WhatsApp: accelerare l’ascolto dei messaggi vocali
WhatsApp sta lavorando da tempo ad una nuova funzionalità che consentirà di rendere meno “pesanti” i messaggi vocali ricevuti da amici e parenti. In che senso? Capita a volte di ricevere audio di diversi minuti, ma non sempre si ha il tempo per ascoltarli per intero. Il rischio è dunque che gli stessi vocali rimangano inascoltati per diverso tempo se non ignorati del tutto, nella peggiore delle ipotesi. Per evitare questo inconveniente e soprattutto far risparmiare tempo a chi deve ascoltare degli audio molto lunghi, il servizio di messaggistica ha pensato ad un acceleratore di riproduzione.
B2B Marketing News: CMO Priorities Study, Global State of Media Report, Google Updates Ad Insights, & U.S. Ad Spending Surges
Twitter Launches Initial Test of ‘Professional Profiles’ for Brands and Creators
Twitter has begun testing new brand and creator professional profiles, which include information about a business, verification badges, and which may feature galleries and other elements, the social media platform recently announced. Social Media Today
These Are Marketers’ Top Organizational Priorities Right Now
45 percent of CMO Council members expect to upgrade or recruit for go-to-market execution and operations, while 38 percent say they’ll do so for content and demand-gen, followed by some 33 percent who plan to upgrade digital interactive marketing efforts — the top three spots in recently-released CMO organizational priority survey data of interest to digital marketers. MarketingCharts
Google Ads Insights Page Available To All
Google has launched a global rollout of the latest incarnation of its popular Google Ads platform, including an array of updated Insights features for finding current and emerging trends tailored to each business’ profile, the search giant recently announced. Search Engine Roundtable
In First Year-Over-Year Pandemic Comp, U.S. Ad Spending Surges 22% In March
Digital ad spending in the U.S. climbed by 27 percent in March compared to the same month in 2020, with overall ad spend rising by 22 percent year-over-year, according to newly-released Standard Media Index data. MediaPost
YouTube Provides New Overview of How its Video Recommendation Systems Work
Google’s YouTube has rolled out its latest guide for brands and creators, including new information on certain aspects of its video recommendation system such as quality watch time and other engagement signals, the video platform recently announced. Social Media Today
Instagram’s new test lets you choose if you want to hide ‘Likes,’ Facebook test to follow
Instagram has begun testing the ability to switch like counts on and off, along with an option for users to hide like counts on their own posts, the Facebook-owned social media platform announced, in a change that could impact how marketers measure content performance. TechCrunch
Facebook Adds Scheduling for Stories, New Ad and Business Discovery Options
Facebook has given its Business Suite users new Instagram and Facebook Story scheduling options, including the ability to save drafts, along with other updated features for business users, the firm recently announced. Social Media Today
Is Your Team Solving Problems, or Just Identifying Them?
There is a bigger difference between spotting problems and solving them than many may typically believe, and the Harvard Business Review explores how making creative collaborations can work to better solve problems together, and other issues of interest to online marketers. Harvard Business Review
New Report Looks at the Most Effective Influencer Marketing Approaches, and Key Platforms of Focus
71 percent of enterprise marketers said their influencer marketing budgets will grow over 2020 levels, while 36 percent saw their influencer content outperform brand-created content — two of several findings of interest to digital marketers in newly-released survey data. Social Media Today
ON THE LIGHTER SIDE:
A lighthearted look at “customer experience friction” by Marketoonist Tom Fishburne — Marketoonist
NFTs and AI Are Unsettling the Very Concept of History — Wired
TOPRANK MARKETING & CLIENTS IN THE NEWS:
- Susan Misukanis — 192: Make content the cornerstone of your strategy, with TopRank Marketing — Let’s Talk Supply Chain
- TopRank Marketing — 7 Engagement Boosting Interactive Content Marketing Examples — Peek & Poke
Have you come across your own top B2B marketing story from the past week of industry news? Please let us know in the comments below.
Thank you for taking the time to join us for the TopRank Marketing B2B marketing news, and we hope you’ll return again next Friday for more of the week’s most relevant B2B and digital marketing industry news. In the meantime, you can follow us at @toprank on Twitter for even more timely daily news.
The post B2B Marketing News: CMO Priorities Study, Global State of Media Report, Google Updates Ad Insights, & U.S. Ad Spending Surges appeared first on B2B Marketing Blog – TopRank®.
Xbox Series X/S, attivato FPS Boost su 13 giochi EA Games
Nella giornata di oggi, Microsoft ha annunciato che tredici titoli di Electronic Arts, tutti disponibili per i membri di Xbox Game Pass Ultimate via EA Play, riceveranno gli aggiornamenti per attivare FPS Boost su Xbox Series X/S con supporto fino a 120hz, come già avvenuto qualche tempo fa per alcune produzioni Bethesda Softworks. I nuovi giochi in FPS Boost includono:
ICOM e Microsoft Italia portano i Musei italiani su Flipgrid
Microsoft Italia e ICOM Italia, il comitato nazionale italiano del principale network mondiale di musei e professionisti museali, hanno annunciato di aver rinnovato la collaborazione volta a supportare la digitalizzazione degli enti museali nel nostro Paese. Per entrambi i soggetti, in una fase storica che ha messo in difficoltà il settore della Cultura, il digitale può diventare uno strumento per ripensare l’esperienza museale dei cittadini e soprattutto degli studenti, che attraverso le attività di approfondimento proposte dalle scuole, sono tra i principali fruitori del nostro patrimonio artistico e culturale. La contaminazione tra fisico e digitale è infatti molto utile per il trasferimento della conoscenza e apre a nuovi scenari in grado di rendere i musei più accessibili sia in questa fase emergenziale sia in futuro.
Seizing the moment – A framework for American innovation
Decades of government investment in R&D led to scientific breakthroughs that gave us the tools we use every day, and public-private partnerships have sparked innovations from the microchip to the internet. Government R&D investment has led to economic growth, jobs and new startups. As just one example, some of Google’s earliest work was made possible, in part, by the Digital Library Initiative, funded by the National Science Foundation.
But if you fast forward to today, the U.S. government investment in tech has moved to the slow lane. Government-funded research in the U.S. has fallen by 60% as a percentage of GDP — from 1.9% of GDP in 1964 to just 0.7% today. Many countries around the world are investing significantly in research and development. For example, China has said that it will be increasing government R&D funding by 7% annually and recently announced a five-year plan to invest an additional $1.4 trillion in developing next-generation technologies.
As a nation we now have a historic opportunity to put aside partisanship and come together on an issue that will determine our future competitiveness. The United States must seize the moment to cultivate science and technology by setting out a national innovation strategy, and we commit to doing our part.
Senators Schumer and Young have introduced the bipartisan Endless Frontier Act — an important step in putting to work America’s strengths in science and technology to tackle some of the biggest issues of our time, from climate change to global health. Legislative proposals to increase funding for the National Science Foundation will accelerate innovation in the technologies of the future — including quantum computing, AI, biotech and genomics, advanced wireless networks, and robotics — and strengthen the U.S. innovation ecosystem through regional hubs spread throughout the country.
We are also encouraged to see that key components of President Biden’s American Jobs Plan call for increased investment in R&D, including focus on advanced manufacturing, support for underrepresented students in STEM, and collaboration with U.S. universities. We hope Congress can come together in a bipartisan way to support extra investment in research and development.
Beyond direct support for R&D, our national innovation strategy should include support for immigration reform, entrepreneurial start-ups, regulatory clarity, and open data and interoperability.
America’s leadership in science and technology comes in part from our unmatched ability to recruit, train, and retain the world’s best talent. Our doors must be open to the best and the brightest, and we should make it easier for experts in vital technology fields to come to the United States and help grow our innovation economy. In parallel, a renewed focus on STEM education, skills-based training, and school-to-work apprenticeship programs will empower American workers and promote job and wage growth around the country.
America’s innovation framework should work for businesses of all sizes. At a time when we’re seeing record-setting investment in the promise of new companies, the government can pitch in by expanding access to public resources such as data, software, and computing infrastructure. Streamlined government contracting will also make it easier for startups to bid for large contracts and gain commercial opportunities.
Tech breakthroughs are built on accumulated and shared knowledge — we all stand on the shoulders of others. Data interoperability and open-source software help all of us, including smaller companies and research organizations. The government should promote interoperability, open data, and open-source applications by more actively sharing public data and contributing to open-source platforms.
Clear, balanced and consistent regulations can unlock innovation while protecting consumers and ensuring an equal playing field. Any new generation of technology raises important new questions and requires a balancing of concerns. At the same time, streamlining regulatory burdens can speed great new products to market, helping smaller companies who can struggle to comply with costly or complex rules.
Larger companies like Google and Alphabet have an important role to play in supporting this work, and our public reports show that we’ve invested more than $100 billion in R&D over the last five years. We’ll keep publishing our findings in scientific journals and support public research through public-private partnerships, like our work with NSF on the National AI Research Institute for Human-AI Interaction and Collaboration and our breakthroughs in quantum computing. We also launched Google Career Certificates to help workers develop the skills they need and share in the benefits of growing industries. And because open data and open-source code are essential for innovation, we host a large number ofpublicly available datasets, services, and software accessible to everyone.
We welcome the moves made in recent days and weeks to support America’s innovation leadership. We’ll continue to look for opportunities to collaborate with government, academic institutions, and others to do our part.
SpaceX, oggi decolla la Crew-2 NASA con 4 astronauti a bordo
La NASA ha dato il via libera per il lancio della missione Crew-2 di oggi, dopo il rinvio di ieri dovuto alle previsioni meteo avverse che hanno quindi portato alla decisione di posticipare il tutto di circa 24 ore. Alle 11.49, ora italiana, dal Launch Complex 39A del Kennedy Space Center della NASA, in Florida, inizierà quindi il conto alla rovescia per l’operazione che porterà la capsula con a bordo quattro astronauti sulla Stazione Spaziale Internazionale, nell’ambito della missione operativa Crew-2 con SpaceX.
Perché i computer sono stupidi?
Si fa un gran parlare di intelligenza artificiale: computer che riconoscono la voce, come Siri o Alexa o OK Google, giocano a scacchi meglio degli esseri umani, identificano ed evitano ostacoli nella guida autonoma o assistita, con tempi di reazione fulminei e irraggiungibili per una persona. È facile pensare che siamo ormai vicini alla creazione di una vera intelligenza sintetica generalista, capace di competere con un essere umano.
Ma l’informatico statunitense Terry Winograd ha ideato un test che dimostra che non è affatto così. Il bello è che lo ha fatto nel 1972, e il suo test funziona ancora adesso. Non per nulla è diventato professore d’informatica alla Stanford University ed è considerato uno dei massimi esperti nel settore.
Il test di Winograd è beffardo, dal punto di vista degli informatici, per la sua semplicità. Una delle sue formulazioni tipiche è questa:
Il trofeo non ci stava nella valigia marrone perché era troppo grande.
Una frase banale, con una struttura grammaticale semplice e parole comunissime, perfettamente comprensibile. Talmente comprensibile e ovvia, per noi umani, che neanche ci accorgiamo che è ambigua. Quale dei due oggetti era troppo grande? Il trofeo o la valigia? Per noi la risposta è istantanea. Per un computer, invece, no.
Infatti una semplice analisi meccanica della frase (“questo è un sostantivo, questo è un verbo”, eccetera) non consente di risolvere l’ambiguità. Per farlo bisogna sapere che cos’è un trofeo, che cos’è una valigia, quali sono i normali rapporti di dimensione fra trofei e valigie, che le valigie sono fatte per contenere oggetti e i trofei no, e il fatto che se l’oggetto A deve stare dentro l’oggetto B, non è un problema se l’oggetto B è molto più grande dell’oggetto A: bisogna sapere che le cose piccole possono stare dentro le cose grandi ma non viceversa.
Non è neanche possibile usare uno dei trucchi preferiti dei sistemi di intelligenza artificiale, ossia sfruttare un enorme corpus di testo e un po’ di statistica per arrivare a una disambiguazione affidabile, o la tecnica tipica degli assistenti vocali, ossia estrarre le singole parole riconosciute e tirare a indovinare sul significato generale della frase. Serve esperienza del mondo.
Il test di Winograd ha varie versioni, chiamate schemi, composte da due frasi che sono differenti tra loro sono per una o due parole ma contengono un’ambiguità che si risolve in due modi opposti. Risolverla richiede conoscenza della realtà e ragionamento. Un computer che fosse capace di farlo sarebbe, all’atto pratico, intelligente.
Questo è un esempio di schema di Winograd:
I consiglieri comunali rifiutarono il permesso ai manifestanti perché temevano disordini
I consiglieri comunali rifiutarono il permesso ai manifestanti perché istigavano disordini
Le persone interpretano la prima frase nel senso che sono i consiglieri comunali a temere disordini; interpretano la seconda nel senso che gli istigatori sono i manifestanti. Lo fanno perché sanno cosa sono i consiglieri comunali e quali sono i loro compiti, e sanno che cosa sono le manifestazioni e le loro possibili conseguenze.
Beh, direte voi, ma frasi ambigue come queste sono rare. Invece no: un gruppo di ricercatori ne ha radunati 150 esempi, da usare come test d’intelligenza per computer. Frasi banalissime, come “ho messo un libro pesante sul tavolo e si è rotto”. Persino GPT-2, uno dei sistemi di intelligenza artificiale più moderni applicato al linguaggio, va in crisi di fronte agli schemi di Winograd, come spiega bene Tom Scott in questo video.
Potremmo risolvere il problema rivolgendoci ai computer in modo meno ambiguo? È improbabile. Il guaio è, infatti, che siamo talmente abituati a usare sottintesi basati sulla conoscenza del contesto che troveremmo estenuante parlare o scrivere in maniera perfettamente non ambigua.
Questa necessità di avere contesto per capire e risolvere le ambiguità non è solo una questione linguistica: è un ostacolo per un settore delicatissimo come la guida autonoma.
Un’automobile che usi un sistema di puro riconoscimento delle immagini, per esempio, verrà confusa dall’immagine della bambina in mezzo alla strada che vedete all’inizio di questo articolo e probabilmente frenerà di colpo per non colpirla. Al sistema mancano il contesto temporale e la conoscenza del comportamento dei bambini che consentono di capire che non ha senso che la bambina sia perfettamente immobile e che la forma della “bambina” cambia, man mano che ci si avvicina, in un modo che rivela senza dubbio che si tratta di un disegno applicato alla superficie stradale.
Senza dubbio, s’intende, se siete esseri umani.
In sintesi: l’intelligenza artificiale fallisce in modi profondamente “inumani”. Dà l’illusione della comprensione. Questo rende particolarmente difficile prevedere i suoi errori e correggerli. Specialmente quando si è al volante.
Le Poste Svizzere offrono fino a 10.000 franchi a chi scopre falle nei suoi sistemi
Un bug bounty è una ricompensa che viene offerta da un’azienda o da un ente a chi trova e segnala in modo responsabile una falla o un difetto informatico in un prodotto di quell’azienda o ente. Questi premi servono per incoraggiare gli informatici a cercare queste falle, con il risultato di migliorare la sicurezza del software per tutti gli utenti.
Ovviamente l’informatico che scopre una falla è tenuto a non rivelarla a nessuno a parte l’azienda o ente che offre il bug bounty, in modo che sia possibile turarla prima che diventi nota e venga sfruttata.
Le Poste Svizzere offrono da pochi giorni uno di questi bug bounty, con ricompense da 50 fino a 10.000 franchi. Non è la prima volta che lo fa, ma in questo caso l’iniziativa è aperta a tutti, mentre in passato era accessibile soltanto su invito. Cosa non trascurabile, le Poste Svizzere offrono un safe harbor, ossia un’immunità da conseguenze legali per chi effettua test e indagini sui sistemi informatici seguendo le regole di un bug bounty. Senza questa tutela giuridica, infatti, una violazione di un sistema informatico sarebbe considerata un reato.
Per maggiori informazioni si può consultare la pagina apposita del sito delle Poste Svizzere, che porta a yeswehack.com/programs/swiss-post, dove è riportato il regolamento del bug bounty e c’è anche una hall of fame.
Le Poste spiegano di aver già trovato 500 vulnerabilità e di aver pagato circa 250.000 franchi in ricompense da quando è stato lanciato il programma, che ha dimostrato di essere efficacissimo, come racconta in dettaglio Sandro Nafzger, responsabile del programma.
A chi non conosce il settore può sembrare strano, e persino immorale, che un’azienda paghi profumatamente degli hacker per penetrare nei suoi sistemi e mostrarne le falle. Ma i bug bounty costano molto, molto meno di un test tradizionale svolto da professionisti e funzionano. Come conseguenza non trascurabile, tengono i talenti informatici al riparo dalle tentazioni del crimine organizzato.
Secondo i dati pubblicati di recente dalla società di sicurezza Digital Shadows, infatti, le bande specializzate in reati informatici pagano cifre notevoli a chi vende loro accessi a sistemi aziendali. Un semplice initial access broker, ossia una persona che trova una falla in un sistema ma non la sfrutta e invece la rivende ad altri, diventando l’equivalente informatico di una persona che scassina una cassaforte e poi se ne va, lasciando ad altri il compito di vuotarla e riciclare il bottino, può guadagnare in media dai 7000 ai 9000 dollari. E questo genere di attacco è aumentato fortemente per via del lavoro da remoto di molte persone durante questa pandemia.
Raffica di tentativi di truffa: la finta assistenza Microsoft e il ricatto che arriva dal proprio indirizzo di mail
Il Canton Ticino sembra essere preso particolarmente di mira dai truffatori in questi giorni.
È tornata alla grande la classica truffa telefonica della finta assistenza Microsoft: la vittima riceve una telefonata da qualcuno che, in inglese, dice di far parte del servizio di assistenza Microsoft e ci avvisa che il suo computer è infetto. Non è vero, e non si tratta di un tecnico di Microsoft ma di un truffatore.
Se la vittima segue le sue istruzioni, il truffatore prenderà il controllo del suo computer, simulerà problemi inesistenti e solitamente chiederà soldi per risolverli.
Ne ho parlato tante volte, ma c’è sempre qualcuno che si affaccia all’informatica per la prima volta, non sa di questa truffa e quindi ci casca o perlomeno si spaventa, per cui vale la pena di ricordare che la cosa migliore da fare è chiudere la comunicazione senza seguire le istruzioni di uno sconosciuto al telefono.
Le chiamate, segnalatemi da numerosi lettori, sembravano provenire da numeri di telefono esteri: una di quelle che ho ricevuto io proveniva apparentemente dal numero austriaco 0043 675 000372; altre indicavano come origine un prefisso 0049 (Germania).
Non è l’unica truffa informatica che sta girando: in Canton Ticino molte persone segnalano ai giornali) di aver ricevuto una mail in tedesco che intima di pagare una cifra in bitcoin altrimenti il computer verrà infettato. La mail dice inoltre che chi l’ha scritta ha le prove che la vittima è entrata in siti pornografici.
Si tratta di un bluff, ma chi lo riceve rimane scosso dal fatto che la mail proviene dal suo stesso indirizzo di posta. In realtà falsificare il mittente è un vecchio trucco dei truffatori e non vuol dire affatto che i criminali sono entrati nella casella di mail della vittima. È sufficiente cancellare la mail senza rispondere e seguire le raccomandazioni della Polizia Cantonale pubblicate da varie testate.
Governance e meritocrazia. Tavola rotonda il 29 aprile
Tavola rotonda del 29 aprile segnalata da “Bussola Italia” Questa tavola rotonda mette al centro altissime competenze. L’evento è organizzato dal Forum della Meritocrazia che è tra i promotori di Bussola Italia. Le istruzioni per registrarsi e partecipare all’evento sono riportate qui sotto. Il progetto Meritocrazia e CdA, a cura di Silvia Stefini e Laura Zanfrini, sarà discusso durante l’evento Innovazione e Governance: “Che ruolo ha il consiglio di amministrazione nel disegno di un ecosistema…
L’articolo Governance e meritocrazia. Tavola rotonda il 29 aprile scritto da Paolo Brambilla proviene da Assodigitale.
Finding more accessible ways to connect
In 2020, global searches for “how to say i love you in sign language” reached an all-time high. While social distancing has been difficult for everyone, it’s disproportionately affected people who are deaf or hard of hearing. Wearing face masks and connecting over video calls has helped to keep us safe, but it’s made it harder to follow conversation through lipreading and more difficult to follow sign language that’s confined to a small screen.
So it makes sense that we’re searching for ways to communicate better. And I’m proud to work at a company that’s building technology to help people do just that. Products like Live Transcribe provide real-time transcriptions of what is being said so people can follow conversations even while wearing masks, and Live Caption automatically captions videos and spoken audio on your device and browser so no one has to miss out on their favorite content.
Behind all this technology are Googlers, like Tony Lee, who makes our films more accessible through captions and whose family uses captioning technology every day. The Googlers working on this technology are passionate about making the world more accessible for the deaf and hard of hearing communities — communities that some of them are also a part of. Here’s a glimpse at a few of the Googlers working on accessible features and the motivation behind their work.
Dimitri Kanevsky, Research Scientist for Live Transcribe, also on the Hearing Accessibility team
“I came to Google to work as a speech researcher to improve speech recognition algorithms. I completely lost hearing in early childhood and waited for so long to have this speech recognition application like Live Transcribe that I am using now everywhere every day. I was happy to be able to finally talk easily to my granddaughters.”
Live Transcribe is available for free on most Android devices in more than 80 languages. It transcribes conversations in real time, which can be helpful to people who are deaf or hard of hearing when speaking with a hearing person during face-to-face meetings. It can also be used to transcribe audio from videos and podcasts.
Ken Harrenstien, Software Engineer on YouTube captions
“For me and most of the Deaf/HoH in particular, captions are essential for accessible video content. I went to MIT. While there, I didn’t go to classes because I didn’t know ASL and couldn’t lipread the lectures or anything. Just books. After we launched captions on YouTube, MIT began uploading many class lectures to YouTube, and I was able to find these videos and finally see how all those professors had been trying to make their subjects interesting. I can enjoy classes, lectures, talks, how-tos on literally any topic, personal stories, ASL performances, live streaming events… It’s like having my own immense library of ‘just books,’ except with video. Without captions, we cannot achieve Google’s original mission of making the world’s information accessible and useful.”
In 2009, we launched YouTube Automatic Captions which use speech recognition to automatically add captions to videos. Since then, we’ve expanded to more than 10 commonly spoken languages and, to date, over 1 billion YouTube videos have been captioned.
Ricardo Garcia (Rago), Tech Lead on Sound Amplifier
“While most hearing assistive technologies focus on speech enhancement or intelligibility, we understood early on that the hearing experience goes beyond speech. Natural sounds — like birds chirping, a river stream or the buzz of a mosquito — and audible cues — like hi-hat cymbals or even the failing motor of a fridge — are well beyond the speech frequency range. I truly believe that by creating these audio algorithms, everybody benefits — not only the deaf and hard of hearing communities.”
Sound Amplifier is an Android application that when used with headphones allows you to filter, augment and amplify the sounds in your environment. It increases quiet sounds, while not over boosting loud sounds and gives the user control over noise reduction and sound enhancement settings.
Sean Kinzler, Software Engineer on Meet Captions
“I joined Google to work on features that are not only challenging, but also have a significant impact on people’s lives. Since the start of COVID-19, virtual meetings have become a critical part of maintaining communication lines in the workplace. Making it possible to caption these meetings helps the Deaf and Hard of Hearing community more freely join in and have an impact in virtual meetings.”
Google Meet uses speech-to-text technology to provide live captions in meetings, which helps participants who may be deaf or hard of hearing follow along and stay engaged. The feature is available in several languages, including French, German, Portuguese, Spanish and English.
I am hard of hearing myself, and throughout my life there have been many times I have felt left out of conversations, or wanted to engage in the media content I was watching, but couldn’t. I just wanted to be included and thought about. Working on accessible features has been my life’s work, and I am thankful that in my role at Google I’ve been able to help make sure all disabled people are included in the work we do, and the stories we tell. Across our products and stories, we aim to create a truly accessible world.
A CODA story: Why accessible technology matters
I’ve been a Googler for over four years, but many of my coworkers only recently learned that I’m a CODA or “child of a deaf adult.” And in my case, I’m the child of two because both of my parents were born deaf.
Growing up in the ‘90s, communicating with my parents was the one thing that made me realize my experiences were different from those of my friends. Long before texting (let alone video chatting) was a thing, my family had a TTY — a complex, and frankly cumbersome device that sent messages letter by letter. By today’s standards it would seem pretty archaic, but as a kid it was just an accepted part of my family’s everyday life.
While technology has come a long way since then, there are still moments that remind me how much harder it can be for people like my parents to stay in touch and connect with the outside world. This past year, when staying close has been more difficult, accessibility has become more important — especially for my family. With the birth of my son Owen, my parents became grandparents for the first time. Being apart has been extra hard since they don’t want to miss a single milestone (big or small).
But technologies like Live Caption and captioning in Google Meet have helped us stay close in spite of the distance. Live Caption automatically adds captions to any audio on the videos we send to my parents, so they can follow all the chatter in the background. And as all of our family time happened on Google Meet last year, captioning helped us communicate more easily — especially when our hands were occupied with Owen. Distance is never easy, but we made it work. And this week, after 14 long months of quarantined virtual bonding, my parents finally got to see Owen in person.
A whale of a tale about responsibility and AI
A couple of years ago, Google AI for Social Good’s Bioacoustics team created a ML model that helps the scientific community detect the presence of humpback whale sounds using acoustic recordings. This tool, developed in partnership with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, helps biologists study whale behaviors, patterns, population and potential human interactions.
We realized other researchers could use this model for their work, too — it could help them better understand the oceans and protect key biodiversity areas. We wanted to freely share this model, but struggled with a big dilemma: On one hand, it could help ocean scientists. On the other, though, we worried about whale poachers or other bad actors. What if they used our shared knowledge in a way we didn’t intend?
We decided to consult with experts in the field in order to help us responsibly open source this machine learning model. We worked with Google’s Responsible Innovation team to use our AI Principles — aguide to responsibly developing technology — to make a decision.
The team gave us the guidance we needed to open source a machine learning model that could be socially beneficial and was built and tested for safety, while also upholding high standards of scientific excellence for the marine biologists and researchers worldwide.
On Earth Day — and every day — putting the AI Principles into practice is important to the communities we serve, on land and in the sea.
Curious about diving deeper? You can use AI to explore thousands of hours of humpback whale songs and make your own discoveries with our Pattern Radio and see our collaboration with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association of the United States as well as our work with Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) to apply machine learning to protect killer whales in the Salish Sea.
3 ways to find and support eco-friendly places on Maps
In an effort to be more eco-friendly, we all know that it’s best to reduce, reuse and recycle — and to support businesses and places that do the same. But it’s not always easy to know which restaurants compost or where you can recycle items, like electronics or clothing. Thankfully, Google Maps and its community of contributors are making it easier for everyone to make choices that are better for the planet.
As an active member of the Local Guides program, a global community of people who share their local knowledge and recommendations on Google Maps, Karol helps people find environmentally-friendly spots in her hometown of Posadas, Argentina.
“Posadas is truly a blessed place surrounded by nature, but it breaks my heart that it’s just taking its first steps on the path to being environmentally-friendly,” says Karol, who used the list featureon Maps to curate and share hard-to-find recycling centers in her city. “Anything that can be done to promote sustainable consumption is priceless.”
Embedding Web Stories across your site
Web Stories are a great way for content creators to bring enhanced experiences to their users and thousands of creators and publishers are using them. Tools for creating stories are available to a global audience, and Google products such as Search and Discover are incorporating Web Stories as a first-class content format. And if you are using WordPress we have good news for you! With the release of v1.5 of the Stories Editor for WordPress, you can easily embed Web Stories into your existing site.
Embedding Web Stories in your site
The Web Stories Editor for WordPress makes it easy for you to create beautiful Web Stories, and the newly released version 1.5 provides capabilities that make it very easy to embed Web Stories into your site, including a versatile Web Stories block, integration of Web Stories into the theme customization process, and Integration with Classic Editor.
Integrating Web Stories into your content strategy allows you to:
-
Take advantage of both original and third-party story experiences to enhance the quality of your content strategy. You can embed your own Web Stories or Web Stories created by other publishers into your content.
-
Diversify your traffic sources by combining organic traffic from search results and Discover, with direct traffic from origin, and social sharing.
The Web Stories block
To embed stories on your WordPress-powered content site , you start by inserting a Web Stories block:
The Web Stories block provides three options for embedding stories into a post or page:
-
Latest Stories: Display your most recent stories, with filtering and sorting options. The list automatically updates as you publish new stories.
-
Selected Stories: Display a list of handpicked stories.
-
Single Story: Embed a single story given its URL. This is a simple option but combined with other blocks, stories can be embedded and displayed in many creative ways.
For the Latest Stories and Selected Stories embedding options, you can specify which Web Stories you want to show, as well as some layout options to control how they are displayed:
-
Carousel: Carousel of web stories as rectangular cards or circular items.
-
Grid: Grid view (up to four columns).
-
List: Stacked list of stories.
Each layout option provides additional settings to give you fine-grained control over how embedded stories appear.
With this new Web Stories block, stories can be displayed anywhere blocks can be used. This includes the upcoming full site editing feature in WordPress, which gives users the ability to edit all elements of a site using Gutenberg blocks. This is great news, as the ecosystem continues to evolve and moving steadily towards Gutenberg-based themes, more and more users will get direct access to the Stories format.
Availability
If you are using any of the following themes, you can start bringing the power of storytelling to your site today:
-
The makers of the popular Astra theme announced their integration of stories.
-
The Neve theme also provides integration of Web Stories into their theme.
-
The Newspack project provides native stories support to the Newspack theme and the new capabilities will be released soon.
-
The Web Stories WordPress plugin provides built-in integrations for all WordPress core default themes so that they have this opt-in functionality out-of-the-box.
Below you can take a look at some demo sites using these themes to get a glimpse of what is possible. Can’t wait to see what you would do on your site!
Astra
The Astra theme provides native integration with Web Stories. Check out the Astra theme demo site. In the screenshots below you can again see a selected stories embed using a circle carousel at the top of the theme, a selected stories embed using a box carousel displaying the members of the team, a selected stories embed using a box carousel displaying stories for the menu items, and a selected stories embed using a list layout.
Newspack
Newspack is an all-in-one publishing platform that incorporates industry best practices to help small and medium-sized news organizations produce great journalism. Integration of Web Stories into the Newspack flagship theme is available as of v1.33.0. Take a look at the Newspack theme demo site showcasing embedded stories in different ways.
What’s next
With the creation capabilities of the Web Stories editor for WordPress and the completely revamped and versatile Gutenberg block, you have everything you need to unleash your creativity and bring the power of the Stories format to your content strategy. And this is just the beginning. Stay tuned and share your stories with the world!