Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Here's an invaluable look at the social media tools universe according to Social Smarts.

There is no feeling as equally overwhelming and futile as walking through the convention halls of Las Vegas, staring at 1,000 identical TVs, and trying to squint out the future between the bezels. But the annual Consumer Electronics Show, going on now, really is the best place to get a peek at the world to come.

With every major electronics manufacturer in attendance, jockeying for attention from the crowd, you can spot not just the incremental improvements but the true paradigm shifts that could change the way we work and live. Here are some of the best ideas out of CES 2017....

How it works

Inpaint photo restoration software reconstructs the selected image area from the pixels near the area boundary. Remove undesirable objects from your images, such as logos, watermarks, power lines, people, text or any other undesired artefacts. There's no need to manually go through messing around with your old clone tool any more! Now you can use Inpaint to easily remove all those unexpected objects that end up spoiling an otherwise really great photograph.Remove objects from photos

 

The devil is always in details. A tiny object on a photo can ruin the entire composition or even make it produce the effect opposite to that you initially were hoping for. Using Inpaint removing objects from photos is almost as easy as taking a shot itself. With merely three simple steps you can make power lines, tourists, buildings, background wreckage and other elements vanish as if they never were there....

Me In a Nutshell is a free, fast, easy way to create a unique personal profile with text, images or both based on a variety of your own social media profiles.

 

The example here is based on my Twitter profile adn created in 30 seconds with just a few clicks.

 

You can do the same at Me In a Nutshell https://www.meinanutshell.com

These days you tend to hear about Russia in terms of its government hacking the US election. But some canny Russian developers have put their skills to something more productive: monitoring the TV appearances of world leaders.

A team of Russian developers have released an AI powered algorithm that tracks all world leaders activities in all media. Based on the information the Verso service analyzes the impact of each President/Prime Minister and shows a rating for them in real-time.

Verso is an experiment to utilise algorithms designed to rapidly recognise faces (even blurry ones) which were developed at Moscow State University,

Once a second the Verso platform takes a screenshot of a set of monitored TC channels. All the faces it detects are run through the computer vision processing, to see if there is one which matches the person the researchers are searching for.

The algorithms it uses are able to tell in milliseconds if a person is at least a 99% match, even with blurred or turned heads. The data it delivers to its site is in real-time....

SnapChat officially changed its name to Snap, Inc. as the company restyles itself from a one-[major] hit app company into a digital lifestyle brand. To mark the occasion, Snap, Inc. introduced Spectacles, fashion and tech-forward sunglasses that record 10-second clips, which can then be uploaded to SnapChat Memories via wifi. Following the Apple playbook, Snap, Inc. also designed a fashionable case that doubles as a charger. Spectacles will be available this Fall and will cost $130.

Spectacles are the result of a secret acquisition in December 2014 of VergenceLabs, which developed Epiphany Eyewear to record video clips with the press of a button on the side of the frame and upload them online via its app. Over the last 19 months, Snap, Inc. remodeled Epiphany into a fun, but thoughtful sunglass package to give Snappers a way to share their perspective hands-free.

By pressing a small button on the side of the glasses, Spectacles capture video through a 115-degree lens, which better conveys someone’s natural perspective and field of vision. Those on the other side of the lens, will know they’re being recorded because of a halo-like light that surrounds the lens. Unlike smartphones, which record video in a rectangular format, video via Spectacles is circular, allowing the viewer to watch the content naturally, whether in portrait or landscape mode, the way the user “saw” it. Essentially, clips offer a playback experience that simulates your natural point of view....

For those of you who haven’t seen it yet, here is a handy visual that features some our favourite web tools for creating and sharing digital quizzes. You can use them to design a wide variety of quizzes including gameshow-style, PlayBuzz and Buzzfeed style, jeopardy games style, and game-based quizzes. The features provided differ from one tool to the other but all of them are easy to use, learner friendly and work across various platforms. We invite you to check them out and share with your colleagues.

REVIEWING A PRODUCT designed to learn over time is like reviewing a newborn baby. So much functionality is dependent on artificial intelligence and machine learning, the only certainty is that it’ll get smarter over time. Who knows what it’ll end up being: A jack-of-all-trades? A specialized savant? Or maybe just a creeper that records everything you say?

 

Consider the Amazon Echo. At birth, it didn’t have the ability to order you Domino’s, play Spotify playlists, or get things from Amazon Prime. In the past year, its capabilities and intelligence have evolved significantly. That’s thanks to hundreds of “skills” created by developers with the Alexa Skills Kit, partnerships with major companies such as Uber and Sonos, and Amazon’s new Music Unlimited service, which offers deep voice-control features.

 

At the ripe old age of two, Amazon’s Echo already has offspring in the form of the Echo Dot and Echo Tap. And now it has a neonate arch-rival in the form of Google Home. In the long term, the competition between the two platforms will be great for users of both devices: Two heavyweights in the tech world will be trying to make their voice assistants smarter, more versatile, and more useful than the other one.

 

As of now, they’re more like twins than not: They both tell decent jokes, they both stream NPR if you ask for news, they both do IFTTT, and they spout recipes and random facts with ease. Because it’s had more time in the world, Amazon’s platform has the advantage in many key areas. But Google Home ($130) trumps the full-size Echo ($180) in a few ways too—and not just in terms of price. They’re both really good, and they’re both going to get smarter. A lot smarter....

Let’s face it: Blogging and producing content on a daily basis isn’t easy. Even if you don’t compose an actual article everyday, chances are you’re still emailing and typing endless paragraphs on sources like Reddit, Facebook, or commenting on other blogs. You may otherwise be researching and connecting with fellow writers/bloggers as part of your daily work routine.

 

To make these responsibilities just a bit easier, here are some of the best – and most reliable – Google Chrome extensions for writers, marketers, and general bloggers....