How the Human Voice Is Traversing Society's Wellness-Tech Frontier

Wearables have been spilling into the mainstream consciousness, and are now -- some say -- geared to take the market by storm. Whether it's wrist bands such as Jawbone's UP, Nike+ Fuelband and Fitbit's Flex, or Google testing and developing smart contact lenses that integrate with mobile devices to measure glucose levels for diabetics, wearable integration is surging.

Additionally, Apple rumors about the health-oriented iOS8, or companies like HealthWatch, that are developing clothing lined with electrode technology to monitor heart rate, the capacity for tech implementation into everyday wearable items is limitless, and the potential benefits are inspiring. While Siri, Cortana, and Google Now highlight the potential of voice technology within the market, smartphone devices have their boundaries, and while voice integration has evolved over the past decade, it has yet to strike a chord with the general public that makes the masses demand it.



Looking at the current wearable landscape, it's evident that fitness bands, glasses, watches and even sweaters are creating the opportunity to combine digital aspects with physical presence. Companies are demonstrating how new technologies cannot only improve the simplicity of our daily lives, but more importantly, our wellness. The applications are endless. They will encourage wearers to be more engaged in their fitness, help modify behavior, help coach their owners into better connecting with their own selves, and provide a platform for patients and physicians to share data. Most importantly, they will educate and empower users to take control of their wellbeing, help physicians and patients monitor medical issues, and ultimately, make better life choices.

Speak Up to Be Truly Heard

These days, everybody's talking about sensors. From, pulse-meters, to spectrographic cameras, a key component to the wearable market, as seen with products like Samsung's Galaxy Gear, and the upcoming Motorola Moto 360, has been the push to leverage voice recognition technology to harmonize with existing technologies.

We believe the role of voice could be greatly extended still. As a matter of fact, it's not at all farfetched to believe that the key sensor for gauging wellness has always been there -- the microphone. Every mobile device (current and emerging) that we own has the ability to pick up on our speech, and with it something immeasurably crucial to our wellbeing -- our emotions. For our voice carries not only our consciously careful choice of words, it also carries our vocally transmitted emotional constructs -- a fact known to anyone who has ever heard the following simple three words -- "Have a nice day." Studies in neuropsychology in the last 50 years have demonstrated that vocal intonation has a bigger impact in communication than your actual choice of words. When this potential is reached on wearables, it will open the technological floodgates to data that until now remained unseen.

Clearly, voice matters. Voices carry not only our words, but also our feelings, our moods, and indications of our general emotional status. With the growing proliferation of wearable devices, their "always-on" characteristics, and their integration with voice-enabled mobile devices, collecting and analyzing vocally transmitted emotions and tracking our emotional wellbeing over time, is now finally a viable possibility.

While initial inception of speech technology limited your smartphone to know when you wanted to call someone, that same device can now understand your emotional side. In the hands of professionals, this innovation will allow users to track their states of emotional wellness over a long period of time, and allow professional caregivers and doctors a more transparent glimpse into the evolution of a patient's wellbeing - adding another layer of information to other sources of data that physicians already use when tracking more physical parameters, such as caloric intake, BMI, blood pressure, etc.

A recent study by IDC, reveals that in the year 2018, the wearable technology market will see about 111.9 million wearables being used around the globe. The integration of voice will enable the ability to monitor emotional wellbeing over time, especially in correlation to the onset of different activities or events. The resulting analytic data can be assessed in relation to happiness, depression, and overall daily mindsets on various types of application in conjunction to other information reported by the user or collected by personal devices.

What to Listen For?

Now that Google Glass is available to the average consumer, and Nike FuelBands (as well as their constituents) are flooding the market, it's time for wellness applications to emerge. Nike, Apple, Sony and Samsung have positioned themselves as front runners in the space; we're seeing a lot of the components essential for wellness coming together, especially within the coming months of 2014 and the years beyond.

From wearable devices to operating systems (i.e. the latest iOS8 health tracking rumors), the ability to use, activate, and monitor these always-on devices is the "perfect storm" for vocally extracted wellness data. Look for wellness apps to pair emotion with additional health data, providing a unique look into the deep inner workings of our bodies and minds. Over the past few decades there have been a large amount of breakthroughs in the market. Now, new platforms need to bring everything together in one centralized space via wearables. With new apps providing large scale data, this type of wellness tracking will also result in medical knowledge being able to advance at breakneck speeds.

Look for voice to have an integral part within the expansion of health and wellness in the next 12 months.

Catch a Rising Star? 3 Things to Know Before Launching That Mobile App

Three weeks into the experiment of "Rising Star," ABC-TV execs are counting on the latest brand of live audience integration and mobile apps to pay off in brand awareness and loyalty. And they may be disappointed.

The debut with 5.1 million viewers saw improvements in the second week as a giant wall of photos of regular folks rose from the floor symbolizing mobile votes for the performer on the talent show. But the second week also saw a drop in ratings of 20 percent.

Lessons learned from ABC's launch include the complicated reality of time zones -- a California viewer is jumping in on the preferences of East Coast viewers after the fact -- as well as system crashes. The show's execs used the West Coast delay to create drama instead of disappointment this past Sunday as singer Shameia Crawford was "saved" by West Coast voters.

On the positive side, prior to airing, the free app jumped to number nine among free apps in the iTunes store. The show also scored the highest rating for the network of a summer debut in two years.

The fate of the show and its app are tied together, and the stakes are high for both. Researchers at Northwestern University's Spiegel Digital and Database Research Center at the Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications show that consumer dissatisfaction with a branded app can silently lose customers.

But there can be good news. In the Spiegel NU study of the Canadian Air Miles program, researchers found that those who used the branded app in the 10 days prior, made 6.17 purchases per month, compared to those who did not use the app in more than five months prior, making 3.5 purchases per month.

Yet, while the innovation and successes of mobile apps are recognized with the 2014 Global Mobile Awards -- that honored apps from ATT& T to a vaccine project in Zimbabwe -- branded apps are not universally successful.

The reach is wider and the stakes are higher than you might think. According to Portio Research, in 2012 there were 1.2 billion app users globally, with 4.4 billion projected app users in 2017. Nearly half of those users are expected in the Asia Pacific. Another recent study shows that consumers spend 89 percent of their media time on mobile apps.

There is no denying the importance of the mobile marketplace. In 2012, 43 billion mobile apps were downloaded worldwide. That number doubled in 2013, and is projected to double again this year. In three years, the prediction is 200 billion app downloads per year globally.

Just last week, McDonald's Corp. launched testing for The McDonald's Mobile Ordering App, in 22 markets, free to customers who pay by credit card in advance for their fries, shakes and Big Macs.

Some apps are time-saving solutions from "new brand" providers, such as Flipboard; or games like Angry Birds. But of greatest interest to those in marketing communications are those apps that are increasingly known to be important customer engagement tools that simplify the customer's ability to do business with them.

And, ideally, these apps stimulate engagement to grow the value of that customer. Recently
So, do these apps deliver and if so, by how much? And do the apps come with any real risks to marketers?

Yes, they deliver -- in some cases by quite a lot -- yet they also come with risks far greater than the simple feedback, "It didn't grow a customer's relationship."

But there is also bad news. The recent study from the Medill IMC Spiegel Digital & Database Research Center found that a customer experience with an inferior app can not only result in not using the app, but using the brand less, or even, not at all.

Research shows access to two sets of data in two entirely different categories. The data includes all customer's purchases from the company prior to downloading the brand's app, and then after the app was downloaded. The results were mixed. In some cases, the consumer disengaged.

No doubt, the consequences of actually losing customers as a result of a bad app -- one that is difficult to use, understand or benefit immediately from its use -- is sobering. Such a misstep would call for a new strategy. All of this challenges the notion that "early to market" is always the best strategy. To that end, here are three considerations before launching an app for branding:


1. "It's the experience, stupid."

Recognize that an app is not a communications strategy but actually part of the customer experience. Meet, (and if possible, exceed), the expectations your best customers have for your brand's experience, and then monitor performance particularly among your best (most valuable) customers.

2. Model the outcomes.

Most scenario modeling of marketing initiatives does not plan for actual losses of an unsuccessful campaign. At worst, the scenarios merely consider relative sized gains. Armed with the insights from these studies, plan models that contemplate some customer attrition. The tradeoffs of quality vs. speed-to-market can also now be modeled with greater reliability. What may be lost by not being first in the market can now be assessed in combination with potential customer retention gains from a more universally valued app.

3. It's a team, baby!

Because an app delivers a customer experience, not just a communications, marketing, product development and engineering share the consequences of the outcomes with all departments. This is a good thing.

The Rising Star outcome may well add support for our research if the app supports the brand as intended. Or it may serve as a cautionary tale. As they say, "stay tuned."

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Tom Collinger is executive director of the Spiegel Digital & Database Research Center housed in Northwestern University's Medill School, and associate professor of Integrated Marketing.

Could Robots Aide in Future Military Operations? U.S. Marines Think So

This sounds like something straight out of "Battle Star Galactica," but I assure you this is actual technology the Marine Corps are testing. Under the umbrella of "shaping tomorrow's Marine Corps today" the proud branch has really been pushing the limits in regards to future military operations. According to the DOD, "As threats to America's global interests evolve and manifest in new ways, the Marine Corps will step out smartly to assess its own methodologies, composition and equipment requirements to ensure effectiveness in a rapidly changing environment."

Among many of the new technologies that have been tested, they have been experimenting with a Legged Squad Support System or LS3 that could help lighten the load of dismounted infantry by carrying up to 400lbs of equipment. Not only does the LS3 look intimidating, but this concept-demonstration that can navigate rugged terrain by using semi-autonomous navigation, could possibly aide Marines on the ground by assisting in carrying injured service members off the battlefield and out of harm's way.

This week, a group of Marines are in Hawaii testing out the LS3 and other forward thinking concept warfighting capabilities. Marines hope this "Advanced Warfighting Experiment will rebalance the Corps, and posture it for the future and aggressively experiment with and implement new capabilities and organizations."

So Battle Star Galactica fans can rest easy, I doubt a "Cylon" invasion is in our future. The Marines are just doing what they do best, by staying a head of the curve.

Cerwin Vega Rises From the Ashes with New Speaker System

It wasn't our fault!

The doorbell rang and standing on the front porch were two visibly annoyed delivery guys bearing 191 pounds of speakers from Cerwin Vega.

We weren't able to appease them, but we have benefited from the experience of putting the speaker system through its paces.

Included in the package were:

• Two Cerwin Vega SL12 front speakers ($748 each)


• A Cerwin Vega SL 10S subwoofer ($581)


• A pair of Cerwin Vega SL5M two-way bookshelf speakers ($248)


• A Cerwin Vega SL45C center speaker ($331)

Cerwin Vega, established in 1954, had been one of the most innovative manufacturers of audio equipment in the 20th Century, but fell upon hard times and declared bankruptcy in 2002. They were briefly owned by the Stanton Group and were later bought by The Gibson Guitar Co. This and several other purchases by Gibson resulted in the formation of the Gibson Professional Audio Division. Now, it looks like Cerwin Vega is rising from the ashes and trying to reclaim its former glory as one of the top audio equipment manufacturers.

We tested the speakers using a Harmon Kardon AVR 1710 amplifier/receiver and four Polk satellite speakers that were embedded in the ceiling of our "man cave." The result was beautiful, pure sound with only a few exceptions.

The front speakers delivered a wide range of sound, from a deep bass to a fairly high treble with no distortion, even when we cranked up the system to full volume. Truthfully, the range of these speakers eliminated the need for a subwoofer, but being audio purists, we decided to add some extra boom to the low frequency range.

The result was an extremely heavy, booming bass, which was a bit overwhelming. We solved that problem by turning down the volume on the subwoofer so it just added an extra "boom" when it was needed.

What really surprised us was how easy it was to integrate the speakers with the Polk satellites. We had expected there would be some minor compatibility issues, but were delightfully proved wrong.

Although they weren't able to produce the wide range of sound of the front, center and subwoofer Polks they replaced, they came close enough where we never missed our older speakers.

We tested the bookshelf speakers, which would probably serve as a set of rear speakers in a complete Cerwin Vega system, with an older Yamaha Natural Cinema amplifier using two small Bose cubes as the rear speakers. The result was a pleasing range of sound delivering better range than we expected from a bookshelf system.

Overall, we really liked what we heard.

Attention Facebook users: Check out Michael Berman's Jocgeek fan page at www.facebook.com/jocgeek, or follow him on Twitter @jocgeek. You can also contact him via email at jocgeek@earthlink.net.

Stop Blaming the Intern for Social Media Gaffes

It happened again. While everyone was out enjoying their Fourth of July holiday, an intern for American Apparel used a photo of the Challenger space shuttle explosion on its Tumblr page, "mistaking the image for a fireworks display." In posts across social media, American Apparel pointed to the intern's age (born after the Challenger tragedy) and apologized for its insensitivity.

Ya think?

The Texas Governor's race has been nasty from the beginning, but one of the uglier moments came in late May when an intern for Republican Greg Abbott's campaign published a tweet that seemed to liken Democratic nominee Wendy Davis to Adolf Hitler. It was convenient to blame the intern and disassociate the campaign from the comments. But pointing a finger at the intern for a nasty post during a campaign where respect and decorum had long gone out the window was laughable.

In the age of new media, messages pushed on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, etc. have become more than commonplace -- they are a necessity for competitive communications offices. These are channels from which many of us get our news and break our news. Posts are no longer harmless -- they impact negotiations, affect the markets and cost people their jobs.

A webpage can be edited and statements can be revised. But social media posts seemingly live forever. A number of organizations pride themselves on catching posts before they are removed, and the damage done in a 140 character message can take significantly longer to fix than it did to draft.

At the same time, busy press offices do not have time to vet every single post. Particularly with breaking news and in times of crisis (organizational, personal or situational), posts must be updated in real-time to stay relevant.

But social posts gone wrong create self-inflicted wounds.

In deciding whether or not to dip an organization's figurative toes in the water of social media, staff should set reasonable expectations about the organizational risks involved and, most importantly, establish protocols for who, when and how social media posts are published. This should include who drafts and approves posts, and setting clear rules on deletions (many organizations refuse to delete posts and will only issue corrections or updates).

A two-person editing system is a good idea if you have sufficient personnel. It means that a second set of eyes is looking for errors, making necessary edits, looking for sarcasm that goes over the top and for any images that may be offensive.

Organizations and principals who hide behind interns or staff for social media gaffes are shirking their own responsibility for maintaining and cultivating their brand. While many officials have staff post from their account, they cannot distance themselves from the words posted in their name. Staff opinions become a principal's opinion, whether they like it or not.

World Cup Sentiment Offers Insight into the Global Consciousness

Pity poor Brazil. Not only did their team get the thumping of a lifetime on July 8th when Germany beat them 7-1, but football (soccer) fans broke every record in the book by tweeting about it.

With 36.5 million tweets seen during the match, sentiment monitors were lit up worldwide. As you might expect, the negative value for Brazil was about the same as the positive value for Germany. But what does sentiment analysis tell us?

Here at Software AG we built a World Cup Sentiment Analysis tool for anyone to enjoy while watching the football. We monitored tweets over a moving window of 30-40 minutes and scored them from positive to neutral to negative.

Twitter might just be the engine by which the mood of the planet can be measured, but it is by nature a lagging indicator.

For example, when Portugal's Christiano Ronaldo left training early one day before the team's June 22 USA match, sentiment plummeted because fans worried about an old knee injury. When the team's officials said he was fit to play, sentiment around Portugal's team rebalanced to positive.

Figuring it takes a person a little while to think of a tweet, type it and post it, we wanted to monitor as many tweets as possible for making the sentiment analysis decision. We grabbed the tweets from Twitter's public feed and dropped them into our analysis engine. The processing of the tweets is completed in under a millisecond; which means results are posted well within a second of the original tweet making its appearance.

But they are still after the fact (even if a lot of fun). So how can we use Twitter -- or other social media sentiment -- for commercial purposes?

Twitter mining is becoming the next big thing in algorithmic trading; with sentiment analysis being used to try to qualify and quantify the emotional chatter around a particular market. It then gauges whether the feelings for a particular stock or commodity are negative or positive, and uses the information for making trading decisions.

A study by the University of Manchester and Indiana University in 2010 concluded that the number of 'emotional words' on Twitter could be used to predict daily moves in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. A change in emotions expressed online would be followed between two and six days later by a move in the index, the researchers said, and this information let them predict its movements with 87.6 percent accuracy.

Another study, this one at Pace University in 2011, found that social media could predict the ups and downs of stock prices for three global brands, Starbucks, Coca-Cola, and Nike.

A U.K. hedge fund, Derwent Capital, liked the idea so much it opened an algorithmic hedge fund in 2012 that made trades based on Twitter sentiment. It soon closed, but reportedly returned 1.86 percent, beating the overall market as well as the average hedge fund.

The question is, can markets be predicted using sentiment algorithms? I think you could use a Twitter algo to get a sentiment reading on particular topics, whether it is revolutions or how people feel about the economy.

The World Cup, though, may be a different matter. You can get some interesting insights about the global consciousness surrounding a particular match, but sentiment analysis will not predict the outcome of the game. But if you could feed the sentiment analysis into another system that was set up with parameters to predict the outcome, you could be onto a winner.

Twitter sentiment analysis could be the next Paul -- the psychic octopus that made several accurate predictions in the 2010 World Cup. Paul would choose his food from two identical boxes decorated in the team flags of the upcoming matches.

Sadly, Paul died a few months later. But perhaps his legacy lives on in a real-time predictive sentiment engine somewhere.

Teen Sexting Is Not A Felony

We need to take a moment to reflect on the state of our laws around "sexting" -- the sending of sexually explicit photos and videos, usually by text message -- and the way these laws are being interpreted and enforced by the police and prosecutors. And we adults need to consider the crazy mixed messages we are sending our teens about sexual behavior in our digital world.

The Washington Post has reported on the case of a 17-year-old boy from Manassas County, Virginia who is being charged as a felon for sending sexually explicit videos to a 15-year-old girl. The girl, in turns out, first sent the boy an explicit photo of herself and he returned with a number of videos. The mother of the girl reported the receipt of these "unwanted" videos to the police. That was in January of this year. The girl has not been charged.

The case was dismissed in June on a technicality, but then prosecutors refilled the charges and this time Manassas City police arrested the boy and took photos of his genitals against his will. Think about that for a moment. A minor is told to undress and have his penis photographed while in police custody in order to obtain evidence.

It gets worse. As the Post reported in their print edition, a trial was set for July 1 and the Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Claiborne Richardson informed the boy's attorney that he must either plead guilty or police would obtain a search warrant for comparison to the evidence on his phone. When asked how he would do this, he explained, "We just take him down to the hospital, give him a shot and then take the pictures we need." In other words, take shots of his erect penis in order to compare those with the videos.

The teen's lawyer, Jessica Foster, was outraged.

"The prosecutor's job is to seek justice," said Foster. "What is just about this? How does this advance the interest of the Commonwealth? This is a 17-year-old who goes to school every day, plays football, has never been in trouble with the law before. Now he's saddled with two felonies and the implication that he's a sexual predator. I don't mind trying the case. My goal is to stop the search warrant. I don't want him to go through that. Taking him down to the hospital so he can get an erection in front of all those cops, that's traumatizing."

So, although the police already have photos of his, presumably, flaccid penis, they need to take him down to the hospital to have a medical procedure in order to induce an aroused state to get the pictures they need. Never mind that there is no scientific background to establish any difference, according to Micheal Iacopino, a member of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers' sex offender policy task force. The police and prosecutors are overstepping the mark, to put it mildly.

Compare this approach to the one taken by New York. In that state they have a "diversion program" that may be used in lieu of criminal proceedings. If a teen is charged with an offense arising from or related to sending out sexually explicit images, the court may order him or her to an eight-hour education program which focuses on the consequences of sexting.

Let's be clear. Sexting is a risky behavior with potential harms -- both emotional and reputational for those involved. While some dismiss it as a modern form of flirting, sexting can have real world implications that can last a lifetime, particularly for teens.

But it should not be a felony. Taking photos or videos of child sexual abuse, commonly referred to as child pornography, is a felony. The law is there to protect minors from the sexual exploitation of adults. It is rightly considered one of the most heinous of crimes -- right up there with murder and rape.

What these two teens did was foolish, stupid and simply wrong. We need to educate ourselves and our kids about the risks and harms and take action, appropriately, when this behavior arises. Most importantly, we adults must not overreact -- from parents to police to prosecutors -- when we discover what our kids may have done. Incarcerating a teen until he's 21 and then labeling him a pedophile for the rest of his life is unjust and wrong.

Forcing a teenage boy to have an erection and taking a photo of the result is perverse and absurd. We adults should have a good hard look at ourselves, our laws and how we pursue them when it comes to teens, sex and their online behavior.