Keith Kirkpatrick is the principal of 4K Research & Consulting, LLC, a provider of qualitative and quantitative research and consulting services to US businesses.
Found in Space
The July 12 release of the images from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has captivated and excited everyone from schoolchildren to space buffs, thanks to the vivid colors and crisp captures of the distant reaches of space. The images from the telescope, which is the largest, most complex and powerful space telescope ever constructed, brought into focus thousands of galaxies, both known and unknown, as well as so-called "cosmic cliffs" of dust and gas, and even a dying star.
The telesc...
Using Employee Advocacy to Support CX Efforts
Customer advocates are extremely useful for recommending and actively promoting a brand, its products, and even the experiences they have interacting with a company. If a company makes a concerted effort to treat customers properly, many customers…
Customer experience policies are rules that cover product returns, changes, warranties, refunds, and access to information and resources, and are used by companies as they interact with their customers. With goals such as increasing efficiency and…...
AI in Contact Centers
Customer contact centers are most efficient when they are able to automate routine tasks and quickly route callers to human agents who can solve issues in a timely and courteous fashion. In years past, rules-based decision matrices (such as "press 1 for sales, press 2 for technical support") were the de facto standard for "intelligent" customer service systems, and often left customers frustrated and angry by the time they reached a live human being.
Advances in artificial intelligence are yi...
Across the Language Barrier
The greatest obstacle to international understanding is the barrier of language," wrote British scholar and author Christopher Dawson in November 1957, believing that relying on live, human translators to accurately capture and reflect a speaker's meaning, inflection, and emotion was too great of a challenge to overcome. More than 60 years later, Dawson's theory may finally be proven outdated, thanks to the development of powerful, portable real-time translation devices.
Borders in the Cloud
10.1145/3237072
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Computing services in the cloud, which provide access to compute capabilities, applications, and data from nearly anywhere with an Internet connection, have made it possible for both individuals and organizations to improve the efficiency of their computing operations, reduce infrastructure costs, and enhance the accessibility and availability of services and data.
However, the growth of cybercrime, most notably large data breaches that have exposed the personal infor...
Technology Brings Online Education in Line with Campus Programs
When you cheat, you only cheat yourself," is an oft-repeated pearl of wisdom from teachers, parents, and enlightened students alike. Nevertheless, 6575% percent of college-age students have admitted to cheating at one time or another, according to surveys conducted in the early 1960s, and recent studies indicate cheating still remains rampant. Indeed, Harvard University forced out 70 students for cheating during a May 2012 final exam, and in 2015, more than 60 Dartmouth College students were ...
A Speed Bump on the Road to 5G?
2020 was supposed to be the year that 5G, new fifth-generation wireless communications technology designed to provide data-speed enhancements of anywhere from 10 to 100 times what 4G can provide, along with lower latency and greater user capacity, was supposed to go mainstream, thanks to 5G-enabled devices and networks finally coming to market.
However, as lockdowns designed to slow the spread of the coronavirus were enacted around the world, they were projected to negatively impact productio...
The Effectiveness of Coding Camps
Andrew Sorensen has been working as a software engineer for technology company Expedia for the past 16 months, but unlike many programmers, the former car salesman didn't spend years toiling away at a university studying computer science. Instead, lured by the promises of a good salary, Sorensen enrolled in 2015 as a student at Coding Dojo, a 14-week, intensive coding school that emphasizes a narrow focus on hands-on programming techniques, and wound up landing a job at the travel website com...
Weaponizing Robots
Science fiction writers often envision a future in which battles are fought not only by human soldiers, but also by automated robot armies that can enhance firepower while reducing humans’ exposure to injury or death. A world filled with Terminator¬-style killing machines remains highly unlikely – outside of Hollywood blockbusters – but robots equipped with serious firepower are being developed today, with an eye on battlefield integration in the not-to-distant future.
Indeed, in October 2013...
Cuny Tutor Program Highlights Math, CS Careers to Nyc Students
While there certainly are exceptions to the rule, many New York City public middle and high school students have not received support and encouragement to focus on math and computer science subjects. That is likely to be a major impediment to these students as they progress through their academic careers, as the U.S. Department of Commerce estimates that STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) occupations are growing at 17% per year, while other occupations are growing at a 9...
Helping NASA Return to the Moon
It has been nearly 50 years since U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Commander Eugene Cernan and crewmate Harrison H. (Jack) Schmitt completed Apollo 17's lunar exploration mission and left the Moon's surface behind in December 1972. While NASA has continued to explore space, via Skylab in the early 1970s, the Space Shuttle program that operated between the late 1970s and 2011, and through ongoing activity at the International Space Station, there has always been a stro...
Is MFA Needed to Improve Security?
Many corporate and consumer-based systems and applications deploy short message service (SMS)-based two-factor authentication technology to help protect users from being hacked. This method of two-factor authentication is fairly simple; a user will log onto an app or system using their username and password, and then a unique security code is generated by an algorithm within the app, which is then sent to the user's phone via a text message. If that code is correctly entered into the system w...
Validating NFTs
The market for non-fungible tokens (NFTs) exploded last year, reaching a trading value of more than US$23 billion, up from just $100 million the year before, according to tracking firm DappRadar.
NFTs, unique digital tokens that cannot be replaced by or exchanged for another token of the same value, are governed by smart contracts and are verified and powered by blockchain, the distributed ledger technology in which a network of computers records transactions and provides buyers with proof of...
Consumers Increasingly Touch on Contactless Payments
Contactless payments, which can be initiated via a smartphone, have been slow to gain traction in North America and Europe, according to research conducted in the fourth quarter of 2019 by comScore. The research found that just 16% and 14% of smartphone buyers in these regions used contactless payments through their phones, likely due to a lack of financial incentives or perceived benefits of switching from traditional mag-stripe or chip-and-pin cards to no-touch modalities.
That may be chang...