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Tag Archives: Much

SO MUCH FOR GLOBAL WARMING, EH?

January 19, 2021   Humor
blank SO MUCH FOR GLOBAL WARMING, EH?

Melting icebergs to cause an ice age.

Icebergs in the Antarctic gradually melting further and further from the frozen continent could be the trigger that plunges Earth into a new ice age, study finds.

Researchers from Cardiff University reconstructed past climate conditions and identified tiny fragments of Antarctic rock dropped in the open ocean as part of a study designed to understand how ice ages begin.

Ice age cycles over the past 1.6 million years have been paced by periodic changes to Earth’s orbit of the Sun – changing how much solar radiation reaches the surface.

However, before this study little was known about how changes in solar energy from small changes in the orbit could so dramatically change Earth’s climate.

They found that melting icebergs gradually move freshwater from the Southern to the Atlantic Ocean by melting further from Antarctica – causing a change in ocean circulation and plunging the planet into a cold period – triggering an ice age.

The impact of human-created CO2 emissions could make the Southern Ocean too warm for Antarctic icebergs to reach, bringing an end to this 1.6 million year cycle of ice ages starting with melting icebergs, study authors warned.

In their study, the team propose that when the orbit of Earth around the Sun is just right, Antarctic icebergs begin to melt further and further away from Antarctica.

This results in huge volumes of freshwater being shifted away from the Southern Ocean and into the Atlantic Ocean.

As the Southern Ocean gets saltier and the North Atlantic gets fresher, large-scale ocean circulation patterns begin to dramatically change, pulling CO2 out of the atmosphere and reducing the so-called greenhouse effect.

This in turn pushes the Earth into ice age conditions, according to the team, who reconstructed past climate conditions including finding tiny fragments of Antarctic rock dropped in open ocean by melting icebergs.

The rock fragments were obtained from sediments recovered by the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) that represents 1.6 million years of history.

The study found that these deposits, known as Ice-Rafted Debris, appeared to consistently lead to changes in deep ocean circulation, reconstructed from the chemistry of tiny deep-sea fossils called foraminifera.

The team also used new climate model simulations to test their hypothesis, finding that huge volumes of freshwater could be moved by the icebergs.

Lead author of the study Aidan Starr, said they were astonished to find that the link between iceberg melting and ocean circulation was present during the onset of every ice age for the past 1.6 million years.

‘Such a leading role for the Southern Ocean and Antarctica in global climate has been speculated but seeing it so clearly in geological evidence was very exciting,’ he said.

Professor Ian Hall, co-author of the study and co-chief scientist of the IODP Expedition, from Cardiff, said the results provide a ‘missing link’ in ice age history.

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ANTZ-IN-PANTZ ……

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Microsoft Dynamics 365/CRM: Yes! But How Much Will It Cost?

July 31, 2020   CRM News and Info
crmnav Microsoft Dynamics 365/CRM: Yes! But How Much Will It Cost?

Perhaps you’ve been planning to upgrade your current on-premise CRM (Customer Relationship Management) solution to a Cloud-based system that will offer more of what you need to drive your business forward. If so, it’s a safe bet that Microsoft Dynamics 365/CRM is at the top of your shortlist.

You’ve read a lot of information here on the CRM Software Blog and elsewhere about Microsoft’s Dynamics 365/CRM Cloud solution and the features that put it at the top of its class. You understand that Dynamics 365/CRM fully integrates with your ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system to enhance your business processes and provide you with invaluable BI (Business Intelligence) for successful decision-making.

And Dynamics 365/CRM gives your employees powerful tools that will be familiar and intuitive.

Now you want to know the bottom line: How much will it cost?

The good news is that getting a price quote for Microsoft Dynamics 365/CRM is easy, instant, and can be done right here on the CRM Software Blog.

Yes, in just a few minutes, you can get an instant price quote for a Microsoft Dynamics 365/CRM solution with the CRM Software Blog’s Quick Quote Wizard.

Here is how the Quick Quote Wizard works:

Look on the right-hand side of each page of the CRM Software Blog for the orange bar labeled: Request Instant Quote Dynamics 365/CRM.

Click on the orange bar to bring up the Quick Quote form.

Select the number and types of licenses you need for your team. Microsoft allows you to mix different license and user types, so you only pay for what you need.

Indicated the level of implementation support you require. Information is supplied on the form.

Enter your contact address, click submit, and you will receive an instant, automated Dynamics 365 Quick Quote outlining license and estimated services costs for an entire CRM project.

There is no obligation; the information and price quotes are a free service that we offer to our readers.

The Quick Quote Wizard is easy and free. Why not try it now?

Find a Microsoft Dynamics 365/CRM partner in your area.

By CRM Software Blog Writer,www.crmsoftwareblog.com

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“Presidency is about a lot more than tweeting from your golf cart” as Trump says “much very good”

May 25, 2020   Humor
 Presidency is about a lot more than tweeting from your golf cart as Trump says much very good


“As the death toll in the coronavirus pandemic neared 100,000 Americans this Memorial Day weekend, President Trump derided & insulted perceived enemies & promoted a baseless conspiracy theory, in between rounds of golf.”

x

#MuchVeryGood is not an “English as a 1st language” construct.

Further, we’re 1 week past most graduations & heading into summer break.

Whomever wrote this tweet isn’t familiar with the schedule of our educational system.

I’m grading the operative behind this propaganda 2/10. pic.twitter.com/9OsjkbA2UV

— Lincoln’s Bible (@LincolnsBible) May 25, 2020

x

“Can you believe that, with all of the problems and difficulties facing the US, President Obama spent the day playing golf” Mr. Trump wrote in 2014. He was criticizing Mr. Obama for golfing after just 2 cases of Ebola were confirmed in the United Stateshttps://t.co/77eZjU94tZ

— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) May 25, 2020

Perhaps Howard Stern, of all people, said it best: “The oddity in all of this is the people Trump despises most, love him the most. The people who are voting for Trump for the most part … He’d be disgusted by them.” The tragedy is that they are not disgusted by him in return.

x

Donald Trump – a vain, cowardly, lying, vulgar, jabbering blowhard – is not a real “man” your father and grandfather would have respected. Nor should any man, but as I write in @TheAtlantic: especially not the ones who claim to support him the most.https://t.co/xRdplS9czc

— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) May 25, 2020

In order to think about why these men support Trump, one must first to grasp how deeply they are betraying their own definition of masculinity by looking more closely at the flaws they should, in principle, find revolting.

Is Trump honorable? This is a man who routinely refused to pay working people their due wages, and then lawyered them into the ground when they objected to being exploited. Trump is a rich downtown bully, the sort most working men usually hate.

Is Trump courageous? Courtiers like Victor Davis Hanson have compared Trump to the great heroes of the past, including George Patton, Ajax, and the Western gunslingers of the American cinema. Trump himself has mused about how he would have been a good general. He even fantasized about how he would have charged into the middle of the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, without a weapon. “You don’t know until you test it,” he said at a meeting with state governors just a couple of weeks after the massacre, “but I really believe I’d run in there, even if I didn’t have a weapon, and I think most of the people in this room would have done that too.” Truly brave people never tell you how brave they are. I have known many combat veterans, and none of them extols his or her own courage. What saved them, they will tell you, was their training and their teamwork. Some—perhaps the bravest—lament that they were not able to do more for their comrades.

But even if we excuse Trump for the occasional hyperbole, the fact of the matter is that Trump is an obvious coward. He has two particular phobias: powerful men and intelligent women.

www.theatlantic.com/…

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100,000 dead on your watch and you have the fucking nerve to go golfing and accuse Joe Scarborough of committing murder. You despicable piece of shit.

— Rob Reiner (@robreiner) May 24, 2020

The attacks from Trump come as the country’s death toll from the virus nears the 100,000 mark and the ensuing economic devastation worsens. As criticism of Trump’s handling of the crisis has mounted, he has turned to his Twitter feed to air grievances and settle scores. He has baselessly accused a stream of perceived opponents of committing crimes, including illegal espionage and election rigging.

[…]

Trump, a president with a penchant for fanning the conspiratorial flames with fabricated allegations, seemed eager for something to use against Scarborough.

In a November 2017 tweet, the president asked when NBC would “terminate low ratings Joe Scarborough based on the ‘unsolved mystery’ that took place in Florida years ago? Investigate!”

x

President Obama has a personal responsibility to visit & embrace all people in the US who contract Ebola!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 15, 2014

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How Much Does It Cost to Own Microsoft Dynamics 365/CRM?

April 30, 2020   CRM News and Info
crmnav How Much Does It Cost to Own Microsoft Dynamics 365/CRM?

In today’s business world, all types and sizes of businesses can benefit from the efficiency of a comprehensive CRM(Customer Relationship Management) solution. If your company hopes to grow and expand, it’s even more valuable.

When you hope to increase your client base, open new offices, or expand into new markets nearby or around the globe, you need a powerful, integrated system such as Microsoft Dynamics 365/CRM.

There’s no shortage of information and articles about the features and functionality of Dynamics 365/CRM; you can find a wealth of articles right here on the CRM Software Blog.

But one piece of information you might have had trouble pinning down is the price. When budgeting for a new or upgraded solution, you need to know the total cost of ownership. That’s not always easy to determine. There is a difference between the sticker price of the software and the actual cost of the software plus installation plus ongoing costs.

The CRM Software Blog’s Quick Quote Tool is here to help. The Quick Quote Tool will generate a ballpark estimate of the total costs involved in implementing and operating Microsoft Dynamics 365/CRM.

Here’s how the Quick Quote Tool works:

Look for the orange ‘Request Instant Quote Dynamics 365/CRM’ bar at the top right of each page of the CRM Software Blog. Click the bar, and you’ll be taken to a screen with a short form to fill out. You’ll answer basic questions about your type of business, the number of employees who will be using the system, the level of support you’ll require (don’t worry, the questionnaire will help you answer these questions), and any concerns you have unique to your business. Include your contact information, and you’re done.

The Quick Quote Tool will use your information to customize a quote which you’ll receive instantly as a PDF sent to your email. After you’ve received your non-binding quote, your contact information will be made available to just one of our expert CRM Software Blog members in your area who will be happy to answer any questions you may have. You can choose to work with that partner or not; it’s up to you. The non-binding estimate and the referral are a free service we provide for our readers.

The CRM Software Blog Quick Quote Tool can get you started in determining just how much your Microsoft Dynamics 365 system will cost you from the first licensing to long-term support. Simply fill out the quote request form and be well on your way to a deeper understanding of the total cost of owning a Dynamics 365 solution from Microsoft.

By CRM Software Blog Writer. www.crmsoftwareblog.com

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Who would do it for as much as the withheld Ukraine aid? George Lopez does Ted Nugent no favors

January 13, 2020   Humor
 Who would do it for as much as the withheld Ukraine aid? George Lopez does Ted Nugent no favors

Tom Hanks reaction to Ricky Gervais joke at Golden Globes Awards show

Apparently Trumpist-bots are trying to be angry about an online message that resembles a stock line in comedian George Lopez’s stage routine about performing a task for less compensation because he’s Latinx.

The backdrop for this is the 30-round AR-15 magazine emblazoned with an imprisoned Hillary flaunted by Donald Trump Junior. The online trends went to citing counter-examples and the discourse deteriorates from there.

George Lopez trended on Twitter Monday morning after commenting on an Instagram account that he would kill President Trump to secure a bounty mentioned during a eulogy at Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani’s funeral over the weekend.

News of the $ 80 million bounty — which hasn’t been confirmed as actually being sanctioned by the regime and instead was a comment from someone speaking at the funeral — was posted uncritically as fact to an Instagram account Sunday.

Lopez commented, “We’ll do it for half.”

x

According to this article it should have been ok for Lopez’s comment as he is a comedian (Ted Nugent was wrong to imply he wanted to kill Obama as he is a non-comedian-he later apologized and vowed to be civil in future comments) https://t.co/7qVAxVbfG0

— Elaine (@IMissJamesWoods) January 6, 2020

Along with his name, “arrest George Lopez” was soon trending on Twitter as right-wing pundits attacked him for the comment. Turning Points USA founder and president Charlie Kirk tweeted that the comment was “sick” and worth an investigation from the Secret Service. LifeZette TV’s Wayne Dupree, too, asked the Secret Service to get involved. He called Lopez a “violent lunatic” who should be arrested. Mark Levin simply called him a “lowlife.”

www.thewrap.com/…


2007

 Who would do it for as much as the withheld Ukraine aid? George Lopez does Ted Nugent no favors

 Who would do it for as much as the withheld Ukraine aid? George Lopez does Ted Nugent no favors

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Too much, yet not enough: Amazon’s Echo Studio, Echo Flex, and Fire TV Cube

January 4, 2020   Big Data

I behold the pile of Alexa devices that Amazon has sent me to review, and I do not immediately know what I want to do with them. There’s an Echo Studio smart speaker, a Fire TV Cube, an Echo Flex (which defies description), and a couple of accessories to go with the Flex. Our household already has an Echo Spot (smart clock with a screen), a smart plug, and a pair of Fire tablets for the kids. And of course, we have the Alexa app on our phones.

Given the volume and diversity of Alexa devices now populating my home, I decided to go all in and try to create as unified a smart home system as I can, comprising all these parts and pieces. This is, of course, what Amazon wants. I bow to the will of the tech giant for the purpose of testing out this smart home stuff.

After doing so, I have three key observations:

  1. These devices, what they offer, and what they require are simultaneously too much and not enough.
  2. To extract any significant value from these devices, you need to have a specific problem (or problems) that a specific Amazon device (or devices) can solve.
  3. These Amazon devices cost a lot of money, and in many cases you’ll need more than one to get the full functionality you need.

The task of creating what portends to be a convenient, virtual assistant-enhanced home feels overwhelming — so many devices; so many individual device settings; so many possible types of lists, reminders, alarms, skills, routines, games, and “Blueprints.” It costs a lot of time, work, and mental energy to dig around to find useful ones and set them all up.

There are some 100,000 Alexa skills you can enable on these devices. Some of them are eminently useful, like a “find my phone” skill to help you keep track of your phone, while a great many of them are utterly banal, like the Spongebob Challenge skill that’s just a themed memory game. It can be a challenge to separate a small bit of wheat from so much chaff.

I do not ascribe to a “tech for the sake of tech” ethos. I’m interested only in what sort of tools or new capabilities tech can provide. That’s a necessary approach to take with these devices — not “what can they do,” but “how can they help me.” If all you want is a nice speaker that you can control with your voice, great — the Echo Studio is for you. If you want a way to control your lights with your voice, you’ll need to pair an Alexa device with an Amazon Smart Plug, if not a third-party lighting system that works with Alexa. If you want an alarm system, you can pair a Ring doorbell with an Echo Flex plus a motion sensor accessory. And so on and so forth.

The point is, although Alexa is an extremely broad, generalized tool, the devices on which you find it are incredibly domain specific. Because they have a discrete purpose, each item in the vast and growing ecosystem of Alexa-powered devices has commensurately limited capabilities, too. Combining multiple domain-specific devices can get you increased capabilities, but only to an extent. A fully tricked-out Alexa-powered smart home needs more than just a handful of devices.

And that’s problematic, because these devices are not cheap. It’s true that Amazon kept costs impressively low on things like most of its Fire tablets (never mind that such devices are loss leaders) and some Fire TV devices, but other devices aren’t so affordable. Even the humble Amazon Smart Plug (which works with Alexa but doesn’t have the virtual assistant on board) is $ 25. The costs build up from there.

All the things

The devices at hand — the Echo Studio, Fire TV Cube, and Echo Flex — are compelling in their own rights, despite their respective costs.

Echo Studio

The Echo Studio ($ 200) is a smart speaker designed to play high-quality music, as opposed to a smart speaker that’s meant to be simply a hands-free voice assistant. The idea is that the Echo Studio offers the sort of audio range and fidelity that you’d want from a nice home speaker system, with five internal speakers, including a tweeter and a subwoofer. It’s able to automatically adjust to a room’s acoustics, too.

The large black cylinder measures approximately eight inches tall and seven inches in diameter, so it’s reasonably compact, such that you can stick it on a shelf or corner of a kitchen counter and it won’t take up an egregious amount of space. It has the normal slate of Alexa buttons — volume controls, mute mic button, and “action” button that obviates the need to use the wake word– and the telltale LED light ring that shows you Alexa’s status or activity.

Subjectively, the audio quality, range, and spatial sound is on par with the stereo speakers-plus-standalone subwoofer that I was previously using — which is impressive, given that the Echo Studio is a single unit. The volume was sufficient to fill the entire main floor of my house with clean, distortion-free music.

Echo Flex

The Echo Flex is a palm-sized device that plugs into a wall outlet and is designed to control things like your lights, locks, thermostat, and so on. It has its own little speaker (and mic) on board, but that’s for communication purposes only — the tinny, distorted sound is grating if you try to play music through it. You can augment the Flex’s capabilities by plugging in attachments to its USB port. Ostensibly the roster of such add-ons will grow, but the two that Amazon sent along are the Third Reality Smart Nightlight and Motion Sensor.

It’s unclear why the Smart Nightlight exists at all. It’s essentially an overcomplication of the traditional night light, which is arguably already a perfect product. The Smart Nightlight lets you set different colors for the light, adjust the brightness of the glow from 1% to 100%, and determine when it turns on and off.

 Too much, yet not enough: Amazon’s Echo Studio, Echo Flex, and Fire TV Cube

The Third Reality Motion Sensor is more practical. From its position in whatever outlet you’ve stuck it and the Flex into, it detects movement that crosses its sensor. Then, you can use the Alexa app to enact all manner of subsequent actions, from giving a verbal welcome to using Alexa Guard — a security notification feature that’s part of Alexa — to alert you to intruders.

You configure all of the above from the Alexa app on your phone. The Flex costs $ 25, or you can buy either (but not both!) of the Third Reality accessories in a bundle with it for $ 40.

Fire TV Cube

Essentially, the Fire TV Cube can supplant whatever other media streaming devices you may employ with your TV, like a Roku.

It’s small and unobtrusive at a little over three inches square (it’s technically a rectangle, but barely). You have to plug it in to a wall outlet, and it doesn’t come with its own HDMI cable. You’re supposed to position it at least one to two feet away from any speaker, including your TV’s built-in speakers, which can create some placement challenges. However, it includes an IR extender that will help you keep your home entertainment setup’s clean look if you need it.

You can control the Fire TV Cube with the included remote, your voice, or both. The box itself has a mic and Alexa, as well as Alexa buttons, so you can speak commands to it with a wake word and do things like adjust the volume directly from there. The remote has an Alexa action button on it, though, so you can press and hold it and issue voice commands without saying the wake word.

 Too much, yet not enough: Amazon’s Echo Studio, Echo Flex, and Fire TV Cube

The $ 120 Fire TV Cube has the same on-screen interface as any Fire TV device, giving you access to streaming channels, live channels, games, and more.

I incorporated all of the above into my home network. None of the devices proved terribly onerous to set up. (You do need to have a Wi-Fi network and your Alexa app handy to perform any necessary configurations.) They joined an Echo Spot (smart speaker with a screen), smart plug, and two Fire 8 tablets that we already had — and of course, the Alexa app on the phones we own.

The app and everything

Even though Alexa is a voice assistant, the organizational center of any and all Alexa devices is the app. It’s where you do everything from adding devices to configuring their settings to checking your device activity.

One could fill numerous tedious pages with all the items and features included in the Alexa app. But a few screenshots tell much of the story:

 Too much, yet not enough: Amazon’s Echo Studio, Echo Flex, and Fire TV Cube

Most of these items are self-explanatory, like reminders and lists, but some are more specific to the Alexa ecosystem. Routines are essentially a way to string together commands or set up cause and effect relationships between commands. If you tap Things to Try, you’ll get a little overview of all the things that you can do with Alexa, from communication to productivity to music. The Skills & Games section is a sort of marketplace where you can hunt for skills, which are essentially apps for Alexa.

The Activity section is one to keep an eye on; it’s where you can see your personal history with your Alexa devices and even play back to recordings of your commands. (Yes, Alexa records and stores audio files of all your queries and commands, although you can delete them.)

Blueprints is one of the more compelling features. It lets you easily create your own “Skill Blueprints,” which are customized skills that you can create from templates, like a chore chart, special date countdown, or study aids. Like many of the Alexa skills, though, a lot of these are frivolous, like a custom Q&A where you create your own answers such as making your hometown the answer for “Alexa, which is the best city in the world?”

I created a basic but customized to-do list in just a couple of minutes, but it was indeed basic — for instance, I included leading items like “email Mike” and “check my meeting schedule,” but Alexa didn’t follow up on any of those things by, for instance, sending the email or checking my actual calendar and reading off my schedule.

What to do

Armed with a group of Alexa devices and the Alexa app, I had to come up with things to try, given the nature of the devices I had on hand and the specific things that made sense for me to use them for.

Listening to music

My family has a propensity for playing music in the house, so voice-controlled music via the Echo Studio seemed ideal. There’s a Spotify Alexa skill you can toggle on (from the app), which is perfect, because we have Spotify Premium. Setting this up took just a few minutes and a few taps in the Alexa app.

However, Amazon really, really, really wants you to use Amazon Music. By default, that’s the pool of content from which it draws. Some of it is free, but to get the best experience, you’re strongly encouraged (by Alexa, via the Echo Studio) to subscribe. Although we believed we obviated this need with our Spotify subscription and Alexa skill, the Echo Studio seemed unable to tap into Spotify like we wanted.

For example, when I said, “Alexa, play Yola on Spotify,” it played “Yola radio” — which includes Yola’s songs, but also the songs of others. When I specified that I wanted to hear Yola’s album Walk Through Fire, I got the same frustrating result. “Maybe we should just use Amazon Music,” my wife sighed, annoyed but resigned. “But that’s what they want us to do!” I yelled, in the general direction of the Echo Studio.

Whatever tracks we did get the Echo Studio to play sounded terrific, though. We did not spring for an Amazon Music subscription.

Watching TV

In order for the Fire TV Cube to be of any real use to you, you need to subscribe to streaming services. We’re cord-cutters, so that was not a problem in our case. Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, Netflix, etc. were all there and available on the little cube. All you have to do is install their respective apps and log in to your accounts, all through the Fire TV interface and using your remote.

I found that navigating to and through the various streaming services using Alexa was intuitive and direct. (You can also turn on follow-up mode, where you can ask Alexa trailing, contextual questions without re-saying the wake word.) From the home screen, for example, I could say, “Alexa, play Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” or “Alexa, play Tiny House World,” and it opened Prime Video and took me to the right show. If I’d previously watched an episode, it returned me to the exact spot where I left off.

Only a certain number of the apps on the Fire TV Cube work with Alexa, but for the ones that do, Alexa is smart enough to know that a given show or movie is on multiple streaming platforms. For example, when I said, “Alexa, play Good Girls,” it asked me if I wanted to view it on Hulu or Netflix.

However, when I asked Alexa to play Little Women (which is a new show on Prime Video), it instead suggested that I buy the book on Audible, and by the way wouldn’t you like to buy an Audible subscription? No thanks, Alexa.

You can also use the Fire TV Cube and Alexa to turn your TV on and off. This feature may or may not work on TVs of a certain age, though.

Lists and reminders

One of the advantages of an ecosystem of devices that all have the same virtual assistant on board is that the experience of interacting with Alexa is essentially the same, no matter the device. It’s true that the commands you might make of a given device are dependent upon what it can do, but Alexa offers plenty of capabilities that work across all of them. For instance, you can ask about the weather or the day’s headlines, or set a reminder, or add to a list, whether you’re near the Echo Studio or browsing on a Fire tablet or watching TV show on the Fire TV Cube.

These are applications where you’re using the cloud-centric strengths of Alexa and not the purpose-built tasks germane to, say, a smart speaker. You could say, “Alexa, remind me to take out the trash tomorrow morning,” and as long as you’re within earshot of an Alexa-powered device, you’re good to go.

But even here, you’ll bump into limitations, like if you make a list. It’s ideal in one sense, because it’s in a shared Prime account, and anyone in the house can say, “Alexa, create a new list” or, in the case of an existing list, “Alexa, add [item] to the list,” and there it shall be. But that just creates a “dumb” list. To get any kind of advanced features, like a grocery list that organizes items by food category or shows you which items you’ve ticked off already so you don’t miss anything, you need to locate and enable a skill, or hope that an automatically suggested one fits the bills. Also note that if you try to use the “dumb” list for groceries, you really need to enunciate clearly, because Alexa isn’t trying to match your words to any sort of domain-specific bank of terms. That is why when I said, “Alexa, add to my grocery list,” and it asked what I wanted to add, when I said “beer,” it added “fear.”

You’ll want a skill, like the OurGroceries skill. This was quite handy, because we already happen to use that app. I found it in the Alexa Skills Store on the web, clicked to enable the skill, and had to create and enter a password for the skill. But then, any additions to our shared lists we made via Alexa automatically synced to the app on our phones. The only slightly annoying bit is that you have to invoke the skill every time — “Alexa, ask OurGroceries to add milk” instead of “Alexa, add milk to the grocery list.”

Communications

One of the most compelling uses of Alexa is communications, especially if you have a lot of devices on your network, as we presently do.

You can make calls from an Alexa device to a phone, and vice versa. Setting this up can be a bit complicated, mainly because you have to know contact names, who has which devices, and so on. But for my specific purposes, it was fairly easy: I turned on the calling ability in the Alexa app and made sure every device on the network was enabled, too. If the kids want to get ahold of me while I’m out, or my wife wants to call me hands-free, they can just ask Alexa to do it from any of the many Alexa devices around the house. If I need to call home but doubt that anyone will pick up a smartphone and answer, I can use the Drop-In feature.

Drop-In is a fabulous tool that lets you connect to one of your Alexa devices from another — including your phone. It’s basically a smart intercom. If I’m in the kitchen and don’t want to yell down to the basement playroom for the kids to come up for dinner, I can tell the nearby Echo Studio to drop in on the Echo Flex (which in this scenario is plugged into an outlet downstairs). After confirming that’s the device I intended to drop in on, Alexa will turn on the Echo Flex’s mic so I can talk to the kids, and they can respond that they’re coming. Even if I’m not at home, I can “drop in” on any of the housebound Alexa devices from the Alexa app on my phone.

Airing of grievances

Here is a short list of annoyances I encountered in the course of setting up, using, and evaluating these devices and Alexa — in addition to any aforementioned grievances.

  • If there are multiple Alexa devices within range of your voice, the wrong one often picks up the command, like when you’re trying to tell the Echo Studio to play a song, and the Fire tablet jumps in instead. (This was abated by Echo Spatial Perception [ESP]), a feature that determines which device you’re closest to if there are multiple Alexa devices nearby. But if you’re shouting at the Echo Studio from across the room while you’re prepping dinner, the tablet your kid is playing with at the kitchen counter may actually be closer to you.) You can change the wake word on the devices so they don’t all respond to “Alexa,” but you can choose from only a few options. Even then, you have to remember which of your devices has which wake word enabled.
  • When your children interrupt you when you’re in the middle of saying something to Alexa. (This happens no matter what virtual assistant you’re using.)
  • The presence of multiple voice assistants. In addition to Alexa devices, you will likely have one or more Google Assistant or Siri devices. Sometimes I’ll find myself using the wrong wake word for a given device.
  • The Alexa app can technically be the default assistant on your phone, but it’s tough to consider ditching Google Assistant or Siri, for all the reasons they’re valuable to your phone experience. If Alexa is not your default assistant, then you have to open the Alexa app and tap the action button in the app before issuing voice commands.
  • The constant upselling is annoying at best. Amazon wants you to keep buying back into its vast service and device ecosystem. This is why a search on the Fire TV Cube resulted in a pitch to subscribe to Audible, why there are ads and promos all over the Fire TV interface, why the Echo Studio tries to steer you to an Amazon Music subscription, and so on.

Something of value

Any time you add to the roster of devices you depend on, you have to come back to the fundamental question of whether it provides something of value — in particular, something of value that you don’t already have or can’t acquire via easier or less expensive means. Although results will vary depending on what each individual wants or needs, for me there’s very little that I got from the pile of Alexa-powered devices that I found indispensable or superior to other options.

Although the calling and drop-in features are nice to have, we already have a smartphone as a dedicated house phone that serves that purpose. “Dropping in” is way more fun, and potentially more effective because you can essentially call a room and anyone in it rather a specific device. But in order to maximize its effectiveness, you need to have multiple Alexa devices spread out across multiple rooms, such that you guarantee that a drop-in can be heard by someone in the house.

The voice features on the Fire TV Cube work quite well, but in most cases I can navigate to what I need faster by pressing a few buttons on the remote. The interface is more cluttered than, say, that of a Roku device, and although the Fire TV Cube does have more features, such as games, there’s nothing particularly compelling about playing games on a device like this one instead of a phone, tablet, or console.

The Echo Studio provides excellent audio performance, and it’s nice to be able to speak the music I want into existence, but it didn’t hook into the music streaming service I prefer in the way I wanted it to. (And although not everyone has the luxury of such a setup, I have a PC with decent speakers already set up in a common area of the house.)

The Echo Flex, along with its accessories, does offer some functionality that you can’t readily get from other devices, like motion sensing and the resulting routines you can employ such as alerting you to the sound of breaking glass. But in order to really extract value from it, I felt as though I needed two or three of them, plus an accessory for each, placed strategically around the home.

Everyone has their own predilections, but in our house the most useful application we’ve found for Alexa so far is connecting the Echo Spot in the bedroom with a Smart Plug so we can turn off the lamp across the room without getting out of bed.

Of course, there are literally tens of thousands of things that Alexa and its many devices can do, so the specific things that clicked for me won’t necessarily appeal to others, and vice versa. But that brings us back to the notion that before you spend a lot of cash on the Echo Studio, Echo Flex, or Fire TV Cube, make sure that they’re going to solve a problem for you, or make something more convenient, or bring new and valuable capabilities to your home — and that those advantages are worth the setup and management overhead.

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Ready for Microsoft Dynamics 365/CRM? How Much Will It Cost?

October 17, 2019   CRM News and Info
crmnav Ready for Microsoft Dynamics 365/CRM? How Much Will It Cost?

If yours is a small or mid-sized business contemplating the purchase of a CRM (Customer Resource Management) solution or if you are a larger company and are considering upgrading to a comprehensive Microsoft Dynamics 365/CRM solution, your research has undoubtedly answered a lot of your questions about features and functionality.

Something that may be a bit harder to pin down is the total cost of the software. You can’t just look online and get answers to such questions as:

• How much does the software cost?

• How much does installation cost?

• What are the fees for training and support?

• Are there any ongoing fees that I should know about?

Of course, a qualified Microsoft Dynamics partner can answer your questions in detail when you are ready. But before you sit down with a salesperson, perhaps you’d just like a ballpark estimate to see if a Microsoft Dynamics 365 solution will fit into your budget.

We’ve got you covered

That’s where the CRM Software Blog’s Quick Quote tool comes in. With the Quick Quote tool, you can get a working idea of the total cost involved in a Microsoft Dynamics 365 solution, including software, implementation, training, support, and fees.

Here’s how it works:

On the right-hand side of any page of the CRM Software Blog, find the orange bar labeled “Request Instant Quote Dynamics 365/CRM,” Click on the bar, and you’ll be taken to the Quick Quote form where you can answer a few short questions about your CRM requirements. Add your contact information, click “submit,” and watch your email inbox for a fast, free estimate for your Microsoft Dynamics 365 solution.

There is no obligation, and the quote is not binding; it’s a free service that we provide for our valued readers. So why not try the CRM Software Blog’s Quick Quote tool today?

By CRM Software Blog Writer, www.crmsoftwareblog.com

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Microsoft Dynamics 365/CRM: How Much Will It Cost?

September 15, 2019   Microsoft Dynamics CRM
crmnav Microsoft Dynamics 365/CRM: How Much Will It Cost?

CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software is a category of integrated, data-driven software solutions that improve how you interact and do business with your customers. CRM systems help you manage and maintain customer relationships, track sales leads, marketing, and pipeline, and deliver actionable data.

With Microsoft Dynamics 365, you get a flexible solution that’s customizable to suit your business requirements. Choose a stand-alone application to meet the needs of a specific line of business or use multiple CRM tools that work together as a powerful integrated solution.

Regular readers of the CRM Software Blog know about the many benefits of Microsoft Dynamics 365/CRM. What you may not know, but would like to, is the total cost of owning Dynamics 365.

To budget the total cost of a Dynamics 365 CRM project you need to know the license and maintenance fees plus the estimated implementation and services costs

That is where the CRM Software Blog Quick Quote Wizard can help.

Here’s how the Quick Quote Wizard works:

On the right-hand side of any page of the CRM Software Blog, locate the orange bar labeled, “Request Instant Quote Dynamics 365/CRM“. Clicking on that bar will take you to the Quick Quote request form.

Fill in some brief information on the form, and you will receive an instant, automated Dynamics 365 Quick Quote outlining software, maintenance, and estimated services costs for an entire project.

The estimate will arrive in your email inbox and comes without strings attached. It’s a free service that we offer our readers.

The Quick Quote Wizard is fast, free, and easy. Why not try it today.

Find a Microsoft Dynamics 365 partner in your area.

By CRM Software Blog Writer, www.crmsoftwareblog.com

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A Green Light for Growth: Inside MACRO’s Mission to Do Much More than Make Movies

May 4, 2019   NetSuite

Posted by Barney Beal, Content Director

As the first African American partner during the 100+ year history of the famed William Morris Agency (currently William Morris Endeavor Entertainment), Charles D. King has made a career out of moving mountains. It’s not all too surprising then, that his company, MACRO, quickly established its reputation for industry leadership with early investments in highly acclaimed projects like Academy-award winning Fences and Netflix feature film Mudbound.

black%20on%20white%20MLogo A Green Light for Growth: Inside MACRO’s Mission to Do Much More than Make MoviesThe vision for Los Angeles-based MACRO was to finance and produce films, television series and other forms of content that authentically give voice to the experiences and views of persons of color (PoC). That meant weaving a multi-platform strategy in today’s complex media landscape that now spans streaming services, technology companies and traditional studios. MACRO’s plan for content would include traditional mediums like film, television and live events, but also investment and partnerships with like-minded channels and partners to distribute it.

King’s Twitter handle reads “Entrepreneur| Investor| Dreamer| Activist | Producer | Believer | Husband | Father | Achiever.”

It’s a self-description that in many ways embodies MACRO, the company King launched in 2015. From the beginning, King considered it both a company and personal mission to tell stories focused on PoCs.

“MACRO’s content and strategic actions are true to our mission of celebrating the voice of PoCs,” MACRO CFO Eric Briggs said. “We work through the content we produce and finance, the people we hire, the interns we onboard, the events we produce, the way we market our content and the way we present ourselves in social media — across the board. Our consistency and focus yields a significant competitive advantage.”

MACRO’s early successes have led to increased investments from its backers — from financial to strategic, covering industries from technology to traditional media – to further build out its multi-platform strategy. MACRO has major events at Sundance and the Academy Awards. It has made direct investments in the digital publishing platform Blavity, a media company created for and by black millennials, and has a VC arm that has invested in 90 early-stage companies focused on media and technology. MACRO also recently announced a first-look partnership with Warner Bros.

As the business grew, its back-office processes became increasingly complex and strained. Growth meant that MACRO’s finance team found itself manually managing the dozens of LLCs required to facilitate production and operating multiple industry verticals. Monthly closes were taking well over a month.

To that end, MACRO implemented NetSuite OneWorld in April 2018 with a successful launch 100 days later.

“We now possess an enterprise-level system covering hundreds of millions of dollars of capital and tens of LLCs. We continuously respond to top tier auditors and tax preparers, a first-class Board and sophisticated investor base. We accomplished this with a small team, ahead of schedule and under budget. I’m not sure I can give a better endorsement than that,” Briggs said.

Easing the analysis and consolidation processes involved in managing the complex business was a big priority. MACRO can now much more carefully manage cash balances to determine capital for film and television projects, as well as maximize interest. The business has been able to raise capital at a valuation that is a significant multiple of previous rounds and monthly closes are now accomplished in days.

“When you have things running efficiently, it gives you a heck of a lot more time to focus on improving operations,” Briggs said. “That’s how businesses can iterate and evolve.”

What’s more, MACRO runs monthly forecasting plans that meld accounting projections with GAAP and cash to support real-time decision-making – something not very many businesses in its space can accomplish. By being able to profitably and seamlessly support running a multi-platform media business, it can harness synergies of the projects and companies it works with.

It’s all a foundation that can scale – and evolve — as MACRO aims to grow its existing businesses, expand into new ones, and pursue select acquisitions.

“We’re still in the early days of an evolution toward digital media,” Briggs said. “A short 10 years ago Netflix launched streaming and the first iPhone was released. We have only begun to see the impact of 5G, Augmented Reality/Virtual Reality and Artificial Intelligence. In a few short years from now, the way we entertain ourselves will evolve further and what we’re doing today will feel antiquated.”

Learn more about NetSuite’s software for media and entertainment companies.

Posted on Wed, May 1, 2019
by NetSuite filed under

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Automakers must decide how much uncertainty is acceptable for autonomous vehicles

June 27, 2018   Big Data
 Automakers must decide how much uncertainty is acceptable for autonomous vehicles

To meet the goal of autonomous vehicles that can operate safely and without any need for human input — that is, L5 automation — automakers must train AI systems to navigate myriad conditions they’ll run into in the real world so that they don’t actually run into anything in the real world). Our highways and roads are, as we all know from experience behind the wheel, wholly unpredictable places, and they’ll continually require self-driving cars to instantly interpret and react to “edge case” scenarios.

While machine learning can guide AI to develop a recognition of, and reaction to, scenarios that it has seen many times before, there’s an immense hurdle in training AI for one-in-a-million (or billion) situations. For example, AI may be well-versed in basic freeway driving, or identifying pedestrians under expected circumstances. However, edge cases abound. Freeways may be littered with everything from tire scraps to sofas to grandmothers chasing after ducks; Halloween costumes can make pedestrians difficult to detect; you can set traps for autonomous vehicles; and even electric scooters can prove problematic for AVs. There will always exist “unknown unknowns” that companies cannot simulate because no one could foresee what to simulate.

Successfully addressing the unpredictable is particularly important to autonomous driving because any and every unexpected and undetected obstacle is potentially a life-or-death safety issue. Because of this, the stakes for addressing edge cases are enormous for the industry.

Solving deep learning’s edge case constraints

The application of deep learning to solving these edge cases snags on a major issue: Deep learning isn’t well suited to provide such assurances. While it’s possible to determine an AI application’s accuracy against a known dataset, there’s no guarantee of performance in real-world situations where edge cases occur and unfamiliar data must be processed. Deep learning systems deliver stunning results and beat expectations when dealing with datasets that are very similar to what they’ve previously encountered. But, because they have limited abilities to extrapolate information, there’s no way to predict how they’ll function in those outlier scenarios. In fact, a good deal of deep learning theory supports the idea that, at some level, it’s not really possible for these systems to understand a domain of data different from what they’ve been trained on.

Faced with this limitation, the most successful strategy today is simply to provide an AI application with huge amounts of data so that it becomes familiar with as many potential edge cases as possible. This brute force method calls for cars to be driven all the time to build experience with ever more unfamiliar scenarios, and then have that data added to the system. Doing so then requires that autonomous vehicle system manufacturers have the infrastructure to label and support those incredible volumes of data.

However, even if manufacturers could have that near-infinite amount of data right this minute, it would still be impossible to prepare autonomous cars for everything they might see on the roads. The world changes, human behavior changes, new cars and objects (like the aforementioned scooters) are introduced, etc. Given this reality, there’s a tremendous onus placed on vehicle system manufacturers to determine how they’ll ultimately address the uncertainty of the real world, while providing a safe and comfortable autonomous vehicle experience that isn’t littered with false positives (i.e., unnecessary braking) for every unknown.

Establishing ways to measure success

Today, AV industry players naturally take an adversarial stance in competing over who has the best technology. However, the questions faced here are so existential and challenging — such as determining how best to test whether autonomous vehicle technology is truly ready for safe use — that industry leaders will likely need to band together to answer them. At the same time, customers and society as a whole need to be convinced that this technology is safe and beneficial. I believe an open standard, one established by the industry to test and verify the safety of autonomous vehicles, could help serve this purpose. Collaboration and edge case data sharing might very well be the best strategy for everyone.

As to the level of safety that autonomous vehicles must achieve, it’s important to recognize two things. First, humans are very good drivers; we only have one accident every 165,000 miles. Second, there’s a double standard in our expectations when it comes to humans and machines. We expect humans to make mistakes, but we find it much less acceptable when machines fail. Given these expectations, autonomous cars may need to be 10 times safer than human drivers to earn widespread acceptance. While we’re likely years away from seeing L5 fully autonomous vehicles able to navigate through the infinite edge case scenarios the roadways throw at them, we’ll be an order of magnitude safer when we get there.

Alexandr Wang is the CEO of Scale, a company that accelerates the development of AI by democratizing access to intelligent data.

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