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Facebook releases tools to flag harmful content on GitHub

Facebook is now open souring its photo and video flagging technologies and making them available on GitHub in a hope that its algorithms will enable other users to remove harmful content. These algorithms known as PDQ and TMK+PDQF will now be available to smaller developers and other users. PDQ is a photo-matching tool inspired by pHash but built by the social media giant. TMK+PDQF is the video-matching tool developed by Facebook’s AI research team and the university of Modena and Reggio Emilia in Italy. In a bid to protect children from harmful footage, Facebook announced these open-source tools as part of its Child Safety Hackathon. They can be used along with Microsoft’s cloud-based PhotoDNA tool and Google’s Content Safety API; both were released to protect kids.

Google to unify App and website measurement in Google Analytics

To reduce the effort of using two products (Google Analytics for Firebase and regular Google Analytics), Google has plans to measure user interactions across platform with unified app and website analytics. A new property type, App + Web, allows business to combine app and web data in one report. The product enables measuring of custom events due to its flexible event-based model for collecting user interactions.
A new analysis module lets you inspect data without limitations of pre-defined reports and the different analysis techniques include; exploration in which one can drag and drop important variables onto a canvas to see instant visualizations, funnels in which one can identify steps leading to a conversation and how to move through it and path analysis wherein one can understand the actions users take between the steps with a funnel to the reasons of conversion.

Salesforce completes $15.7bn Acquisition of analytics thoroughbred Tableau Software

CRM solutions provider, Salesforce has acquired analytics vendor Tableau Software for around $15.75bn. With this acquisition, Salesforce aims to drive digital transformation. Working with Einstein and Tableau, Salesforce said that it would deliver the most intelligent and intuitive analytics and visualisation platform for every department and every user. Tableau on the other hand will work with Customer 360 enabling it to reach a broader customer base. It will continue to operate independently under the Tableau brand and will remain headquartered in Seattle.

IBM launches new blockchain platform for supply chain management

Information technology company, IBM and blockchain consultancy Chainyard have rolled out a new blockchain network for supply chain management, created in a way to upgrade supplier validation, onboarding and life cycle information management. This new blockchain is called Trust Your Supplier and the other participants along with IBM to formulate it include Anheuser-Busch InBev, Cisco, GlaxoSmithKline, Lenovo, Nokia, Schneider Electric and Vodafone. To prevent the manual processing of managing suppliers, Trust Your Supplier uses a decentralized approach and an audit trail built on blockchain. It can transform the companies on board and manage the supplier network enabling buyers and sellers to identify procurement benefits through reductions in cost, complexity and speed.

Experian leads US$20M first close of Series B1 Investment in CompareAsiaGroup

Multinational consumer credit reporting company, Experian has invested US$20 million first close of Series B investment in CompareAsiaGroup, a comparison site with presence across Asia. This investment will be used to improve the use of data-driven technologies, offering customers more personalised services along with innovation, efficiency and scalability.

NUS and China firm tie up on AI research

A camera system based on AI that allows higher quality images and helps deep learning processes will soon be developed in Singapore. This technology can be mounted on AI robots or surveillance cameras. It will be jointly developed by a team of researchers from National University of Singapore (NUS), led by Dr Feng and Beijing-based AI firm Pensees technology.
Pensees has just opened the Pensees Singapore Institute, it’s first outside China and will house upto 70 staff including AI algorithm researchers, system researchers, hardware experts and engineers. Dr Fend stated that the research collaboration between the Chinese firm and NUS has been selected as one of the AI 100 Experiments (100E) project managed by AI Singapore (AISG) and will receive funding for 18 months.

HPE buys MapR and its Unique file system for analytics and machine learning

HPE has bought MapR for an undisclosed amount and said that I would make the Big Data analytics company’s unique file system technology part of its analytics and machine learning solutions for enterprises. MapR sells its proprietary file system simplifying the process for enterprise IT teams that are building infrastructure for analytics in a variety of environments. MapR’s investors have included Google Capital, Intel Capital, Qualcomm Ventures, and Lightspeed Venture Partners, among others. MapR’s file system technology will enable HPE to offer a portfolio of products to boost AI and analytics applications to facilitate customers manage their data assets.

[“source=financialdirector”]