Loud and clear: AI is improving Assistant conversations
To get things done with the Google Assistant, it needs to understand you – it has to both recognize the words you’re saying, and also know what you mean. It should adapt to your way of talking, not require you to say exactly the right words in the right order.
Understanding spoken language is difficult because it’s so contextual, and varies so much from person to person. And names can bring up other language hiccups — for instance, some names that are spelled the same are pronounced differently. It’s this kind of complexity that makes perfectly understanding the way we speak so difficult. This is something we’re working on with Assistant, and we have a few new improvements to share.
Teach Google to recognize unique names
Names matter, and it’s frustrating when you’re trying to send a text or make a call and Google Assistant mispronounces or simply doesn’t recognize a contact. We want Assistant to accurately recognize and pronounce people’s names as often as possible, especially those that are less common.
Starting over the next few days, you can teach Google Assistant to enunciate and recognize names of your contacts the way you pronounce them. Assistant will listen to your pronunciation and remember it, without keeping a recording of your voice. This means Assistant will be able to better understand you when you say those names, and also be able to pronounce them correctly. The feature will be available in English and we hope to expand to more languages soon.
A good conversation is all about context
Assistant’s timers are a popular tool, and plenty of us set more than one of them at the same time. Maybe you’ve got a 10-minute timer for dinner going at the same time as another to remind the kids to start their homework in 20 minutes. You might fumble and stop mid sentence to correct how long the timer should be set for, or maybe you don’t use the exact same phrase to cancel it as you did to create it. Like in any conversation, context matters and Assistant needs to be flexible enough to understand what you’re referring to when you ask for help.
To help with these kinds of conversational complexities, we fully rebuilt Assistant’s NLU models so it can now more accurately understand context while also improving its “reference resolution” — meaning it knows exactly what you’re trying to do with a command. This upgrade uses machine learning technology powered by state-of-the-art BERT, a technology we invented in 2018 and first brought to Search that makes it possible to process words in relation to all the other words in a sentence, rather than one-by-one in order. Because of these improvements, Assistant can now respond nearly 100 percent accurately to alarms and timer tasks. And over time, we’ll bring this capability to other use cases, so Assistant can learn to better understand you.
Tips and shortcuts for a more productive spring
In my previous life as a startup entrepreneur, I found that life was more manageable when I was able to stay organized — a task that’s easier said than done. At Google Registry, we’ve been keeping an eye out for productivity and organization tools, and we’re sharing a few of our favorites with you today, just in time for spring cleaning.
.new shortcuts to save you time
Since launching .new shortcuts last year, we’ve seen a range of companies use .new domains to help their users get things done faster on their websites.
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If your digital workspace looks anything like mine, you’ll love these shortcuts: action.new creates a new Workona workspace to organize your Chrome tabs, and task.new helps keep track of your to-dos and projects in Asana.
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Bringing together notes and ideas can make it easier to get work done: coda.new creates a new Coda document to collect all your team’s thoughts, and jam.new starts a new collaborative Google Jamboard session.
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Spring cleaning wouldn’t be complete without a tidy cupboard: With sell.new you can create an eBay listing in minutes and free up some closet space. And if you own or manage a business, stay on top of your orders and keep services flowing by giving the shortcut — invoice.new — a try.
Visit whats.new to browse all the .new shortcuts, including our Spring Spotlights section.
Six startups helping you increase productivity
We recently sat down with six startups to learn how they’re helping their clients be more productive. From interviewing and hiring, to managing teamwork, calendars and meetings, check out these videos to learn how you can make the most of your time:
Arc.dev connects developers with companies hiring remotely, helping them find their next opportunity.
The founders of byteboard.dev, who came through Area 120, Google’s in-house incubator for experimental projects, thought that technical interviews were inefficient. So they redesigned them from the ground up to be more fair and relevant to real-world jobs.
To run more efficient meetings, try fellow.app. Streamlining agendas, note taking, action items and decision recording can help your team build great meeting habits.
Friday.app helps you organize your day so you can stay focused while sharing and collaborating with remote teammates.
Manage your time productively using inmotion.app, a browser extension that puts your time on auto-pilot.
No time to take your pet to the groomers? Find a groomer who will come to you and treat your pet to an in-home grooming session with pawsh.app.
Whether you’re a pet parent, a busy professional or just looking to sell your clutter online, we hope these tools help you organize and save time this season.
Marketer’s Toolkit: 10+ New Tools To Enhance Your B2B Marketing Stack
How can B2B marketers improve their content in refreshing new ways, and also add to their stack of marketing skills?
In 2021 most B2B marketers are busier than ever due to the pandemic, the challenges of remote work, and increased expectations to show results.
This makes finding the time to research and locate useful new marketing-related software tools and services a challenge.
Don’t worry, however, as we’ve got 10+ new or updated tools that can enhance your B2B marketing stack, from digital imaging and video to data insights and more.
We’ll take a look at some of these helpful tools for today’s busy marketers, to help refine and augment your B2B marketing strategy now and into our post-pandemic future.
Sorting through vast lists of seemingly endless marketing tools and platforms can be frustrating, as well as a hit and miss proposition, so we’ve put this collection together so that you can skip the search and get right into tools you can use today to help create memorable B2B marketing stories.
Let’s start right in with our collection of 10+ handy tools to augment your marketing stack.
1 — MindMeister
With MindMeister, a mind mapping tool from MeisterLabs, marketers can visually organize and diagram all manner of information and uncover fascinating connections that might otherwise remain hidden.
Brainstorm new ideas, map out project plans in a variety of ways, mark up information, all in a collaborative and sharing online environment — these are all areas where MindMeister can prove helpful in many B2B marketing efforts.
MindMeister offers a free basic version that lets you create three mind maps, along with subscription plans suited for anywhere from personal to enterprise uses. Find @MindMeister on Twitter.
2 — Google Stack
Area 120 is Google’s in-house project incubator, which recently released Stack — an experimental document digitization and organization app that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze all scanned content.
For B2B organizations that have found the move to paperless less of a paradise and more of a digital abyss, Google’s Stack and it’s AI technology — along with easy and secure integration with Google Drive — will be a welcome addition to the organization category.
Conversion to PDF is done by taking snapshots of documents, and presently the app is available only for Android devices. Read Google’s Stack announcement on the Area 120 blog.
3 — CoSchedule’s Subject Line Tester Tool
Marketers looking for a fresh take on potential new email campaign or newsletter subject lines can try CoSchedule’s Subject Line Tester tool.
This tool offers numerous recommendations, visual previews, and ratings for potential subject line choices, including sentiment and length analysis and keyword insight. It also offers a word balance feature showing a particular subject line’s emotional power and whether it is particularly common or on the rare side, in addition to other helpful analysis.
Similar subject line analysis tools exist, and for those who haven’t yet tried CoSchedule’s implementation, running a test may point out new considerations for improving and optimizing your next email campaign. The tool is just one of CoSchedule’s sizable array of marketing organization features. Find @CoSchedule on Twitter.
4 — Keyword Insights
Keyword Insights is a combination keyword clustering, intent, context, and ranking tool presently in beta test status, providing a new glimpse into data that can help create a more informed content marketing strategy.
Features offered by Keyword Insights include unique topic cluster reports and keyword search intent data, allowing marketers to import their keywords in nearly any format and see numerous data-backed suggestions.
The tool can also show rank-tracked output with such information as search volume, suggestions on additional keywords to target, and which URLs may perform better if they were split into separate pages. Find @KeywordInsights on Twitter.
5 — Monster Mash
Google AI recently released Monster Mash, a tool that allows marketers to turn basic sketches into 3D animations without the involvement of designers or developers, creating an element which can add more visual excitement to top-notch marketing content.
An online example of what the new Google AI tool can accomplish lets users draw online and then inflate and animate their two-dimensional sketches into moving 3D works. Find @GoogleAI on Twitter.
6 — WebVitals Cumulative Layout Shift Debugger (CLS)
WebVitals Cumulative Layout Shift Debugger (CLS) is a free tool built by former Google engineer Fili Wiese, allowing marketers to examine and find where to improve on Google’s CLS user-centric metric for webpage layouts.
“The Cumulative Layout Shift Debugger uses the Layout Instability API in Chromium to detect and measure the layout shifts in the viewport between when a web page starts loading and when it finishes loading and calculates its cumulative layout shift score,” the utility’s instructions note, and the tool presents this information visually using squares.
CLS is a key part of Google’s Core Web Vitals measurements, and brands can use WebVitals Cumulative Layout Shift Debugger to optimize existing mobile and desktop page layouts, or test new ones.
7 — Grammarly
Grammarly, while not necessarily a new tool, has continually refined and added to its online writing assistance product, which comes in plans ranging from free to those tailored to teams of up to 149 users.
Going far beyond spelling grammar, and punctuation suggestions into areas including mobile writing tone detection, warnings to avoid overused language, and optimal formatting suggestions, the Grammarly of 2021 offers many new and helpful features for B2B marketers looking to take their writing to the next level. Find @Grammarly on Twitter.
We’re also looking out for you on that front, and recently published “B2B Content Marketing: 10 Tips to Level Up Your Writing Skills,” by our senior content marketing manager Joshua Nite.
8 — Ryte’s Keyword Cannibalisation Report
Ryte’s Keyword Cannibalisation Report helps marketers track down multiple web pages that may be ranked by Google for the same keyword and which could potentially be digitally cannibalizing your own site, and instead allowing the pages to implement changes that avoid the issue.
The Keyword Cannibalisation Report helps pinpoint situations including poor internal linking practices, similar or duplicate content, title or description markup, inconsistent anchor text use, and more. Find @Ryte_EN on Twitter.
A similar free alternative Cannibalisation Explorer tool, using Google Data Studio and Google Search Console data, has been made available by SEO consultant Hannah Rampton, offering another take on this often-valuable data.
9 — Loom
Loom’s powerful video messaging tools have also been updated, especially during the pandemic, which has seen a massive increase in the use of online video communication.
Recently passing the ten million user threshold, Loom has updated its cloud-based video editing capabilities, utilizing a real-time video transformation layer to make even the longest videos editable online.
Loom has also continued to build integrations with other tools such as Miro and Pitch, creating new levels of dynamic collaboration opportunities for marketers who use the platforms. Find @Loom on Twitter.
10 — Agorapulse Power Reports
Agorapulse has added new premium Power Reports, advanced tools for handling multiple social media accounts, adding to the social media management system’s fine existing collection of helpful inbox, publishing, reporting, monitoring and team collaboration tools.
The new Agorapulse Power Reports options allow marketers to report on up to 10 social media profiles, with scheduled reporting, problem area identification, content ideas and suggestions, customized comparison and demographic data, and more. Find @Agorapulse on Twitter.
Build Your Own B2B Marketing Super Stack Of Helpful Tools
It’s not the marketing tools alone that make for enchanting customer experiences. Skilled and creative use of the vast digital palette we’re all fortunate to have at our fingertips requires dedication, time, and a healthy dose of vision.
B2B marketers can create great content by combining existing tools in new ways, building digital assets that sing a unique song that will help brands weave stories that truly stand out.
We hope you’ve found our look at a handful of new and updated marketing tools helpful as you build new campaigns throughout 2021, and that they’ll also contribute to your own team’s knowledge and inspiration.
Need more useful marketing tools? Here are several articles we’ve written exploring additional tools for B2B marketers:
- 5 More Handy Tools For 2021’s Busy B2B Marketers
- Inside Influence 11: Marshall Kirkpatrick from Sprinklr on Elevating B2B Content with Influencers
- Inside Influence 7: Pierre-Loïc Assayag from Traackr on Influencer Marketing Technology
- Inside Influence 13: Tim Williams from Onalytica on Optimizing B2B Influencer Experiences
- 5 Unheralded SEO Tools for Content Marketers
- 10 Fresh Social Media Marketing Tools To Boost Brand Storytelling
- 31 DIY Marketing Tools To Create Remarkable Experiences
- 10 Smart Question Research Tools for B2B Marketers
- How B2B Marketers Can Make the Most of Interactive Content Tools
- The Content Marketer’s Toolbox: 3 ‘Real-Life’ Tools for Gaining Insight, Inspiration, & Amplification
The post Marketer’s Toolkit: 10+ New Tools To Enhance Your B2B Marketing Stack appeared first on B2B Marketing Blog – TopRank®.
Sony ha già venduto 7.8 milioni di PlayStation 5
La pandemia da COVID-19, ne abbiamo già parlato più volte in passato, ha provocato un vero e proprio boom del settore videoludico. Da anni non si vendevano così tanti videogiochi e così tante console in tutto il Mondo e tra le aziende che più ne hanno beneficiato c’è Sony, che sul finire dello scorso anno ha lanciato la nuova PlayStation 5, oggetto del desiderio di milioni di videogiocatori.
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, finisher brevi grazie all’update
Molti utenti avranno già collezionato dozzine (e forse anche centinaia) di ore di gioco in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, ma ora Ubisoft aggiunge una comoda funzionalità per risparmiare tempo. Con l’aggiornamento 1.2.1 di Valhalla, adesso disponibile su Xbox, PlayStation, PC, Stadia e Amzona Luna, lo studio francese ha introdotto un pulsante a due posizioni che consente di disattivare le brevi animazioni cinematografiche riprodotte quando il proprio personaggio esegue una finisher.
Helpful tools for when you’re ready to travel
As vaccines become more available, many people are eager to start planning vacations again. We’re seeing more searches for travel-related destination information — like travel restrictions by country and where to travel, which both recently hit all-time highs. If you’re ready to plan a trip, here are a few updates to keep you informed on the latest travel guidance and explore potential destinations.
Stay up to date on travel guidance
When you look for travel information like flights, hotels or things to do, Search will let you know if there are COVID-19 related travel advisories or restrictions for your destination. Now, we’re adding more travel restriction details, like whether you’ll need to quarantine upon arrival or provide proof of test results or immunization records.
You can now also track travel advisories or restrictions for your destination and get email updates. If you are signed into your Google account, you can toggle “Receive an email if this guidance changes.” You’ll be notified when restrictions are added, lifted or reduced. These updates are country-specific, with state-specific information available in the United States.
Google triplica i ricavi: è record di fatturato
Google ha pubblicato oggi il resoconto finanziario dell’azienda per l’ultimo quarto fiscale, svelando dei ricavi davvero impressionanti. Il colosso di Mountain View ha dichiarato ricavi per 55,3 miliardi di dollari, facendo registrare un ottimo +34% rispetto allo stesso periodo del 2020. Il reddito operativo è stato invece di 16,4 miliardi di dollari (+106,1%), con un margine di operatività pari al 30%.
TikTok, aperto Centro europeo di Trasparenza e Responsabilità
TikTok ha annunciato l’apertura di un Centro di Trasparenza e Responsabilità in Europa con sede in Irlanda. L’azienda prevede che la struttura possa essere completamente operativa entro il 2022, inizialmente solo in modalità virtuale a causa delle restrizioni per il Covid-19. Spiega Alexandra Evans, Head of Child Safety, Europe – TikTok:
Pillola anti Covid-19, ecco come si svolgono i test
Ieri vi abbiamo parlato di una nuova pillola per combattere il Covid-19 che l’azienda farmaceutica statunitense Pfizer starebbe testando in queste settimane in due laboratori segreti, uno negli Stati Uniti e uno in Belgio. Ebbene, il Sunday Telegraph ha ottenuto delle copie dei documenti consegnati ai partecipanti ai test e le informazioni che emergono sono piuttosto interessanti e curiose.
Russia, maxi multa ad Apple per abuso di posizione dominante
Il Servizio federale russo anti-monopoli (FAS) ha inflitto una multa di 12 milioni di dollari alla Apple per abuso di posizione dominante nella distribuzione di applicazioni mobili su sistema operativo iOS. E’ quanto rivelato dall’agenzia di stampa moscovita Ria Novosti, che riporta una nota proprio della Federal Antimonopoly Service of Russia.
Christie’s annuncia la nuova asta NFT di Tatler
In esclusiva Tatler , siamo lieti di dare la notizia del prossimo Christie’s Post-War and Contemporary Art Day Sale Trailblazers: Centuries of Female Abstraction , che si terrà il 14 maggio 2021. Celebrando le donne dell’espressionismo astratto, l’asta sarà presenta agli intenditori sia dell’arte digitale che di quella tradizionale l’opportunità rara di acquisire dipinti di Helen Frankenthaler, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Yvonne Thomas e Lynne Mapp Drexler. Ogni opera è accompagnata da un NFT…
L’articolo Christie’s annuncia la nuova asta NFT di Tatler scritto da Michele Ficara Manganelli ✿ proviene da Assodigitale.
Il gigante Binance lancia il Marketplace NFT
Changpeng Zhao, CEO di Binance, parla durante un’intervista televisiva a Tokyo, in Giappone, giovedì 11 gennaio 2018. L’exchange di criptovalute Binance ha rivelato martedì l’intenzione di introdurre il proprio mercato in cui gli utenti possono creare, acquistare e vendere oggetti da collezione digitali noti come NFT. I token non fungibili sono un tipo di risorsa digitale . Sono progettati per rappresentare la proprietà di oggetti virtuali rari, che potrebbero essere qualsiasi cosa, da opere d’arte…
L’articolo Il gigante Binance lancia il Marketplace NFT scritto da Michele Ficara Manganelli ✿ proviene da Assodigitale.
Folle speculazione NFT: ma gli va malissimo
Per mesi, Shane Dulgeroff aveva guardato gli NFT – o gettoni non fungibili – per pezzi di arte digitale, figurine di baseball e altri oggetti da collezione venduti per quantità sbalorditive . Poi, il 27enne agente immobiliare californiano ha avuto un’idea. E se avesse commissionato un rendering digitale di una casa che possedeva e l’aveva venduta all’asta come NFT, insieme alla proprietà del mondo reale? In poche settimane, ha avuto un’opera d’arte digitale in technicolor…
L’articolo Folle speculazione NFT: ma gli va malissimo scritto da Michele Ficara Manganelli ✿ proviene da Assodigitale.
NFT e artisti elettronici la nuova frontiera è raggiunta: ecco come
Sebbene gli NFT siano in circolazione da alcuni anni, il movimento è davvero decollato in modo massiccio di recente. Se sei stato sui social media in qualsiasi momento nell’ultimo mese, saprai cosa sono gli NFT, ma in caso contrario lo analizzeremo. Gli NFT, o token non fungibili per dargli il nome completo, consentono agli acquirenti di fare offerte – o acquistare direttamente – beni digitali. Questi beni digitali si presentano sotto forma di un’immagine, un’animazione,…
L’articolo NFT e artisti elettronici la nuova frontiera è raggiunta: ecco come scritto da Michele Ficara Manganelli ✿ proviene da Assodigitale.
Tips from Google’s resilience expert on avoiding burnout
A college soccer player, Lauren Whitt was sidelined by two knee injuries that took her off the field during her sophomore and junior year. This was incredibly frustrating — she’d played soccer most of her life and had even won a Pan-American gold medal with the U.S. Youth National Soccer team. She realized she was going to need to find a way to cope.
“I began to study the idea of resilience more,” Lauren says. “How it changes your body and your life. It sort of became my personal mission.” A few years later, it became the subject for her doctoral dissertation — today, it’s the focus of her work.
Lauren is the head of global resilience at Google, a job that’s been crucial this last year. Even as vaccines become available, so many stressors remain: Searches for the term “pandemic fatigue” increased more than 300% during the past month in the U.S., and “job burnout quiz” was a breakout search over the past three months. These things are exactly what Lauren hopes to alleviate through her programs that help Googlers build resilience, deal with stress and develop skills to tackle new challenges.
But resilience isn’t only about helping people cope with the negative; it’s also about giving them more room to experience the positive. Lauren wants to help Googlers feel creative and productive so they can thrive at work. “I’m so passionate about this work because I think that while I’m not personally making something that launches us all into the future, I can help the people at Google who are doing that be their best.”
First, though, it’s important to know what resilience truly means. Lauren describes it as the capacity to bounce back. “Resilience is the ability to respond and recover from stress. To feel successful it’s important to be able to take on intense challenges, and then pause to reflect on what went well and what didn’t, so we can go into the next project,” she explains.
Being resilient on the job doesn’t mean working nonstop, but working smarter. She says it’s not a matter of endurance, but of focusing on a task and then taking a break to tackle the next challenge in your best physical and mental shape. “All of us are constantly in a position where we can cultivate resilience and strive to be mentally stronger, especially during those moments when we have to perform at our best, like a big work presentation or a sensitive meeting,” Lauren adds. “Showing up and being present is a challenge for everyone, so by cultivating resilience we get new tools, behaviors and mindsets to take on challenges in different ways.”
At Google, Lauren says we’ve even seen that people with higher resilience have lower possibilities of burnout. Fortunately, resilience is something anyone can develop. Here are six tips Lauren uses in her work here at Google:
1. Establish a morning routine.Starting the day consistently grounds you and gives you certainty and security.“Whether you’re working from home or from an office, it’s that consistent routine of how you start your day that prepares you for what’s to come,” Lauren says.
2. Take mental recovery breaks throughout the day.Choose moments to reset instead of jumping to the next task or issue immediately. “Whether it’s ending a meeting five minutes early or taking a 10-minute walk, these intentional breaks are important to help you reconnect and recover,” Lauren says.
3. Stick to a sleep schedule. Sleep isn’t just about recharging, but also gives you consistency every night. “Our sleep routines are the best opportunity to reach into our minds and be able to recover from any of the stressors of the day.”
4. Be intentional with the stories you tell yourself. “Consider what you tell yourself and the meaning you give to your activities. Stop listening to things that aren’t intentional, because our thoughts are not always helpful or true. Instead, start talking to yourself with thoughts of positivity, optimism, hope or gratitude.”