Drones also known as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), is a small flying aircraft system that can be remotely controlled. The use of drones in construction is an innovation which is really taking off. You can learn more about the benefits of using drones in building surveying here.
So what are the top considerations for construction companies wanting to add drones to their business plan?
Battery life and flight time
A longer battery life and flight time will give you greater flexibility so this is an important feature to consider when selecting the correct drone. However, it is important to remember that with better battery life and flight time, comes higher costs. This is generally down to how much a company is willing to invest in the quality of the drone product.
Continue reading: https://www.cavendishprofessionals.com/top-tips-for-adding-drones-to-your-construction-business/

A sort of holy grail for drone policy has been a system of oversight that doesn’t stifle innovation and doesn’t overburden the legacy air traffic system. State and federal regulators, policy experts, and drone advocates have all tried their hand at achieving the unachievable since at least 2005-when the FAA granted the first unmanned civilian aircraft license. To this day, however, there has been little agreement on the best path forward for low-altitude flight.
Peering through the looking glass at a future bustling with drone traffic, it is clear that a well-thought-out technical solution to manage air traffic will be the necessary groundwork. Fortunately, the FAA and NASA have been working on a technical solution, called UTM or the Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Traffic Management System, since 2016. 
If uniformly adopted, UTM will pave the way for drone innovation. Setting our sights higher in the skies, UTM could also unlock new possibilities for the future of air travel. At a bare minimum, however, the UTM partnership has shown us that rather than a regulatory approach, a technical solution can be just as effective.
Continue reading: https://www.thecgo.org/benchmark/the-approach-to-drone-regulation-that-will-change-air-space-management/

1. Introduction
Blockchain technology has the potential to revolutionize the handling of data in all industry sectors and finance is no exception. In this brief article we seek to compare, in a broad sense, Hyperledger Fabric (HF from now on) with other leading blockchain platforms in the context of building a financial exchange. Only permissioned blockchain platforms that support smart contracts are considered, as these are indispensable features of the project at hand. In addition, we have also restricted ourselves to open-sourced platforms, since any blockchain solution would benefit greatly from a community that further develops the platform it is running on. With this criteria in mind, we will compare HF to Quorum, R3 Corda, MultiChain. It is important to keep in mind that, due to the novelty of the technology and the scarcity of test studies, this article is meant to provide only a modest guideline for comparison among the different platforms. This article is organized as follows: Section 2 is meant to provide some generic information about each of the platforms. Section 3 is meant to display some aspects that make HF stand out among the other platforms. In Section 4, we present some non-functional requirements that any exchange platform would have to possess. Lastly, in Section 5 we compare the different platforms against these requirements.
Continue reading: https://www.tradeheader.com/blog/hyperledger-fabric-comparative

Blockchain technology has the potential to disrupt many traditional industries especially financial services such as Asset Management, Lending, Trade Finance, Remittances, etc. As per a PwC report on Global Fintech, 77% of financial institutions are expected to use or try out blockchain in their production system by 2020. Funding on blockchain-based startups is at an all-time high, exceeding over a billion in the last 5 years. 
What Is Blockchain?
Blockchain is a type of distributed ledger technology (DLT). DLT allows the recording of transactions through a shared database among a network of computers. It is decentralized, cryptographically secure, and updateable in an immutable manner. The distributed network eliminates the need for control by a single authority. 
In the case of remittance payments, blockchain technology holds the potential to remove intermediaries enabling peer-to-peer transfer, cut down cross-border transaction costs, and address shortcomings of current payment systems such as speed, access, and transparency.
Continue reading: https://www.compareremit.com/money-transfer-guide/impact-of-blockchain-technology-on-western-union-and-moneygram/

In 2009—four years after it was published—I read Ray Kurzweil’s The Singularity Is Near. It is an optimistic view of the future—a future that depends on computational technology. A future of superintelligent machines. It is also a future where humans will transcend our present biological limits.
I had to read the book twice—once for the sense and once for the detail.
After that, just for my own interest, year-in, year-out, I started to track this future; that meant a weekly read through New Scientist, Wired, the excellent technology pieces in the New York Times and the Atlantic, as well as following the money via the Economist and Financial Times. I picked up any new science and tech books that came out, but it wasn’t enough for me. I felt I wasn’t seeing the bigger picture.
How did we get here?
Where might we go?
I am a storyteller by trade—and I know everything we do is a fiction until it’s a fact: the dream of flying, the dream of space travel, the dream of speaking to someone instantly, across time and space, the dream of not dying—or of returning. The dream of life-forms, not human, but alongside the human. Other realms. Other worlds.
Continue reading: https://lithub.com/more-life-into-a-time-without-boundaries-jeanette-winterson-considers-the-bigger-picture-of-ai/

Up until recently, implementing artificial intelligence was cost-prohibitive for many companies – but now companies can use third-party artificial intelligence as a service (AIaaS) solutions to get the benefits of AI without the high price and large time investment of custom in-house development.
According to ResearchandMarkets.com, the global market for AIaaS solutions is expected to reach around $11.6 billion by 2024.
What Is AIaaS?
Artificial intelligence as a service combines the power of computer systems that can perform human-like tasks (like problem-solving, pattern recognition, and learning) with the flexibility and affordability of third-party service solutions.
With AIaaS, AI technology can be accessible to any company. Even small organizations or departments with limited budgets can implement AI solutions to improve their products, services, and processes using low- or no-code software and APIs.
Continue reading: https://bernardmarr.com/what-is-artificial-intelligence-as-a-service-aiaas/

We are moving towards a data driven world with every passing day. Even the smallest devices around us have become “data juggernauts”, constantly dishing out data into various technology and information ecosystems.
However, this terabytes of data being generated every second, or even millisecond, brings certain costs and overheads along with it. Perhaps the most notable and obvious one of these overheads is the storage of this vast amounts of data.
Most of the readers would agree that there is a certain “emotional cost” of data which you already have on hand. No matter how outdated or irrelevant the data lying around you may be, you would feel a certain hesitation in getting rid of that data.
Then, there is the dreaded fear of the unknown, when you convince yourself that you may come to need this data one fine day, so better to keep it instead of getting rid of it right now. When doing so, we often forget that data storage has limitations attached to it.
As soon as the volume of data crosses a certain threshold, which may vary depending on the nature of data that we are talking about and the relevant industry, it would no more be economically viable to hold onto any more data.
Continue reading: https://www.dincloud.com/blog/the-future-of-edge-computing-and-the-problems-it-solves

As technology extends deeper into every aspect of business, the tip of the spear is often some device at the outer edge of the network, whether a connected industrial controller, a soil moisture sensor, a smartphone, or a security cam.
This ballooning internet of things is already collecting petabytes of data, some of it processed for analysis and some of it immediately actionable. So an architectural problem arises: You don’t want to connect all those devices and stream all that data directly to some centralized cloud or company data center. The latency and data transfer costs are too high.
That’s where edge computing comes in. It provides the “intermediating infrastructure and critical services between core datacenters and intelligent endpoints,” as the research firm IDC puts it. In other words, edge computing provides a vital layer of compute and storage physically close to IoT endpoints, so that control devices can respond with low latency – and edge analytics processing can reduce the amount of data that needs to be transferred to the core.
Continue reading: https://www.networkworld.com/article/3636499/edge-computing-the-architecture-of-the-future.html

M3 Agriculture Technologies combines drones with Helium-compatible sensors to improve the economics of sustainable agriculture production in the air and on the ground.
How often do you think about where your food comes from before you consume it? Whether you consider it or not, every item in the grocery store requires labor, transportation, and technology to ultimately reach you. While the process of agriculture production and consumption is not standardized, it is a requirement of every global economy. Unfortunately, agriculture production also faces serious challenges.
The UN Sustainable Development Goals list “Zero Hunger” as Goal 2, noting that “135 million globally suffer from acute hunger largely due to man-made conflicts, climate change, and economic downturns. The COVID-19 pandemic could now double that number, putting an additional 130 million people at risk of suffering acute hunger by the end of 2020.”
Continue reading: https://blog.helium.com/m3-delivers-sustainable-agtech-to-the-peoples-network-using-drones-5916cbbf9432

Saving money and boosting safety and efficiency at construction sites is easier than ever with the industry’s new secret weapon: drones. Also called unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, drones are airborne robots that can be flown autonomously or via remote control. They come in a variety of sizes and designs, but all function in essentially the same way.
The UAV is equipped with a data link that allows it to communicate with its ground control station, or GCS, which is usually either a remote control or a computer. The drone may also be able to carry a payload, depending on its weight capabilities. This could be anything from a package to a sensor or data collection device. Many drones come with built-in cameras, as well.
These high-flying robots can help save your team incredible amounts of time and money at construction sites. In fact, in 2018, construction experienced higher growth in drone usage than any other industry. With a little flight training, you can have a drone up and running at your site in no time, creating opportunities to speed up your project timeline, increase site safety, and reduce costs in numerous ways.
Continue reading: https://mechanical-hub.com/ways-contractors-are-transforming-drones-into-cost-saving-tools/

Today’s Woman in Tech: Bernadette Nixon, CEO at Algolia
Bernadette is an entrepreneurial & driven CEO with a strong track record of growing and scaling global businesses and is focused on doing that at Algolia. Prior to Algolia, she served as CEO at Alfresco where she led the open source content services provider in redefining its go-to-market strategy, launching strategic new products and building a world-class team to scale the company’s growth. Bernadette has also held leadership positions at SDL PLC., OpenText, Metastorm, CA Technologies, InterQuad, NCR, and the United Nations in Geneva. Bernadette received her BA in Business Studies and Marketing from the University of Hertfordshire.
Algolia provides an API platform for dynamic experiences that enable organizations to predict intent and deliver results. Algolia achieves this with an API-first approach that allows developers and business teams to surface relevant content when wanted — satisfying the demand for instant gratification — and building and optimizing online experiences that enhance online engagement, increase conversion rates, and enrich lifetime value to generate profitable growth. More than 10,000 companies including Under Armour, Lacoste, Birchbox, Stripe, Slack, Medium, and Zendesk rely on Algolia to manage over 1.5 trillion search queries a year. Algolia is headquartered in San Francisco with offices in New York, Atlanta, Paris, London, and Bucharest. 
Continue reading: https://jaxenter.com/women-in-tech-nixon-175739.html

Once upon a time
Upon entering the tech industry WeTal founder Charlotte was soon faced with a harsh reality - the tech industry was a male dominated and not very inclusive. Throughout her career she was met with disbelief and doubt: can girls code?
Taking initiative
Charlotte saw a rapidly growing need to make the tech industry a space where competencies from diverse individuals are seen, valued and embraced. She wanted to wash off the “boys club” stamp that has tainted the tech industry for a long time and show that women can - and women want to code.
Continue reading: https://wetal.com/we-include/story-behind

I’m a proud nerd working in tech!  I’m a natural empath and relator with a technical background, which means I get to understand how technology works, build it, play with it, and talk to all different kinds of people about it.
I’m incredibly lucky to have fallen into something I love so much.  I was the enthusiastic one at school – that hasn’t changed – and, not knowing what I wanted to do with my life, studied Math and Computer Science at university because my brain loves problem solving.  Unlike most of my mainly male peers, I’d never coded before and had a horribly steep learning curve to catch up with them, before coming out the other side and becoming a fulltime programmer after I graduated.
A couple of years in, I decided I wanted more interaction with people and joined MuleSoft, a pre-IPO startup, as the first woman in the pre-sales team, not knowing what any of that meant but thinking it sounded like a fun challenge.  What followed was another steep learning curve, but one so rewarding at the same time that it really defined my career and the core of my professional identity.
I loved it so much, in fact, that several years later after Mulesoft IPOed and got acquired, I wanted to do the whole thing again and joined another start-up called Kong.  At Kong, we power the connected world, with the world’s most widely used API gateway.  I’m the Field CTO, and I love my job: I get to use my creativity, empathy, and technical knowledge to bring to life the art of the possible with Kong technology.  I tell stories to inspire change and get to learn from and brainstorm with some of the most innovative companies in the world.
Continue reading: https://wearetechwomen.com/inspirational-woman-melissa-van-der-hecht-field-cto-kong/

Brookings Institute released a report on the emerging and fast-growing artificial intelligence (AI) economy across the United States, with AI-related projects occurring in federal facilities and universities, finding that start-ups using AI solutions have grown five-fold from a decade ago.
While the job market for AI-related jobs is growing, it is still small in the U.S. job market, with AI job postings accounting for two million, or one percent, of almost 22 million U.S. job postings. 
A combination of Black, Hispanics and the Indigenous population make up five percent of Silicon Valley, according to a Wired survey. A Trustradius survey found that 65 percent of minorities say that diversity in the tech industry has increased in the last decade. 
Some metro areas are growing in the tech-provider industry. Cities like Atlanta have 85 percent diversity in the tech industry, Dallas has 72 percent and Chicago at 71 percent. 
Continue reading: https://www.tpinsights.com/free-articles/ai-can-bring-more-equity-to-the-workplace-and-consumer-markets-by-implementing-these-conditions

Concerned by the sharp rise in natural disasters around the world, a team of AI researchers at Mila is launching a website that lets people see the potential impact of climate change on any address, anywhere on the planet.
A different type of simulation
This Climate Does Not Exist invites users to project themselves into environments transformed by climate change. What would a place look like if it was hit by flooding, wildfires or smog? Using a complex algorithm, the site generates a realistic filter of the effects of climate change on any location in Google Street View. The experience raises awareness in users about the possible scenarios if the world’s response to climate change continues to fall short.
“If nothing is done soon, we can expect major climate disturbances,” says Yoshua Bengio, Mila’s scientific director and head of the research team behind This Climate Does Not Exist. “By showing images of how climate change could affect the places we hold dear, this website makes the risks of climate change that much more real and personal. We hope this will motivate people to take action to prevent the worst-case scenarios from coming true.”
Continue reading: https://mila.quebec/en/imagine-the-climate-future-in-your-neighbourhood-or-anywhere-else-using-artificial-intelligence/

Helping organizations, teams and individuals be agile in a distributed, mobile and flexible workplace.
At The SMART Workplace we help you thrive in a mobile, flexible workplace – with as much or as little support as you need. We support organizations and teams to be more agile, mobile, and collaborative. We coach change champions to develop and reinforce networked, collaborative cultures and develop leaders to collaborate virtually and face-to-face, building relationship competencies in a digitally-driven workplace.
http://www.thesmartworkplace.com/

While there have been many papers and just as many discussions about the value that artificial intelligence can bring to the digital workplace, there has been less discussion about whether enterprises should use AI, and even less as to whether workers can genuinely work with it.  
AI Working With Enterprise Workers
While a lot of the coverage AI receives in the media looks to the positives of AI — unless, of course, that coverage is about the possibility that AI will result in the suppression of jobs — there is also recent research from MIT that questions whether humans are capable of working with AI or not. A recent article by Kylie Foy from the MIT Lincoln Laboratory argues that while AI programs have far surpassed the best players in the world in games that are generally considered essentially human, humans didn’t appear to enjoy playing, or collaborating, with AI.
In the study, Foy explained, MIT Lincoln Laboratory researchers sought to find out how well humans could play the cooperative card game Hanabi with an advanced AI model trained to excel at playing with teammates it has never met before. In the game not only were the scores no better with the AI teammate than with the rule-based agent, but humans consistently hated playing with their AI teammate. They found it to be unpredictable, unreliable, and untrustworthy, and felt negatively even when the team scored well.    
Continue reading: https://www.reworked.co/digital-workplace/can-enterprise-workers-really-work-well-with-ai/

Susan Kostbar
Sr. Director, Member Relations, Vendor and Distributor at CompTIA https://www.linkedin.com/in/susan-kostbar-332974/

Only 20% of U.S. companies are fully deploying artificial intelligence (AI) for decision-making in their businesses based on survey responses from 1,000 senior business executives.
According to the news site Axios, 61% of organizations are just starting to adopt AI for decision-making, while 19% are categorized as having barely begun. Surveyed business leaders are hesitant to adopt AI because many organizations—particularly non-tech companies—“don’t completely trust it” and “can’t tap the talent they need.” However, businesses that decide not to adopt the technology risk falling behind.
“The majority of executives get stuck in a vicious circle where when they first try AI, the first wave of results tend to be underwhelming,” Ben Pring, managing director at Cognizant’s Center for the Future of Work, a consulting firm that conducted the survey, told Axios. “You have to work at it and you have to learn how to optimize it.”
Organizations need to hire professionals skilled in AI to solve the problem. However, competition for them is fierce. While there is an expectation among business leaders that AI should reduce their reliance on employees, the reality, according to Pring, is that they still need employees who know how to deploy the technology.
Continue reading: https://innovationatwork.ieee.org/three-ways-to-prepare-your-workforce-for-artificial-intelligence/

We’ve all heard about it, we all come into contact with it, but what is blockchain and how will it impact global banking? With fintechs leading the way in the digital transformation of banking, what are the practical applications of blockchain and how will it shape the future digital bank?
In today’s globalized environment, with regulatory demands and competition from fintechs and others, institutions that cannot meet these challenges may not be viable in the long term.
Regulatory demands and competition from fintechs, disruptors and others, especially in today’s globalized environment are posing a long term viability challenge to those institutions that cannot match these agile digitally focused organizations.
With the emergence of blockchain technology, a new revolution is underway: the industry is embarking on transformation, from operational processes, to different business markets such as payment services, real estate, insurance, asset management, crowdfunding and lending to leverage the advantages it offers.
Continue reading: https://atos.net/en/industries/banking/digital-vision-digital-banking/blockchain-revolutionizing-banking

When people think of the internet of things (IoT), they think of a smart device or sensor, but if you want to build an IoT solution, there are six layers that must be considered. Each layer has its own requirements and considerations as well as security ramifications to achieve successful business outcomes and ensure data privacy and compliance. The six layers include:

• Layer 1: IoT Devices
• Layer 2: Edge Computing
• Layer 3: Connectivity & Data Transport
• Layer 4: IoT Platforms
• Layer 5: Data Management
• Layer 6: IoT Applications

In The Six Layers of an IoT Solution guide, the CompTIA IoT Advisory Council has broken these layers down and provided overarching guidance on IoT security to help enterprise CIOs, IT solution providers, and aspiring IT practitioners understand IoT solutions holistically.
Read more: https://connect.comptia.org/content/guides/6-layers-of-an-iot-solution

The public may not understand the 5G edge or network slicing but they are not hard to grasp. A good analogy is to think of 5G as being like the international airline business with aircraft flying passengers and cargo all over the globe all the time, and the airport as the edge. Here many different services are on offer to passengers, from baggage handling to baguettes, and even more for business to business, from air control to aviation fuel. Many of the airport’s services do not impact and are of no relevance to the massive global industry and infrastructure behind the airport, and it’s the same with the edge. Much of the data is gathered, processed, analyzed and acted on close to where it is generated and stored locally – none or only a portion of it needs to traverse the network, depending on the application. Like dedicated network slices enabled by 5G at the edge, the services on offer at the airport are tailored and scaled to meet specific needs at particular times, and support many different business and operational models.  
Continue reading: https://www.mobileeurope.co.uk/features-me/16156-what-are-the-use-cases-for-5g-edge-computing

Aquiline Drones Corp. (AD) quips that, “All roads lead to AI.” Recent developments in artificial intelligence (AI) integration make that statement hard to argue against, and the astute application of AI to AD’s cloud-based services also makes a lot of sense. So, smart drones are a real thing. But are they smart enough to solve problems and create a return on investment?
I’ve already written about AI in relation to the supply chain and automation, and with good reason. According to a report by Grand View Research, worldwide revenues for the AI market, including software, hardware, and services, are forecast to grow 40.2 percent annually, topping $997.77 billion by the end of 2028. Now, with AD acquiring ElluminAI Labs, I’m exploring AI in the realm of commercial aerial drones.
AI enabled drones
According to AD, the acquisition of ElluminAI Labs is the second strategic acquisition in the company’s pre-IPO plan. The first being the purchase of 50 percent of Netherlands-based Aerialtronics, a renowned drone manufacturer, for $9 million from Paris-based Drone Volt. The purchase was principally to bolster AD’s in-house R&D capabilities.
The acquisition of ElluminAI Labs enables AD to incorporate deep learning AI frameworks throughout its entire drone technology ecosystem which includes manufacturing, pilot training, drone business operations, and cloud solutions, all on a global scale.
Continue reading: https://www.qualitydigest.com/inside/innovation-column/ai-sky-deep-learning-drones-101121.html

Tessa Wijaya describes herself as “a unicorn among unicorns among unicorns.”
As an Indonesian woman running a $1 billion financial technology start-up in Southeast Asia, she is a rather rare breed.
Women leaders in tech are uncommon. This is especially true in fintech, where they hold 7% of leadership positions. But Wijaya said she is hoping that will change by showing more women and girls they can follow the path less traveled.
“I really do want to encourage more women to be in tech,” the millennial entrepreneur told CNBC Make It.
A $1 billion female founder
Wijaya is the co-founder and chief operations officer of Xendit, an Indonesian fintech platform that processes digital payments for businesses in Southeast Asia, like Grab, Wise and Traveloka.
Since launching in 2015, Xendit has grown rapidly. Today, it processes more than 65 million transactions worth $6.5 billion annually. It reached the $1 billion “unicorn” status in September.
Continue reading: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/12/xendit-tessa-wijaya-on-being-a-woman-in-tech-building-a-unicorn.html