All posts by Paul Stradling

News

Android Stack Scanner Can Organise Your Documents

Google is launching its ‘Stack’ app for Android, an AI-based scanner that also names and categorises the documents it scans.

The Technology

The Stack app is a result of collaborative work between Area 120, Google’s in-house incubator and the DocAI team in Google Cloud, and the technologies from Google’s acquisition of the education start up ‘Socratic’.

How It Works

When users take a photo of a document, the Stack app scans it, automatically names it, and suggests the right category or “stack,” to store it in.

Stack is also able to identify important information in documents (e.g. the “due date” or “total amount due”) and pull that out to make the document easier to find and access, plus users can search through the full text of documents (not just the title) to quickly find what is needed.

When it comes to (secure) storage, Stack uses advanced security and sign-in technology to protect the documents in the app and a face or fingerprint scan can be added as an extra layer to unlock the app.  Copies of documents can also be automatically saved to Google Drive which means that they are still accessible should a user decide to stop using Stack.

Benefits

The benefits of using Stack are that it provides a fast, easy, handy, intelligent, and searchable way to organise all important work documents such as invoices and receipts. The fact that important details in the document (e.g. due date) can be recognised by the app can make it easier to pay bills on time and can provide different (fast) ways to search for documents.  Also, the app’s ability to categorise and store a document accordingly in effect provides an instant time and space-saving filing system that is also secure and always available from anywhere using a smartphone.

Just The U.S. For Now

Unfortunately, Stack is only currently available in the U.S. via Google Play Store.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

When Stack does become available in the UK, this could be a very useful digital filing system for businesses which is fully portable (a phone app), searchable, secure, and provides a backup on Google Drive if the user decides to stop using Stack at any point.  This app sounds like a handy way to finally organise any piles of paper and any disparate pdfs into one central, easily accessible system.  For Google, this has been a productive way to use technology that it gained through an acquisition to add value to its services, and it is another good example of how AI can be put to practical use to tackle real-life daily challenges. There are many other mobile scanner apps available (Adobe Scan, Clear Scanner, Office Lens, Tiny Scanner), but the advantages of this one are the recognising/categorising and searching elements provided by AI plus the fact that it’s from Google and backs up to Google Drive for futureproofing.

News

Tech Tip – How To Speed Up Your Phone Charging

If you are finding that your phone is getting slow at charging, here are some of the possible causes and solutions:

– Incompatible or faulty accessories, such as power brick, USB cable, or charging pad/mat (for wireless charging). Choosing a charger or brick with higher amperage e.g., a power brick with 2 to 3 amps could help speed up charging, as could making sure that you are using an authentic charging (USB) cable that is in good condition. Using a different USB cable and power adapter could be a good first try at solving the problem.

– Wireless charging slowing things down. Wireless charging tends to be slower than cable charging, so consider switching back to traditional adapter & USB cable charging (bearing in mind the point made above).

– Damage to or dirt in the charger port on the phone (where the cable plugs in). If there’s dirt, use a wooden toothpick or a soft brush to clean it out. If it is broken, a technician, perhaps recommended by your local phone shop can fix it for you.

– Background apps using power. To stop this happening (Android), use Settings > Battery> Battery Usage to find the apps and disable their background battery usage. Select the app and tap Background restriction. For iPhones or iPads, go to Settings > Battery and tap Show Activity.

– An old or defective battery. To check an iPhone or iPad’s battery capacity, use Settings > Battery > Battery Health and if the Maximum Capacity is 80 per cent or lower, this may be a sign that the battery needs replacing.

– Using the phone while charging. This should be avoided because it causes the phone to charge more slowly, raises battery temperature, and increases the chances of fraying the charging cable.

News

Featured Article : Art, Cars, Carbon & Crazy Numbers

With news of a booming NFT market and the acceptance of Bitcoin as payment for Tesla cars, we look at the environmental impact of these and how the technology needs to be improved to be made more sustainable.

Robot Painting Collaboration

This week there was news that an artwork co-created by a robot called Sophia fetched $7,000,000 dollars. The artwork, which consisted of a 12-second MP4 file showing how the work evolved and a ‘self-portrait’ painted with a robot arm, was not just an example of the advancements of robotics and AI, or the incredible collaboration between a human and a robot to create an artwork but is also an example of how the market for ‘NFT’ art is growing.

NFT

Blockchain is at the incorruptible ledger, a bit like a secure spreadsheet that no-one can alter, that is the technology that powers cryptocurrencies like Ethereum or Bitcoin.  A non-fungible token (NFT) is the term for any unit of data on that blockchain / digital ledger. A unit could be any digital file such as digital artwork files, audio, videos, and more.  Each NFT represents a unique, non-interchangeable, exclusive digital item/asset, and is recorded in the blockchain ‘ledger’ as a cryptographic “hash”.

NFT Artwork

The market for NFT artworks is growing and more examples of digital NFT artworks fetching high prices are making the news more often as they break new boundaries. For example, this month, an artist known as Beeple sold a photo collage artwork (of 5000 images) at Christies called ‘Everydays — The First 5000 Days’, for a staggering $70 million. This makes it the third most expensive sale ever of a living artist, only beaten by the price fetched for works by David Hockney and Jeff Koons.

Another Price – Carbon

Many environmental and tech commentators are, however, concerned about the environmental impact of transactions involving the use of Blockchain and the cryptocurrencies that it powers. 

Mining

Much of the concern focuses on how energy-hungry the process of adding data to the blockchain, known as ‘mining ’, is. Crypto mining, uses software to explore millions of cryptographic checksums to find one that has the right number combination to “mint” a transaction and to try computations on the next block to be added to the blockchain.  Unfortunately, solving this complex puzzle involves using a large amount of electricity, the production of which produces carbon dioxide. The obvious conclusion for some tech and art commentators is, therefore, that NFTs may be making a negative contribution to climate change.

Debate

Turkish artist Memo Akten recently posted details online of “The Unreasonable Ecological Cost of #CryptoArt”.  Akten highlighted how “a single Ethereum (ETH) transaction is estimated to have a footprint on average of around 35 kWh. This in itself, is ludicrously high. To put that into perspective, this is roughly equivalent to an EU resident’s electric power consumption for 4 days.”  

The artist also compared how a single ETH transaction mouse click can set off a chain reaction to mining farms that ultimately delivers a footprint of 35 kWh for an ‘average’ transaction, and emissions of close to 20 KgCO2.  For perspective, the artist compares the impact of this one single mouse click to an average email being estimated to have a footprint of a few grams of CO2 or watching one whole hour of Netflix being estimated at resulting in the production of around 36 grams CO2.

Akten argues that just one NFT can involve many transactions including minting, bidding, cancelling, sales, and transfer of ownership which creates a footprint of a single NFT of hundreds of kWh, and hundreds of KgCO2 emissions.  Akten says that a single NFT footprint works out to be the “equivalent to an EU resident’s total electric power consumption for more than a month, with emissions equivalent to driving for 1000Km, or flying for 2 hours.”

Other commentators, such as Kelsie Nabben, a researcher at the RMIT University Blockchain Innovation Hub, believe that NFTs may be no more environmentally damaging than other ways of trading art e.g., transporting them around the world and storing them in temperature-controlled environments, all of which uses a lot or energy.

More Efficient In Time

Many agree, however that NFT technology is still relatively new and that it could be made more energy efficient as it advances, thereby reducing its environmental cost.

Buying Tesla In Bitcoins Cancels Environmental Benefits

The recent announcement that Tesla Inc customers can now buy its electric vehicles with Bitcoin, and how this could be a big step forward for the cryptocurrency’s use in commerce has been met by counter-argument that focuses on the potential environmental cost.  A medium.com article pointed to how, ironically, the cost of buying an energy-saving, environmentally friendly electric-powered Tesla car in Bitcoins could equate to cancelling one third of the CO2 savings for its whole lifetime.

Cambridge Bitcoin Energy Research

NFTs and buying Tesla vehicles with Bitcoins essentially highlight how the whole interaction between blockchain and cryptocurrencies has some way to go to reduce its energy-consumption.  Recent figures from Cambridge Researchers recently highlighted how power-hungry “mining” for Bitcoin consumes 21.36 terawatt-hours (TWh) a year meaning that if Bitcoin were a country, its energy (electricity) consumption it would be ranked above Argentina and the energy could power all the kettles in the UK for 27 years. Although this sounds shocking when framed this way, it should be remembered that the amount of electricity consumed each year by home devices in the US alone that are always-on but not active could power the entire Bitcoin network for a year, thereby highlighting other important areas for improvement in terms of widespread environmental impact.

Looking Ahead

There has been an explosive rise in NFTs and in only three months, the combined market cap of major NFT projects has increased by a massive 1,785 per cent. Although this has created booming NFT, high valuations of NFT-related tokens and the accompanying new market and investment opportunities, the environmental cost appears to be growing at the same time.

Calls for a carbon tax on cryptocurrencies to help balance out some of the negative consumption, carbon offsetting, and offering prizes (Elon Musk) for new Carbon Capture Systems are all very well but may not be tackling the problem itself. Developing a more energy-efficient and environmentally sustainable way of managing how crypto-currencies work and how they interact with Blockchain may be the way forward in solving some of the environmental problems created by the increased use of cryptocurrencies and the growth of the NFT market. This could involve several steps such as using different, low-energy consensus algorithms, building more energy-efficient blockchains and creating more sustainable mining solutions, and is something that must be addressed soon in order to ensure that Blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies, which have many benefits, can grow in a way whereby those benefits aren’t outweighed by the environmental cost.

News

Tech Insight – What Are Zero-Click SERPs?

In this article, we look at what a zero-click searches (SERPs) are, how this has impacted SEO, and what measures can be taken to increase the likelihood of your pages achieving featured snippets.

Zero-Click SERPs

A zero-click search describes when the search engine query is answered by a snippet of text at the top of the search engine results page (SERP).  This means that the searcher has no need to scroll down or click on any of the other search engine results for the query because it has been answered at the top without any clicks. Google introduced the feature to enable users to get instant answers to queries.

Position One Degraded

In terms of natural, organic search engine results, the introduction of a zero-click search (featured snippets) has been another step in the degradation of what would have been position one, following the introduction of pay-per-click ads, Google local listings, maps, and more.

Types of Snippets

Google doesn’t just provide short paragraph snippets for zero-click searches.  It can also answer a question by providing (for example) a bullet point list, an answer involving a conversion (dollars to pounds / kilometres to miles) where the conversion engine calculation has already been done, and more.  Zero-click search snippets can, therefore, be displayed in several formats including a paragraph, a list, a table, or even a video. The “people also ask” (PAA) boxes i.e., the section of questions with dropdown boxes just below the featured snippet also provides ranking opportunities for snippets.

Google Decides

Google’s algorithms/automated system decides which (featured) snippet, taken from its web search listings, and is displayed as a zero-click result at the top of the SERPs.

Fewer Clicks

Displaying an instant, definitive, featured snippet answer at the top of the search results page may be very good news for the page that the snippet comes from but is likely to result in significantly fewer clicks for the other pages returned as results for that key phrase. For example, Wikipedia was reported to have lost more than 20 percent of its traffic after the launch of zero-click searches and SparkToro research from 2019 showed that half of all searches are zero-click searches.

Takes Clicks From #One

Research by Ahrefs shows that the zero-click featured snippet also appears to take clicks from the #1 ranking result. 

What Are The Implications For SEO

Having a definitive answer appear at the top of the search engine results means that searchers are less likely to scroll down and click on any other links.  This makes SEO more difficult, potentially less effective for most pages, and even more competitive.  This could also mean that businesses are more likely to opt for pay-per-click to at least feature prominently on the search page and perhaps be more inclined to make more use of Google’s other suite of tools (e.g. Google My Business).

Hrefs research (based on 112 million keywords) shows that 12.29 percent of search queries have featured snippets in their search results.

What To Do

Google’s featured snippets/zero-click search results come from pages that already rank in the top10 and are mostly triggered by long-tail keywords (i.e. more specific keywords and phrases). Google’s featured snippets are also governed by a set of policies which do not necessarily apply to normal web search listings.  These policies govern things like dangerous, harmful, or hateful content or content that contradicts consensus on public interest topics. With these points in mind, increasing the chances of getting a web page featured as a possible zero-click search result means:

– Use keyword research to target question-type searches, long-tail keywords and higher CTR opportunity keywords.

– Use high-quality information-rich content that is written to be informative for people and not just written for search engine appeal.

– Make sure that pages include relevant facts and stats as these may be given greater relevance by Google.

– Use heading tags and structure the content into concise paragraphs of the kind that could be returned as a featured snippet.

– Include an FAQ section to pick up on question keywords in snippets.

– Include plenty of relevant, high-quality images with relevant text in the alt tags.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

The degradation of what used to be the number one position in the search engines has posed challenges to businesses and has created the need to employ multiple means to get noticed and get clicks. This means having to use SEO alongside PPC, social media, Google Tools and more which all adds up to time, effort, and costs.  For a business to get a zero-click search placing (a featured snippet), involves creating high-ranking pages anyway, and paying particular attention to publishing high-quality content that is based on research into real queries and questions, and incorporate stats and information that are of real value and interest.

News

Notable Notes About … The New £50 Note

Bletchley Park code-breaking hero and wronged computer pioneer Alan Turing is to feature on the UK £50 note from 23rd June.

Alan Turing

Despite breaking WWII Nazi Germany’s Enigma machine code, allowing enemy messages to be read and thereby shortening World War II and saving countless lives, Alan Turing’s genius and heroism was overshadowed by a conviction in 1952 for gross indecency relating to Turing’s homosexuality.  The conviction, for having an affair with a 19-year-old Manchester man, led very sadly to Turing being forced to opt for a ‘chemical castration’ (being given female hormones) as the only alternative to imprisonment, which led to Turing committing suicide aged only 41. The UK mathematician, developmental biologist and computer science pioneer was finally granted a posthumous royal pardon in 2013.

Father of Computer Science

After studying at King’s College Cambridge, in 1936 Turing published his paper “On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem”, with which Turing proved that his “universal computing machine” could perform any mathematical computation if it were representable as an algorithm. This, plus his work developed at Bletchley Park is why Turing is widely thought of as the father of modern computer science. Turing was also the co-creator of the first computer chess programme.

Biologist

Alan Turing was also a pioneer of morphogenesis, and used mathematics to understand how natural patterns, such as the spiral formation of the seeds in a sunflower head and the arrangement of spots on a leopard can form.

Features of the £50 Note

The new £50 with Alan Turing’s face on it (the last of the Bank of England’s collection to switch from paper to polymer) will feature :

– A photo of Turing taken in 1951, and a table and mathematical formulae from Turing’s seminal 1936 paper “On Computable Numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem”.

-The Automatic Computing Engine (ACE) Pilot Machine, which was one of the first electronic stored-program digital computers.

– Technical drawings for the British Bombe, the machine specified by Turing and one of the primary tools used to break Enigma-enciphered messages during WWII.

– A quote from Alan Turing, given in an interview to The Times newspaper on 11 June 1949: “This is only a foretaste of what is to come, and only the shadow of what is going to be.”

– A copy of Turing’s signature.

– Ticker tape depicting Alan Turing’s birth date (23 June 1912) in binary code.

– Two key security features: a metallic hologram which changes between the words ‘Fifty’ and ‘Pounds’ when the note is tilted and a large see-through window with a gold and green foil on the front depicting a finely-detailed metallic microchip image.

– A silver foil patch with a 3D image of the coronation crown.

– The Queen’s portrait in the see-through window with ‘£50 Bank of England’ printed twice around the edge. (The small clover shapes on the outside of the window are based on architectural features at Bletchley Park.)

– A smaller see-through window in the bottom corner of the note, the shape of which is based on architectural features at Bletchley Park.

– A red foil patch containing the letters ‘AT’ is based on the image of a sunflower head linked to Turing’s morphogenetic work in later life.

Landmark Moment In Our History

Director of GCHQ Jeremy Fleming said: “Alan Turing’s appearance on the £50 note is a landmark moment in our history. Not only is it a celebration of his scientific genius which helped to shorten the war and influence the technology we still use today, it also confirms his status as one of the most iconic LGBT+ figures in the world. Turing was embraced for his brilliance and persecuted for being gay. His legacy is a reminder of the value of embracing all aspects of diversity, but also the work we still need to do to become truly inclusive.”

Questions

Questions have, however, been asked about why £50 notes don’t appear to have diverse ethnic minorities represented on them and, apart from the Queen and Jane Austin (who are both white), there are no other women featured on banknotes currently.

The Turing Pattern Project

To mark the launch of the new £50 note, the Bank of England and Sheffield University are running ‘The Turing Pattern Project’ with UK primary schools.  This project shows children how to use Alan Turing’s biological mathematical algorithm, acting as computers would, to create the pattern of a giant puffer-fish.

Twelve Puzzles

To celebrate Alan Turing’s image being featured on the new £50, GCHQ has created its “hardest puzzle ever”, the #TuringChallenge. The online puzzle, which anyone can attempt, requires a string of puzzles which get increasingly difficult to be solved.  If the first 11 puzzles are answered correctly, the answers should take the form of 11 single words or names which the Enigma simulator will be needed to decode. See details here: https://www.gchq.gov.uk/information/turing-challenge.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Alan Turing’s incredible mind, aptitude for maths and science, and his work in cracking the Enigma code at Bletchley Park resulted in millions of lives being saved through the shortening of the war in Europe, and in the rapid evolution of computer science that has fed directly into the digital world and workplace that we know today. Despite being a national hero, how Turing was treated is widely regarded as shameful, and the posthumous pardon and apology, along with being honoured on a banknote have been ways in which the UK has been able, in some small but public ways, to right some the wrongs of the past, honour a truly great scientist, and contribute to a greater understanding and acceptance of sexual differences and diversity.

News

Live Teams Transcriptions

Microsoft has launched a live transcription tool for Teams. In other words, it provides a written record of the spoken word during a meeting.

How it works

The tool identifies each speaker and automatically captures in real-time what each speaker says. As a result, the transcript is available during and after meetings. The speech is transcribed by AI-based Automatic Speech Recognition technology.

As a result, the technology uses a meeting’s invitation, participant names and attachments to improve accuracy and recognise jargon for each transcript automatically.

Using live transcription

To use the tool, the admin must turn on the ‘Allow Transcription’ policy which enables the meeting organiser to start a transcription. Participants are notified that the setting is on and can choose to hide it from their meeting view. If attendees do not want to be identified, they can turn off speaker attribution in their profile settings. After that, the transcripts will be available in a column to the side. Microsoft advises that the tool is not guaranteed to be 100% accurate.

Storage

After each meeting, the saved transcript is downloadable in Teams. In addition to being accessible from desktop and web, it is in the Teams calendar meeting event and through the transcript tile in the chat. The files will be stored in the meeting organiser’s Exchange Online account. However, only the organiser or admin can delete it.

Privacy and security

Microsoft says that no-one at Microsoft can see a meeting’s content. The models are automatically deleted after each meeting. Subsequently, Microsoft doesn’t use or store this data for improving its own AI.

Availability

The tool is available for scheduled Microsoft Teams meetings (in U.S. English) to public cloud customers. They should have licenses for Microsoft 365 E3, Microsoft 365 E5, Microsoft 365 Business Standard, and Microsoft 365 Business Premium SKUs.

What does this mean for your business?

Finally, the tool’s introduction is another move in the market battle between Zoom and Microsoft Teams. Although Zoom beat Microsoft to announcing a live transcript feature, Microsoft won in terms of delivering the feature. 

Above all, the live transcript tool will help users to either follow meetings more easily, catch up on meeting content, helping multi-tasking and being an extra accessibility feature.

Read more: Working from home

News

Tech tip – how to adjust sound for specific apps

Personalising our experience with technology is becoming easier and more important to users. But do you know how to adjust sound for specific apps? Adjusting volume settings allows you to remove unwanted noise and prioritise specific sounds like email notifications, for instance. 

Changing the volume levels of individual applications can be done quickly and easily on Windows 10. If you want to have better control of the volume of your computer, follow our simple guide below: 

Using sound settings 

Firstly, click on the ‘start’ button in the bottom left of the screen and then select ‘settings’. Alternatively, you can type ‘settings’ into the search bar next to the ‘start’ button. You can also right-click on the speaker symbol located on the toolbar and select ‘open sound settings’. 

Once you have opened the settings page, click on ‘system’ and then open the ‘sound’ option. Next, select ‘app volume and device preferences’ which can be found under the ‘advanced sound options’ section. You will find this by scrolling down the page. 

There you can adjust the master volume or levels of specific apps you have open and system sounds. These will be adjusted as part of the master volume. 

Adjusting sound using the volume mixer 

To use the volume mixer, right-click the speaker symbol on the taskbar and select ‘open volume mixer’. Any apps that are open and making a noise will be visible on the mixer. The master volume and system sounds will be visible at all times on the mixer. 

You can then use the volume sliders to increase or decrease the output of each app. If you would rather silence, you can choose to mute apps completely.  

If you want to find read more tips on how to make the most of your tech, simply visit our news section.