The beginning of the year always comes hand in hand with resolutions – to make ourselves prettier, slimmer, to fulfill our dreams, achieve our goals or to finally start a previously-imagined business. According to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), there are 27 million working-age Americans – nearly 14% of the whole country – who are either running or starting to run a business. Statistics show that there are more and more people who want to start their own company or launch their projects and ideas. Being an entrepreneur is becoming a more desirable career path all over the world and, more often than ever before, people are successfully launching their businesses in different parts of the globe. In which fields entrepreneurs can achieve their goals in 2017? Read on, and you’ll find your answer!
Artificial Not Always Stands for Bad
Artificial Intelligence touches you every day. When you get into a car, and your Apple iPhone sends you information about the traffic and an approximate time of the journey – thanks to Artificial Intelligence, you’ll be on time. To be more specific, an Artificial Intelligence is an intelligence exhibited by machines, which perceives its environment in a “human way.” Colloquially, the term is applied when a machine’s “cognitive” functions are similar to those associated with human minds, such as learning, or problem-solving. The uses for Artificial Intelligence can be more and more important in many areas of human functioning. It can replace some health services and make patients’ lives easier, especially regarding the likes of chronic diseases.
According to research, the cost of healthcare for chronic illnesses in 2014 was almost 3 trillion dollars, and the patient themselves still complain about a sense of loss once they come home after the medical appointment. Norrie Daroga, founder, and CEO of idavatars, created a perfect solution and, colloquially, a lending hand for those who suffer chronic diseases. Sofie is Idavatars’ intelligent, empathic and conversational app powered by IBM Watson. It was created to promote patient engagement, manage chronic conditions and improve healthcare outcomes through a series of interactive and intelligent, one on one conversations with a patient. She’s tracking the patient all day, answering questions and, if things are getting worse, she’s able to alert the doctor. This project is incredibly helpful for those who need to take an extreme care of their health.
What Is The Big Deal About Big Data?
Talking with your friends on Facebook, posting on Twitter or sharing photos with your family – all these actions contribute to big data. All of your moves on the Internet are stored in this mysteriously sounding ‘big data’. Every digital process and social media exchange produce it. Systems, sensors and mobile devices transmit it and big data is arriving from multiple sources – your mobile, tablet, computer and many other electronic devices contribute at an alarming velocity, volume, and variety. It can change the way people within an organization work together – insight from big data can enable employees to make better decisions, optimizing operations and much more. What is important regarding taking advantage of big data is an optimal processing power, analytics capabilities, and skills.
Falon Fatemi, founder of Node.io for sure is capable of using big data correctly. Node.io aims to reorganize the information on the web based on the people who use it. The Node data intelligence layer powers proactive and personalized recommendations, helping the B2B world understand the people and companies that matter most in their business.
Internet of Things – Connecting and Simplifying
Internet of Things is networking physical devices and vehicles, buildings and other items that are embedded with electronics and software. What is surprising is the fact that, due to Internet of Things, users can not only connect different objects but it is also possible to network animals or even people – with some unique IDs, of course! The idea allows data to be transferred into and over the system, without interaction between computers and other human users. In other words, it is simply a network of various devices all connected and synchronized with each other. Today, we’ve got a lot of facilities and programs which surround us with all of the tools needed to control them – it may not be convenient to look for and remember which remote control to use when you want to listen to music and which one is for when you want to stop your favorite program on TV. Having all in one solution seems to be quite an advantage and a life-simplifying facility. Ok, so we know that you can have an intelligent building and with smart devices, but can you wear intelligent clothes?
Of course! Heapsylon turns clothes into computers. The company launched Sensoria Socks which are infused with textile pressure sensors and paired with proprietary electronics. The sensors are accurately tracking steps, speed, calories, environmental temperature and distance. All of these seems to be incredibly important but, being aware of the fact that in America there are 25 million runners, up to 85% of whom will suffer some injury this year, the information mentioned above might not be enough to protect them from these injuries. To avoid this, they should change the foot landing technique and weight distribution on the foot as they walk and run – Sensoria Socks may be a helpful device in changing bad running habits and, what is more important, avoiding injuries.
AR and VR – Making Fun of Mixing Different Worlds
Augmented Reality
Augmented Reality (AR) is a live, direct or indirect, view of a physical, real-world environment in which elements are supplemented by computer-generated sensory input sources, such as sound, video, graphics, or GPS data. Regarding augmented reality, information about a user’s surrounding environment becomes interactive and digitally manipulable. In short, Augmented Reality brings out the components of the digital world into a person’s perceived real world. It can be done while using some applications or brilliant devices like Epiphany Eyewear.
Do you know what Epiphany Eyewear and Buddy Holly the rock and roll star have in common? Smart glasses look exactly like these worn by the famous singer from 1950’s. For sure, Buddy and his glasses couldn’t see as much and so vividly as everyone who wears smart glasses. Epiphany Eyewear are smart glasses developed by Vergence Labs. These glasses are not only making you look as stylish as a rock and roll star, as they also allow to record video stored within its hardware for live-stream or uploading to a computer or social media network.
Virtual Reality
This typically refers to computer technologies that use software to generate realistic images and sounds that replicate a real environment and stimulate a user’s physical presence in the environment. Virtual reality has been defined as a realistic and immersive simulation of three-dimensional environments, created using interactive software and hardware, experienced and controlled by the movement of the human body – or as an immersive interactive experience generated by a computer. It is getting more and more popular, and luckily there will be limitless opportunities to make use of technology easier and more exciting due to virtual reality.
Thanks to virtual reality, we can create an avatar based on our photos. Loom.ai is founded by an award-winning team of visual specialists from DreamWorks and Lucas Film – so when it comes to making things look good on the screen, we are in good hands! Thanks to Loom.ai, the new era of communication – by automatically converting selfies into 3D avatars life-like visualizations – has finally come. These animated and expressive faces can be used to power the avatar section in all fields where an avatar is needed. No more square images and resembling someone else’s face!
Chatbots – The Digital Parrots
A chatbot is a computer program which conducts a conversation via auditory or textual methods. You may be surprised when you stumble upon such programs because they are designed to convincingly simulate behavior as a real conversational partner. Chatbots are typically used in dialog systems for various practical purposes, including customer service or information acquisition. Some chatbots use very natural language processing systems, but many simpler systems only scan for keywords within the input, then pull the reply with the most matching keywords, or the most similar wording pattern, from a database.
Among the companionate ship crew, there must be a truthful parrot. It should be present amid every team member – of course, it’s not possible literally, but Polly is something which can replace a real parrot successfully. Polly.ai is utilizing chatbots to help managers pick up employee happiness. Its chatbot product integrates with popular office app Slack and lets managers poll employees on a one-time or recurring basis. How does it work? At first, you have to chat with Polly and tell her what do you want to know from your co-workers and whether it is a one-time cooperation or a recurring poll. Then, Polly starts to collect data ongoing feedback from your teammates directly in Slack. Now you can browse and track trends, segmented stats and get insights through the dashboard.
As you can see, are many opportunities and areas where you can launch a startup and gain some huge success. Good luck!
