverless cars that can decide who they can run over. Also, they are building machines and weapons that can kill people at war. This means we have more ethical concerns with artificial intelligence. She elaborates how machine learning is different from traditional programming and how the later needs to be fed a lot of structured data and the system learns by churning this data to identify patterns. Learn how she explains the importance of human morals in an era of post machine intelligence.

How I am fighting bias in algorithms

Joy Buolamwini takes us on an interesting journey of discovery she made while working with a facial recognition software. She points out that the software fails to detect her face because whoever coded that algorithm didn’t work with a diverse data set including a broad range of skin tones. The glitch wasn’t serious as long as it was used in studies but when facial recognition software is used in criminal investigations, this could be a serious problem. Find out how she highlights a crucial issue and gave suggestions to counter bias in algorithms.

How AI can bring on a second Industrial Revolution

“The actual path of a raindrop as it goes down the valley is unpredictable, but the general direction is inevitable,” – Kevin Kelly

Well yes the general direction is known and inevitable, and likewise the embracing of AI backed systems by humanity is bound to happen. However, we need to reason in order to understand how Artificial Intelligence must be developed and adopted. Again like other visionaries, he also agrees that our creation is going to outsmart us. Are we prepared to deal with it. Let’s explore what he says about the second Industrial Revolution.

The incredible inventions of intuitive AI

Maurice Conti begins by elaborating how humans are unconsciously living the life of a cyborg-machine in a human’s body. Think about it, we already use our cell phones for long-term memory and storage. So by the looks of it, the augmented age has already began. Take a tour of the Augmented Age with futurist Maurice Conti and preview a time when robots and humans will work side-by-side to accomplish things neither could do alone.

How computers can learn to be creative

Blaise Agüera Arcas is a principal scientist at Google who works with deep neural networks for machine perception and distributed learning. In this fascinating lecture, he displays how the function of neural networks can now be emulated by machines. The systems can recognize images like our ocular system and maps an image that it can reproduce in reality. As he rightly points out:

“Perception and creativity are very intimately connected, any creature, any being that is able to do perceptual acts is also able to create.”

Arpatech Website

Feb 23, 2018

Jobs That Will Go Extinct After Artificial Intelligence...

The post-modern world has witnessed certain jobs vanish. The fear and hysteria around Ai is quite natural. In the world led by post-AI revolution, almost 47% of US jobs are exposed to automation.

When we welcomed Atms and cash points without apprehension, the automation and ease of operation made us ignore the amount of jobs it took. Same was true for industrial revolution. That was a conscious choice and there was a fair amount of comprehension involved. It was not a flashy decision. Our industry paved its way towards industrial automation.

Today, yet again we are on the brink of another major revolution. This time, it will cost the jobs from almost all sectors. From self-driving cars to driverless flying taxis, we are about to enter a time much like the futuristic world predicted in 1899 by French Artist, Jean-Marc Côté that got published on post cards.

The robots of today’s world are more than just assists. So, let’s get to the pressing question, Is your job about to disappear?

Check out some of the top jobs that have a high likelihood of employing robots and automation.

Customer support specialists

Not surprisingly, the future of CSRs appears to be in jeopardy. With Facebook messenger chatbots gaining traction and acceptability among the customers, there is a likelihood that more companies will rely on automation. With Ai-driven chatbots answering support questions for customers, and effectively engaging them, the likelihood of this job getting replaced is grows incrementally.

robot at the table

Waiters and service crew

While some restaurants across the world are testing the efficiacy of robots as waiters, others are trying to induce a culture that induces their acceptance. However, McDonald’s aims to build a fast food chain fully operated by robots. This will limit the number of human employees to a few maintenance workers. It is indeed a cheaper and faster alternative than actually training human employees and this fact is agreed by other executives in the food service industry.

Another aspect of this kind of automation is going to result in loss of jobs as fast food chains will compete to gain competitive edge.

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Courier delivery persons

One of the few things to replace humans are drones. No matter how much we talk about their augmentative role, the reality seems to contradict all those claims. Drones were initially deployed to remote areas where human access was difficult. Today however drones have already started to replace courier delivery guys. Some of the major courier service providers might limit the number of riders but this replacement is expected to grow at 5% by 2024. Although the displacement of courier delivery persons is slow, it is certainly going to have an impact.

Some of the above-mentioned affects of artificial intelligence are prolific and long-term and it is expected to improve customer experience and convenience, the two, key metrics all brands are aiming for. Obviously in this situation, it would be foolish of businesses not to opt for advanced system that saves them money.

Arpatech Website

Feb 19, 2018

10 Brands Converging AI Into Retail and e-Commerce

The convergence of AI into retail is making waves. It offers better customer experience, adds relevance and personality and enables a brand to connect with its audience across all platforms.

While businesses are planning to implement Artificial intelligence in the coming years, it’s the retail sector that seems excited about the prospect. Some brands have started to experiment with AI to deliver better customer experience. Others are planning to implement it in the coming years. They realize that ecommerce offers a competitive landscape and the brands that will thrive with success in coming years are the ones that can harness the latest tech. Are you ready to venture towards the future of AI?

Let’s check out how some brands have implemented Artificial Intelligence.

Amazon adds automation to grocery shopping

Leading from the front is amazon when it opened an AI backed grocery store called Amazon Go. The store does not have any checkouts and this seems to be an attempt towards automation. The customers who use this app can have an entire shopping experience without waiting in long checkout queues. Their stores without checkout counters are designed to detect objects customers pick. The sensors work in co-ordination with image recognition and the amazon accounts are charged as soon as you exit the store. While Amazon Go is still recovering from tech glitches, the idea of automated shopping has created acceptability in consumer’s mind.

amazon-adds-automation-to-grocery-shopping

Neiman Marcus accelerates image search

This American department store has coupled image search that allows their customers to click pictures of items anywhere and match it to find if any similar product is available in their inventory. It was an excellent approach to enable customer engagement. Besides this Snap, Find, Shop feature, they have used AR in their store that allows shoppers to compare different outfits in a 360 degree view of themselves.

Disney adds magic to SKU organization

Not surprisingly, Disney is one of those few brands that have integrated Artificial intelligence to organize product SKUs and are on their way to create Artificial neural networks. They have launched an ecommerce site, shopDisney that employs AI and machine learning to organize product categorization and site searches for the user. They get relevant product recommendations that are tailored for a wider audience.

disney-adds-magic-to-sku-organization

Paypal stuns frauds

Paypal is one of those brands that are interested in defeating bad guys at the con using artificial intelligence. After several scams targeted Paypal users, they have decided to detect fraud and manage possible risk with 3 types of modern machine learning algorithms. The system identifies purchase patterns by studying thousands of purchases in the past with fraudulent nature. The idea is to identify the difference between a genuine purchase or that from a list of stolen accounts. As ecommerce continues to grow, the issue of theft will continue to linger but Paypal is a working example for retail brands concerned about data security and theft.

StarBucks barista goes mainstream

Not far behind in the league of brands that experiment with emerging tech is Starbucks. This time, they intend to imbed AI backed voice activated apps from the likes of Siri. The virtual assistant will be a mobile device companion called My Starbucks Barista. It will allow user to place an order by simply tapping a button and talking to the virtual barista. While the order is prepared in the nearby store, you can pick up your drink without waiting in long queues.

starbucks-barista-goes-mainstream

Lowe’s sci-fi geek

The famous home improvement retailer brand known Lowe’s has been testing store mapping robots called LoweBots in some of their locations. They are walking sales guides equipped with natural language processing that allows them to process and respond to general queries such as “where is hardware section?” They also have built-in sensors to detect people standing idle and inquire them if they would require help.

lowes-sci-fi-geek

Sephora launches beauty advice chatbot

Sephora is home to elaborate range of cosmetics and beauty products and the online shoppers are often intimidated by the idea of product search. For instance, a typical product search query could give about 200 results but Sephora experimented with chatbot giving beauty advice and product suggestions to ease their purchase decision. It’s an incredible sales tactic using AI that seems innovative and garners better engagement.

sephora-launches-beauty-advice-chatbot

Macy’s quick answer bots

Macy’s also appears to be ahead of the curve since they adopted Microsoft’s AI to optimize shopping experience and solve customer issues across all channels. The virtual agent answers the general FAQs and make suggestions but if they are unable to give any further answers than the customers are transferred to Live agent for further assistance thereby making the customer experience swift.

Arpatech Website

Feb 12, 2018

The Chatbot Evolution And Its Role In Conversational Co...

The biggest challenge yet opportunity in e-commerce is constant change. With the rise of Ai driven chatbots, we have witnessed a major shift in the way businesses think about conversational commerce.

All entrepreneurs seem excited about the convergence of mobile messaging apps and advances in artificial intelligence. It allows various brands to communicate more effectively with its customers and establish an omni-channel presence through chatbots at reduced costs. The idea is both promising and implementable but is it workable in an environment where customers want to interact with real humans. They’re certainly reassessing their priority.

But can bots overcome personalization issues?

Well that’s exactly where AI comes into play. Currently, tech startups are testing chatbots boosted with machine learning, natural language processing to offer sales and customer support.

In the league of good bots (crawlers, transactional bots, informational bots) vs bad bots(hackers, scarpers, spammers, impersonators), chatbots have developed a personality similar to that of a human. They have seen at least 4 generations of evolution starting from a rudimentary FAQ bot to a sophisticated AI-driven bot that can serve all aspects of conversational commerce by delivering convenience and personalization. Now these bots have already started to improve an online shopper’s experience.

In fact, more shoppers enjoy their interaction with chatbots that can address their queries and make recommendations. At the same time, entrepreneurs and startups are searching for competitive chatbots to integrate in their business for better engagement and customer retention. Here’s how these bots can be categorized.

Chatbot evolution: Breaking down the generations

Generation 1: bots answering FAQ

Generation 2: read my mind bots

Generation 3: Ai driven sophisticated interaction

Generation 4: advanced voice/image recognition

Role in conversational commerce

When e-commerce became a sensation, every brand wanted to make sure they catch up to the idea. Eventually, they were also the first to experiment with chatbots. Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa and Google Assistant soon became the virtual assistants that revolutionized the way consumers interact with brands.

Some interesting and revolutionary ideas came forth as brands joined the bandwagon. They have added their bit of creativity in both operational nature and naming of the bots. Take a look at some of past year’s chatbots:

top-chatbots-and-their-interesting-roles

Arpatech Website

Feb 2, 2018

5 Tips to Make Sure Your WordPress Blog Has the Best Fu...

Are you looking to start a WordPress blog? It can be rather challenging if you don’t know what things to consider first. Sure enough that you want your resource to be packed full of the best functionality. If you are not tech savvy, this point may also be confusing…

via GIPHY

Please don’t be scared as our blog post is aimed at helping you out with this. Herein under we will share 5 simple tips to make sure that your WP blog has a comfy set of features for all the urgent needs.

In fact, nowadays it has become much easier to launch decent websites with all those free and paid templates available out there.

You just go to a reliable marketplace and choose one of the best WordPress themes for blogs.

templates

It’s really great that you have already chosen the CMS that will power your blog. We bet you won’t regret about this.

WordPress is used by more than 25% of all websites in the world. Mastering WordPress is a piece of cake as you even won’t need to learn any tedious programming or coding.

The platform is open source, which means that thousands of developers are building resources, plugins, extensions for it, and improve the CMS in many other ways.

Yes, WordPress has a vast ecosystem. It’s community of talented and creative wordpress developers, designers and technologists are crafting all the above things that are available for free, which enables you to build an awesome site, say picking out a template from WordPress themes for business.

In a word, WordPress gives you the utmost design flexibility, best search engine optimization, tons of tools and plugins to optimize, personalize, and tweak your site’s look and performance.

However, starting off can be hard. That’s why we created a kind of brief checklist of the must-have WP blog features.

checklist

WordPress has numerous features that make it the right choice for most bloggers. This is the reason why so many people love it.

But let’s get to the meat. Here are 5 key features to check before purchasing a WP theme for your blog.

Design. You can literally do whatever you wish out of a WordPress theme. WordPress has a bunch of free themes out of the box, but you can buy a host of premium themes for nearly $50. A ready-made premium design will bring the look and feel of your website to the next level. If you have the technical knowledge or know someone who has it, you can add all sorts of custom items to your blog using code.
Responsive nature and cross-browser compatibility. A responsive website will adjust to any screen resolution of the device it is being displayed at. Cross browser compatible blogs will perform the same perfect in all browsers. This leads to greater UX and enhanced SEO, which is very important for your resource.
Search engine optimization. There is no sense in having the most beautiful website design if nobody visits it. WordPress blogs naturally organize your content the way that is optimized for Google’s search engine. That means your posts will get public attention if you follow best SEO practices and produce great content.
Shortcodes and widgets. Shortcodes simplify the embedding of media content. You can also use them for post output, elements, grids, lists, tabs, video and audio, Google Map, and much more. If Theme Customizer is available in your WP theme pack, even your kid will cope with editing your page via it. The best thing is that you can view the amendments you’ve done in real time, just using the Preview function for the purpose.
Extensive documentation and 24/7 support. Quality WordPress themes have semantically awesome code that explains itself. But you can take a look into neatly packed docs that cover and explain many bases for you. If you still have issues with your WP theme, free expert 24/7 support is always there to solve it.

Your turn

Of course, this list can be continued. We highlighted only 5 key points to consider if you want your WP blog to have the best functionality. What features do you consider the most essential for a fully functional blog? Please don’t be shy to post your additions in the comments section.

Cheers!

Arpatech Website

Jan 30, 2018

15 Eye-opener Quotes on Artificial intelligence

Can we be the reason of our own damnation?

The recent ongoing debate was sparked in the wake of Artificial intelligence gaining momentum in various sectors such as healthcare, transport, retail and beyond. The fear of unknown in tech world is not unheard of. There was a similar hysteria when cloud computing was introduced, but this time it’s not just conspiracy theories that are forming resistance. Some of the tech giants and science prodigies are continuously sounding the alarm. While major investors are optimistic and actively dissing all possibilities of AI taking over or loss of jobs on massive scale as a result of AI driven automation, the case presented by Elon Musk, Jack Ma and the likes is worth considering.

Seems like an era of war of words between the tech giants.

In one camp, you will see notable supporters making their case in favor of advanced artificial intelligence. But the other side acknowledges the power and prowess yet remains critical about its uncontrolled entry into mainstream world. It is touted as that invention capable of posing an existential threat to humanity if allowed to propagate at an uncontrolled and unchecked pace.

Some tech giants are insisting we should place hurdles in its widespread proliferation before its too late. They believe the tech world is at odds because of this genuine fear that nations would compete to excel at AI and we might bear the far worse effects similar to that of the post nuclear obsession.

To put things into perspective let’s hear what the top minds say about Artificial Intelligence becoming our currency. Checkout the compilation of quotes on Artificial Intelligence.

Sounding the alarm

Interestingly, the stance promoting AI is worth listening to but the problem is that we know far too less about AI than we realize.

Conforming to AI

Another idea suggests that humans will not suffer unless they choose to conform, or else.

Some believe real intelligence can’t be replaced. So perhaps there is no reason to worry. Robots are just going to assist us in trivial and mundane tasks so that we can focus on things that matter and enjoy life.