Daimler (owner of Mercedes) and BMW will combine mobility services in a 50/50 venture that will include their car-sharing services to fight technology disrupters such as Didi Chuxing (China) and Uber (USA). The deal is said to include their ride-hailing, charging, parking and respective car sharing services (Car2Go and DriveNow). The venture is a fantastic example of industry incumbents altering their business models in response to digital disruption, an ever increasing global phenomenon. 

The deal will not affect the two brands' competition in the luxury car market but will rather seek to offer customers a connected system of mobility services. Daimler Chief Executive Dieter Zetsche declared that "“As pioneers in automotive engineering, we will not leave the task of shaping future urban mobility to others.” The venture makes a lot of sense from a business perspective as customers are much more likely to be drawn to a singular app solution from both brands instead of standalone services. 

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After more than a year of testing, Google has announced that they are rolling out "mobile - first" indexing. The majority of Google visitors use the search engine from a mobile device and that has been the case since 2015. Google's "mobile - first" indexing will use the mobile version of a web page for ranking and indexing in order to better ensure that the majority of its users (mobile users) discover the content they are searching for. 

Google first boosted the rank of mobile-friendly web pages back in 2015 and mobile has only become increasing more of a priority for Google over the years. Google announced plans to introduce mobile indexing in 2016 and began to shift a small number of websites to mobile - first indexing late in 2017. Google has announced that mobile indexing will not affect how content is ranked directly but will rather allow these web sites to "perform better" on mobile searches. 

Google will begin mobile indexing a first wave of websites that are already following mobile indexing best practices and will notify these websites through the Search Console. 

Web site speed is another increasingly important factor for Google rankings that will also be adjusted this year - in addition to Google currently using page speed when determining page rankings, websites that load slowly will begin to be down-ranked in July 2018. 


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With Googe's ARCore release (ARCore is to Google's Android what ARKit is to Apple's iOS) late last year, companies now have the option of releasing augmented reality experiences to users on both Android and iOS. ARCore/ARKit provide content creators like The New York Times with the opportunity to leverage AR technology to enhance their products and offer them to mobile users on both sides of the operating system divide. The New York Times most recent AR experience is available on both platforms through The New York Times app and gives users a glimpse into the visual legacy of David Bowie.  

Google's ARCore was developed through a collaboration of Google's VR Group and Android team. The software development kit (SDK) is supported by both the Samsung S8 and the Google Pixel and gives more than 100 million users access to ARCore apps. In regards to Apple customers - any customers who have iPhones or iPads with iOS 11 have access to all ARKit applications. The combination provides content creators with the opportunity to reach an ever increasing base of consumers. Going forward, we expect to see a steady increase in the creation and use of new and exciting AR experiences. 

The New York Times has released two previous AR experiences, with its coverage of the Winter Olympics representing its first use of news coverage through AR. 


​Click here to read the full article on the New York Times AR Experience and here to read about Google's ARCore. 

L'Oreal has purchased Modiface, an Augmented Reality beauty company, that has developed both mobile and desktop Augmented Reality apps for many of the top companies in the beauty industry over the years. Modiface's AR beauty technology is widely considered to be industry leading and has recently been applied to powering the makeup filters provided by Samsung Galaxy S9's Bixby Vision. Modiface will continue to finish out its contracts with other companies but will responsible for creating new digital experiences for L'Oreal's many brands. The cosmetics industry is one of many industries that has been seriously investing in digital applications as companies seek to provide customers with more innovative ways to test and visualize their products. 

 L'Oreal and Modiface partnered together in the past to develop L'Oreal's very own "Style My Hair" application which allowed customers to see visualize different hair colors on themselves.  L'Oreal no doubt expects the benefits of Modiface's AR technology to help boost its marketing efforts and increase online sales across many of its 30 plus brands. With this purchase the company continues to display how seriously it believes digital is key to the future of its company - L'Oreal  spends close to 40% of its marketing budget on digital channels. 

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Researchers from Microsoft have developed a machine translation system that is able to translate articles written in Chinese to English with the same level of accuracy as humans. This milestone, which represents a much harder hurdle than speech recognition was thought to be unattainable by many. Using recent breakthroughs in AI construction, the Microsoft researchers were able build a system that generates translations that are both more natural sounding and that are more capable of accounting for context. 

The system was developed using deep learning, dual learning, joint training, deliberation networks and agreement regularization and can be tested out at here. Microsoft develop the machine translation system using a sample of around 2,000 sentences and its accuracy was verified by bilingual language consultants. The task of machine translation of written sentences was much more complex than simple pattern recognition because different words can be used to convey the same meaning and previous attempts to translate web pages or articles could only give you a general idea of what was being said rather than provide a deep level of understanding. 

People have been trying to reach this milestone for decades and even Microsoft's own employees admitted that they believed they wouldn't reach this milestone as soon as they have. When the rate of AI advancement surprises even the experts of the field, you have to wonder what other milestones could be closer than we imagined! 


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Successful governments are discovering that practical and effective technology strategies enable them to address public sector challenges as well as deliver service improvements. The top ten govtech (government technology) initiatives that show the most impact pertain to these topics : government of things, blockchain, service delivery, economic sustainability and big cities/bigger data. Here are the top 10 initiatives worldwide:

Government of Things:

1. Sweden's national railway is conducting an NFC payment trial where customers can choose to embed a microchip under the skin of their hands. This payment method trial pushes well beyond the e-ticket method most countries consider innovative.

2. India currently has a biometric identity card network called the Aadhaar Program that serves more than 1 billion citizens. The program distributes welfare services annually that approach $40 million. 

Blockchain:

3. Ghana is working with Bitland to develop a national land registry built on the tokens from blockchain. 

4. The United Arab Emirates is investing in a digital transaction platform based on blockchain that will serve the entire government. The goal will be to remove close to 100 million official documents from government processes. The project is already in pilot testing with more than 20 current blockchain use cases. 

Service Delivery and Economic Sustainability

5. The United Kingdom will aim to provide 1.5 million more citizens with access to cognitive therapy services by 2021 by using AI and digital health providers. One of these providers, Ieso, uses text messaging to provide cognitive behavior therapy. 

6. Tanzania is fighting whitefly-borne diseases by using portable, DNA sequencing devices to identify virus strains and enable proactive measures. 

7. The Development Bank of Japan has invested heavily into a space launch company who has goals of developing lunar products financed by displaying advertisements on the moon. 


Big Cities, Bigger Data 

8. Korea has built an autonomous-driving facility for R&D so large it's called K-city.

9. Hangzhou partnered with Alibaba to develop an AI platform called City Brain that has help decrease traffic congestion by 10 percent by rerouting it.

10. Australia launched a National City Performance Framework (a policy and planning tool based on data) to help boost the rollout of Smart Cities around the country. 

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Crowdfunding gives startups the opportunity to acquire small amounts of money from large groups of individuals instead of going through a traditional bank loan. The European Commission has entered into draft law a proposal to create crowdfunding "passports" to allow crowdfunding platforms to scale up in Europe. The proposal is part of increased efforts by the EU to boost growth in the fintech (financial technology) sector. A EU license would provide companies with the opportunity to find investors all over Europe, increasing their base of potential funders as well as providing one set of rules for crowdfunding platforms to comply by. 

The proposal currently covers sums raised during campaigns of up to a million euros over 12 months. Campaigns that raise more will be subject to current prospectus and securities rules. On Thursday, the Commission proposed a variety of economic and job growth measures in the financial technology sector in a continued effort to decrease the level of Europe's dependence on bank funding. 

The rise of technology and digital applications in sectors such as the financial industry has regulators pushing to ensure that correct measures are in place to encourage growth as well as protect both consumers and creators of these new products. 

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The World Economic Forum will manage a new consortium that will attempt to help fintech (financial technology) firms implement adequate security measures at the product design stage. The creation of the consortium is a response to the ever growing presence and impact of digital services in finance. The group will seek to create a standard upon which the security of data aggregators and fintech companies will be assessed.  Founding members in the consortium include Kabbage, Citigroup Inc, Zurich Insurance Company, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation. 

As banks and financial organizations' collaborations with tech start ups continue to grow globally, the desire to ensure proper cybersecurity measures are being implemented by all companies is becoming paramount. The financial services industry is among one of the most targeted by cyber criminals and hackers due to its vast amount of assets (data and money). It is important to ensure that as the way financial services are consumed and created shifts and evolves, risk to consumers is appropriately managed and minimized. The consortium is currently seeking to add more members and has yet to announce whether its focus will be global or focused on a specific region. 

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