Latest iOS App Security Best Practices

iOS from Apple is one of the most secure platforms. Also, the applications created using this platform are not as vulnerable as those built on other competing mobile platforms. Even then, businesses cannot put code, logic, data, and its communication open for any possible malware activity.

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OneNeck IT Solutions

"OneNeck® IT Solutions LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Telephone and Data Systems Inc. (TDS), employs nearly 550 people throughout the U.S. The company offers hybrid IT solutions including cloud and hosting solutions, managed services, ERP application management, professional services and IT hardware. OneNeck also has Tier 3 data centers in Arizona, Colorado, Iowa, Minnesota, Oregon and Wisconsin. "

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Software, Low-Code App Development, Application Development Platform

Are Telcos Ready for a Quantum Leap?

Article | June 15, 2023

Quantum technologies present both an opportunity for telcos to solve difficult problems and provide new services and a security threat that could require extensive IT investment. Are Telcos Ready for a Quantum Leap? When Andrew Lord, Senior Manager, Optical Networks and Quantum Research at BT, first started presenting quantum technologies at customer events six or seven years ago, his was the graveyard shift, he says, entertaining attendees at the end of the day with talk of 'crazy quantum stuff.' "But that is no longer the case," says Lord. "Over the last two years, I've noticed a shift where I now speak before lunch, and customers actively seek us out." Two developments may be causing the shift: Customers’ growing awareness of the threats and opportunities that quantum computing presents, plus a recent spike in investment in quantum technology. In 2022, investors plowed $2.35 billion into quantum technology startups, which include companies in quantum computing, communications and sensing, according to McKinsey. The public sector has also been digging deep into its pockets. Last year, the United States added $1.8 billion to its previous spending on quantum technology, and the EU committed an extra $1.2 billion, the consultancy noted, while China made total investments of $15.3 billion. According to Luke Ibbetson, Head of Group R&D at Vodafone, quantum computing's promise lies in solving a probabilistic equation within a few hours. This task would take a classical computer a million years to accomplish. This breakthrough would enable telcos to address optimization problems related to network planning, optimization, and base station placement. The flip side is that a powerful quantum computer could also break the public-key cryptography that protects today’s IT systems from hackers. As a spokesperson at Deutsche Telekom remarks: “Telcos will have to react to the threat of quantum computers to communication security because their core business model is at risk, which is offering secure digital communications.” The idea of quantum computing posing a security threat is not new. In 1994, Peter Shor, a mathematician working at AT&T Bell Labs, showed how a quantum computer could solve the logarithms used to encrypt data. “His work simultaneously ignited multiple new lines of research in quantum computing, information science, and cryptography,” according to an article by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where Shor is currently working. Beyond The Lab What has changed nearly thirty years on is that quantum computing is creeping out of the lab. Sizeable obstacles to large-scale quantum computing, however, remain. Quantum computers are highly sensitive to interference from noise, temperature, movement or electromagnetic fields and, therefore, very difficult and expensive to build and operate, especially at scale: IBM’s latest quantum processor, for example, operates at a very low temperature of approximately 0.02 degrees Kelvin. When Deutsche Telekom’s T-Labs tested telco use cases, it found quantum computing coped well with small problem statements. “However, when the problem size was scaled to real-world problem sizes, the quality of the QComp solution degraded,” according to the spokesperson. The company is now awaiting the next generation of quantum computing platforms to redo the analyses. All of this means, for now, quantum computers are not large and powerful enough to crack Shor’s algorithm. The question is, when will someone succeed? The Global Risk Institute tracks the quantum threat timeline. In its latest annual report, the organization asked 40 quantum experts whether they thought it likely that within the next ten years, a quantum computer would break an encryption scheme like RSA-2048 in under 24 hours. Over half the respondents judged the event to be more than 5% likely, and almost a quarter considered it to be more than 50% likely. Any breakthrough will come from a relatively small number of actors. Today, governments and academic institutions are home to around half of the 163 projects accounted for worldwide by Global Quantum Intelligence, a research and analysis company, according to its CEO, André M. König, with big technology companies and specialized startups accounting for the rest. Q2K Nonetheless, the impact of quantum computing could be widespread, even if relatively few of them are built. The challenge of preparing for a post-quantum future is often called Q2K in reference to the Y2K bug. In the late 1990s, many (but not all) governmental organizations and companies spent millions of dollars on Y2K systems integration to ensure that IT programs written from the 1960s through the 1980s would be able to recognize dates after December 31, 1999, all while being uncertain of the scale or the impact of the risk if they didn’t. ‘Q2K’ differs in that there is no specific deadline, and the dangers of a major security breach are much clearer cut. However, it is similar in demanding a lot of work on aging systems. “Cryptography is used everywhere,” points out Lory Thorpe, IBM’s Director of Global Solutions and Offerings, Telecommunications. She adds, “Because telco systems have been built over periods of decades, people don’t actually know where cryptography is being used. So, if you start to look at the impact of public key cryptography and digital signatures being compromised, you start to look at how those two things impact open source, how that impacts the core network, the radio network, [and] OSS/BSS, network management, how the network management speaks to the network functions and so on.” This complexity is why some analysts recommend that telcos take action now. “You’re going to find tens of thousands of vulnerabilities that are critical and vulnerable to a quantum attack. So, do you have to worry about it today? Absolutely - even if it’s in 2035,” says König. “Anyone who has ever done [IT implementation projects], and anyone who’s ever worked in cybersecurity [knows], tens of thousands of vulnerabilities that are critical [requires] years and years and years of just traditional integration work. So, even if you’re skeptical about quantum, if you haven’t started today, it is almost too late already.” Don’t Panic! For the past two to three years, Vodafone has been preparing to migrate some of its cryptographic systems to be quantum-safe, according to Ibbetson. He believes there is no need to panic about this. However, telcos must start planning now. König said, "The telecoms industry as a whole is not moving as quickly as some other sectors, notably the banking, pharmaceutical, and automotive industries. In these sectors, post-quantum security planning often involves CEOs at a very strategic level." For this reason, Vodafone joined forces with IBM in September 2022 to establish the GSMA Post-Quantum Telco Network Taskforce. “Even though many industries are preparing to be able to defend against future quantum threats, we didn’t see anything happening particularly in in the telco space, and we wanted to make sure that it was a focus,” says Ibbetson. “Obviously it will turn into an IT-style transformation, but it’s starting now with understanding what it is we need to mobilize that.” AT&T has also been working to pinpoint what needs to be addressed. Last year, the company said it aims to be quantum-ready by 2025, in the sense that it will have done its due diligence and identified a clear path forward. Minding Your PQCs Companies across multiple sectors are looking to post-quantum cryptography (PQC) to secure their systems, which will use new algorithms that are much harder to crack than RSA. König contends that PQC needs to become “a standard component of companies’ agile defense posture” and believes the development of PQC systems by software and hardware companies will help keep upgrade costs under control. “From a financial point of view, vendors do a fantastic job bringing this to market and making it very accessible,” says König. Lord, who has been researching quantum technologies at BT for over a decade, is also confident that there is “going to be much more available technology.” As a result, even smaller telcos will be able to invest in securing their systems. “It doesn't need a big boy with lots of money [for] research to do something around PQC. There’s a lot of work going on to ratify the best of those solutions,” says Lord. There are several reasons why eyes are on software based PQC. Firstly, it can be used to secure data that was encrypted in the past, quantum computing advances will make vulnerable in the future. In addition, the quantum-based alternative to PQC for securing network traffic called quantum key distribution (QKD), comes with a huge drawback for wireless operators. QKD is hardware-based and uses quantum mechanics to prevent interception across optical fiber and satellite (i.e., free space optical) networks, making it secure, albeit expensive. But for reasons of physics, it does not work on mobile networks. Setting Standards Given the importance of PQC, a lot of effort is going into standardizing robust algorithms. The political weight of the US and the size of its technology industry mean that the US government’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is playing a key role in the technical evaluation of post-quantum standardization algorithms and creating standards. NIST expects to publish the first set of post-quantum cryptography standards in 2024. In the meantime, Dustin Moody, a NIST mathematician, recommends (in answers emailed to inform) that companies “become familiar and do some testing with the algorithms being standardized, and how they will fit in your products and applications. Ensure that you are using current best-practice cryptographic algorithms and security strengths in your existing applications. Have somebody designated to be leading the effort to transition. QKD There is no absolute guarantee, however, that a quantum computer in the future won’t find a way to crack PQC. Therefore, institutions such as government agencies and banks remain interested in using QKD fiber and satellite networks to ensure the highest levels of security for data transmission. The European Commission, for example, is working with the 27 EU Member States and the European Space Agency (ESA) to design, develop and deploy a QKD-based European Quantum Communication Infrastructure (EuroQCI). It will be made up of fiber networks linking strategic sites at national and cross-border levels and a space segment based on satellites. EuroQCI will reinforce the protection of Europe’s governmental institutions, their data centers, hospitals, energy grids, and more,” according to the EU. Telecom operators are involved in some of the national programs, including Orange, which is coordinating France’s part of the program called FranceQCI (Quantum Communication Infrastructure). Separately, this month, Toshiba and Orange announced they had successfully demonstrated the viability of deploying QKD on existing commercial networks. Outside the EU, BT has already built and is now operating a commercial metro quantum-encryption network in London. “The London network has three quantum nodes, which are the bearers carrying the quantum traffic for all of the access ingress,” explains Lord. For example, a customer in London's Canary Wharf could link via the network to the nearest quantum-enabled BT exchange. From there, it joins a metro network, which carries the keys from multiple customers “in an aggregated cost-effective way to the egress points,” according to Lord. “It is not trivial because you can mess things up and [get] the wrong keys,” explains Lord. “You really have to be more careful about authentication and key management. And then it's all about how you engineer your quantum resources to handle bigger aggregation.” It also gives BT the opportunity to explore how to integrate quantum systems downstream into its whole network. “What I'm telling the quantum world is that they need to get into the real world because a system that uses quantum is still going to be 90%, non-quantum and all of the usual networking rules and engineering practices apply. You still need to know how to handle fiber. You still need to know how to provision a piece of equipment and integrate it into a network.” SK Telecom is also heavily involved in quantum-related research, with developments including QKD systems for the control and interworking of quantum cryptography communication networks. Japan is another important center of QKD research. A QKD network has existed in Tokyo since 2010, and in 2020, financial services company Nomura Securities Co., Ltd. tested the transmission of data across the Tokyo QKD network. As the EU’s project makes clear, satellite is an important part of the mix. Lord expects satellite-based QKD networks to come on stream as of 2025 and 2026, enabling the purchase of wholesale quantum keys from a dedicated satellite quantum provider. Back in 2017, China already used the satellite to make the first very long-distance transmission of data secured by QKD between Beijing and Vienna, a distance of 7,000km. Securing The Edge There are additional efforts to secure communications with edge devices. BT’s Lord, for example, sees a role for digital fingerprints for IoT devices, phones, cars and smart meters in the form of a physical unclonable function (PUF) silicon chip, which, because of random imperfections in its manufacture, cannot be copied. In the UK, BT is trialing a combination of QKD and PUF to secure the end-to-end journey of a driverless car. The connection to the roadside depends on standard radio with PUF authentication, while transmission from the roadside unit onward, as well as the overall control of the autonomous vehicle network, incorporate QKD, explains Lord. SK Telecom has developed what it describes as a quantum-enhanced cryptographic chip with Korea Computer & Systems (KCS) and ID Quantique. Telefónica Spain has partnered on the development of a quantum-safe 5G SIM card and has integrated quantum technology into its cloud service hosted in its virtual data centers. Given China’s heavy investment in quantum technologies, it is no surprise to see its telecom operators involved in the field. China Telecom, for example, recently invested three billion yuan ($434m) in quantum technology deployment, according to Reuters. Quantum in The Cloud Some of America's biggest technology companies are investing in quantum computing. Today, it is even possible to access quantum computing facilities via the cloud, albeit at on small scale. IBM's cloud access to quantum computers is free for the most basic level, rising to $1.60 per second for the next level. And it is just the beginning. America's big tech companies are racing to build quantum computers at scale. One measure of scale is the size of a quantum processor, which is measured in qubits. While a traditional computer stores information as a 0 or 1, a qubit can represent both 0 and 1 simultaneously. This unique property enables a quantum computer to explore multiple potential solutions to a problem simultaneously; and the greater the stability of its qubits, the more efficient it becomes. IBM has a long history in quantum research and development. In 1998, it unveiled what was then a ground-breaking 2-qubit computer. By 2022, it had produced a 433-qubit processor, and in 2023, it aims to produce a 1,121-qubit processor. Separately, this month, it announced the construction of its first quantum data center in Europe, which it expects to begin offering commercial services as of next year. Google is also firmly in the race to build a large-scale quantum computer. In 2019, a paper in Nature featured Google’s Sycamore processor and the speed with which it undertakes computational tasks. More recent work includes an experimental demonstration of it’s possible to reduce errors by increasing the number of qubits. Microsoft reckons that "a quantum machine capable of solving many of the hardest problems facing humanity will ultimately require at least 1 million stable qubits that can perform 1 quintillion operations while making at most a single error." To this end, it is working on what it calls a new type of qubit, a topological qubit. Amazon announced in 2021 an AWS Center for Quantum Computing on the Caltech campus to build a fault-tolerant quantum computer.

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AI Tech

Over the Waterfall to GitOps

Article | September 8, 2023

One of the first steps on the journey to cloud-native is transforming culture. This starts with embracing Agile methodology, followed by implementation of DevOps processes and eventually GitOps, as we explore in this extract from the recent e-book Mind the gap: bridging the skills divide on the journey to cloud native. Most CSPs agree that culture, including governance and skills, is the single biggest obstacle to adopting a cloud-native architecture. Traditional waterfall project management focuses on a linear progression, where one task or process needs to be completed before the next can start. This approach is time-consuming and costly, and it stifles innovation. It’s a major reason a CSP typically takes more than a year to develop a new service. Adopting Agile methodology is a completely new way of working that focuses on building cross-functional teams to speed innovation and service creation. This requires CSPs to seek individuals with the new project management skills and are adaptable and quick-thinking. Agile may not be suitable for every aspect of the business or for every project, but it is critical for moving to cloud-based, and eventually to cloud-native environments. Agile’s assumptions • Early, continuous delivery of software leads to happy customers • Changing requirements are always welcome, even in late development • Working software is delivered frequently • Business teams and developers work together every day • Projects are built around motivated and trusted individuals • Face-to-face is the best way to communicate • Working software is the principal measure of progress • Development is sustainable and constant • Attention to technical excellence and good design are required • Simplicity is essential • The best architectures emerge from self-organizing teams • Teams look for ways to be more effective and adjust accordingly There are lots of Agile approaches, but many CSPs use a model made popular by Spotify, which organizes teams into ‘squads,’ ‘tribes,’ ‘chapters,’ and ‘guilds.’ Vodafone Group follows this model and uses ‘very, very flat, non-hierarchical governance,’ according to Dr. Lester Thomas, Chief IT Systems Architect at Vodafone Group. “We’ve learned doing this in the digital space, but we’re trying to adopt that software approach right into our network.” Culture Eats Technology UScellular began adopting Agile methodology about five years ago, and the company is implementing cloud-native applications wherever they make sense. During its shift to the new way of working, cultural change has been the most difficult obstacle to overcome, significantly harder than technological change, according to Kevin Lowell, the company’s Chief People Officer and former Executive VP in charge of IT. The shift started with creating ‘a compelling why’ – in this case, improving how customers experience using UScellular services. The company replaced some waterfall processes with iterative Agile processes managed in scrums and implemented in sprints. The IT team also began meeting regularly with business stakeholders and educating them about how Agile works. Telecom Argentina is also embracing Agile. It is working with Red Hat to adopt a framework called Team Topologies to create a more efficient way of collaborating. The company is applying Team Topologies within its network division to create cross-functional teams that not only focus on the evolution and operation of technological platforms but also on creating and delivering services. From Agile to DevOps While Agile methodologies help to establish communication between IT teams and other stakeholders in the company, DevOps goes further by introducing an end-to-end software lifecycle that establishes a continuous flow of development, integration, testing, delivery and deployment. Google’s approach to DevOps, called Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), has been widely adopted in telecoms. It provides the foundation for the ODA Canvas, and it’s how Vodafone Group is implementing DevOps. Vodafone is a cloud-native pioneer. For the past several years, the company has been transforming into a platform provider, using what it calls a ‘telco-as-a-service’ or TaaS strategy. Vodafone is becoming a software company on its quest to become a techco, which involves hiring 7,000 software engineers to add to the existing 9,000 in the company. A key driver for embracing a cloud-native approach is “moving from our millions of human customers to billions of things,” says Thomas. Instead of offering just four primary services – fixed voice, broadband Internet, mobility and TV, he envisions using 5G network slicing to support thousands of IoT services per vertical market. “Unless we can drive this through software-driven approaches and automation, we’re not going to be successful,” he says. From DevOps to GitOps The problem with DevOps, however, is that most CSPs aren’t developing their software; they buy solutions from vendor partners. As Omdia’s James Crawshaw, Principal Analyst at Telco IT & Operations, notes in a research report, this makes it difficult for operators to create CI/CD pipelines that cut across organizational boundaries between CSPs and suppliers. To address this, CSPs “have adapted DevOps to their needs and created GitOps, which they use to take third-party applications and deploy on their own platforms,” Crawshaw explains. Philippe Ensarguet, Group CTO at Orange Business Services, recently explained that GitOps requires continuous integration and continuous operations or CI/CO. This means moving away from a prescriptive way of implementing operations to a declarative approach that supports full automation. What is GitOps? “If you rely mainly on the prescriptive approach, the day you want to move into production and scale up the number of applications you implement, you have to manage it purely with humans, and you hit the wall on scalability,” says Ensarguet. William Caban, Telco Chief Architect at Red Hat, sees GitOps as foundational to the concept of zero-touch, zero-wait and zero-trouble services, which will be orchestrated end-to-end in autonomous networks. “This is exactly what GitOps is about: event-driven, intent-based networks,” he says. “It becomes the operational model for architectures based on the ODA and autonomous networks.” CSPs must hire software and automation skills for GitOps. They also must reskill network experts, such as radio access network (RAN) engineers, to work in CI/CO teams so everyone uses common terminology. Some operators are going even further by creating centers of excellence (CoEs) where cross-functional teams from business, network and operations collaborate. “In GitOps, it is also necessary to codify team members’ knowledge, so that even as people move around or leave the company, the software development and operations lifecycle processes are not disrupted,” Caban says.

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Neural Networks

Empowering Industry 4.0 with Artificial Intelligence

Article | September 15, 2023

The next step in industrial technology is about robotics, computers and equipment becoming connected to the Internet of Things (IoT) and enhanced by machine learning algorithms. Industry 4.0 has the potential to be a powerful driver of economic growth, predicted to add between $500 billion- $1.5 trillion in value to the global economy between 2018 and 2022, according to a report by Capgemini.

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How Artificial Intelligence Is Transforming Businesses

Article | February 12, 2020

Whilst there are many people that associate AI with sci-fi novels and films, its reputation as an antagonist to fictional dystopic worlds is now becoming a thing of the past, as the technology becomes more and more integrated into our everyday lives. AI technologies have become increasingly more present in our daily lives, not just with Alexa’s in the home, but also throughout businesses everywhere, disrupting a variety of different industries with often tremendous results. The technology has helped to streamline even the most mundane of tasks whilst having a breath-taking impact on a company’s efficiency and productivity

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Spotlight

OneNeck IT Solutions

"OneNeck® IT Solutions LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Telephone and Data Systems Inc. (TDS), employs nearly 550 people throughout the U.S. The company offers hybrid IT solutions including cloud and hosting solutions, managed services, ERP application management, professional services and IT hardware. OneNeck also has Tier 3 data centers in Arizona, Colorado, Iowa, Minnesota, Oregon and Wisconsin. "

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AI Tech, General AI, Software

TribalScale Partners With Senso AI to Unleash Generative AI Technology for Enhanced Software Customization

Accesswire | August 02, 2023

TribalScale, a leading software development firm known for crafting world-class digital products, is thrilled to announce its strategic partnership with Senso AI, a trailblazing provider of cutting-edge AI solutions. This collaboration is set to transform the employee experience at TribalScale by harnessing the power of Senso AI's advanced solution to enhance the company's wiki support. TribalScale's internal repository of information will evolve into an intelligent and dynamic knowledge hub, revolutionizing information retrieval and empowering employees like never before. Gone are the days of sifting through heaps of documents or getting lost in an ocean of data. The integration of AI empowers employees to swiftly access relevant information, leading to a more efficient and empowered workforce. Beyond the transformative impact on TribalScale's internal operations, this partnership will also pave the way for the software development firm to revolutionize the industry itself. TribalScale aims to empower businesses with a head start in embracing Generative AI, offering custom software implementations that cater to the unique needs of both current and prospective clients. Sheetal Jaitly, CEO of TribalScale, commented on the collaboration: "An unprecedented wave of hockey stick growth awaits those who harness the power of Generative AI. Surprisingly, 99% of organizations we engage with are uncertain where to begin. With Senso as our strategic partner, we have the edge to make a profound impact in this market, leading to substantial software implementations for our current and prospective clients. Reminding us of the early days when we championed 'Mobile First', now we embrace the transformative force of Generative AI and its indispensability in every customized software implementation moving forward." Saroop Bharwani, CEO of Senso AI, also expressed his excitement about the partnership: "In today's global landscape, organizations of all sizes face a common challenge: an abundance of untapped, unstructured data buried within PDFs, Word Documents, and more. Employees spend considerable time daily seeking answers. For example, finding an answer for a client, or seeking employment and benefits information. This invaluable knowledge awaits liberation. "Senso has achieved remarkable success, collaborating with financial institutions to consolidate institutional knowledge, reduce costs, and elevate customer satisfaction through the power of AI. This success has unlocked an array of new use cases. Within a matter of weeks, we can seamlessly integrate this transformative solution across an organization, delivering maximum value in record time and generating substantial near-term revenue. "To remain competitive, organizations must proactively embrace Generative AI in their workflows, empowering their teams to envision fresh perspectives on their roles. Our pioneering partnership with TribalScale positions us as frontrunners in providing your customers, prospects, and employees with these services promptly, presenting a remarkable opportunity for all." About TribalScale TribalScale is a global innovation firm that helps enterprises adapt and thrive in the digital era. Through agile practices, we transform teams, build best-in-class digital products, and create disruptive startups. TribalScale has consistently been recognized for its excellence and has now added Fast Company's Best Workplaces for Innovators 2023 list to its accolades. About Senso AI Senso AI is a pioneering provider of advanced AI solutions, pushing the boundaries of what's possible with AI. Their enterprise-grade product makes it easy for organizations to ingest institutional knowledge and improve information retrieval capabilities for a variety of use cases, opening up new possibilities for businesses seeking to unlock the potential of their data.

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AI Applications, Software, Future Tech

unitQ Unveils AI Analysis of User Feedback for OpenAI's New ChatGPT iOS App

Prnewswire | June 02, 2023

unitQ, the leading AI platform empowering organizations to take a user-centric, real-time data-driven approach to craft high quality products, services, and experiences, announced today that its AI-powered user feedback software has analyzed what users like, dislike, and want from OpenAI's new ChatGPT iOS application. unitQ's advanced AI translated, categorized, and summarized ChatGPT App Store reviews, providing a comprehensive and unbiased perspective on areas of success and opportunities for improvement for OpenAI's revolutionary generative AI mobile application. unitQ's analysis revealed that the ChatGPT iOS app, which has been routinely updated following the app's May 18 debut, has been well-received by users for its clean interface and copy/paste functionality. Users also love the app for its speed, simplicity, reliability and lack of ads and fees. However, users have complained about overheating, battery drain, syncing issues, haptic feedback and accessibility issues. Users want plugin and Siri support, as well as math formula rendering features, and improved account creation. OpenAI has clearly been listening to its users, and in just two weeks' time, has included iPad support, upgraded right-to-left language support, altered its haptic feedback, enhanced speech recognition, and added a host of other features and refinements such as the ability to clear chat history while expanding to more countries. "unitQ's goal is to help companies improve the quality of their products, services, and experiences by providing real-time, actionable AI-powered insights into user feedback," said Christian Wiklund, unitQ CEO. unitQ's analysis filtered out thousands of reviews in which users only left stars, but did not provide written comments. Of these written reviews, more than half revealed feature requests. The remainder of reviews concerned bugs and quality issues, many of which OpenAI has been addressing. Here are some key bugs in order of frequency, according to written reviews: Overheating issues Can't sign up Device not compatible Excessive battery drain Difficult to navigate UI Crashing Force closing Subscription upgrade not recognized Fails to launch Can't login with Google Voice mode not working No customer support Unsatisfactory behavior *Following a recent ChatGPT update on iOS last week, the user reviews were erased from the App Store. unitQ had parsed the reviews before they were reset. The power of AI to understand real time user feedback at scale unitQ's AI analysis of ChatGPT's iOS application's user feedback underscores the power of unitQ's platform to surface insights from real time user feedback by automatically categorizing and summarizing user pain points, product gaps, trending issues and bugs to empower organizations to deliver high-quality experiences. In unitQ's Spring 2023 State of Mobile Applications benchmarking report, released today, unitQ has analyzed 22,225,825 pieces of publicly available Google Play Store and Apple App Store user reviews for more than 5,300 top Android and iOS mobile applications. Real time insights from user feedback were translated, categorized and summarized using unitQs proprietary AI and ML algorithms to surface: Top Quality Issues Top feature requests Trending 4-star reviews on brink of a 5-star review Top 50 apps driving quality excellence Top user complaints across all verticals are slow performance, force closing or crashing, and too many advertisements with a combined total of 421,954 pieces of user feedback left for these issues. Top Quality Issues by vertical are nuanced with unique categories appearing such as "Subscription too expensive" for education apps, "Can't transfer funds" for finance apps, and "Excessive storage usage" for gaming apps. Of the 22,225,825 pieces of feedback analyzed, 566,796 surfaced feature requests. A few examples include gamers wanting more individual analytics about their performance for gaming apps, students wanting a more customized user experience for education apps, and listeners wanting the ability to exclude certain artists from music apps. Apps with the highest quality excellence in Spring 2023 include: TikTok, Coursera, Rocket Mortgage, Turo, 23andMe, Ten Percent Happier and more. See the Top 50 Quality Excellence Awards winners: Quality Excellence Awards here. Artificial intelligence to identify gaps, growth opportunities Becoming a user-centric organization requires a deep and personal understanding of the people using today's products. Powered by machine learning and AI, unitQ captures real time user feedback in more than 100 languages from more than four dozen sources — including Amazon, the Apple App Store, Discord, Google Play Store, Reddit, Twitter, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and more. unitQ also integrates with productivity tools such as GitHub Issues, Jira, PagerDuty, Slack and Zendesk to alert users on key customer issues in any language, location or platform. Now, with unitQ, product, engineering, support, and customer experience leaders get access to a single source of truth for real-time user feedback to inform their product roadmap, alert on bugs, proactively resolve support issues, and gauge sentiment to ensure the best possible customer experience. unitQ is providing companies with a new way to stay close to their users with real-times insights into what their users think, feel, and experience. About unitQ As the leading real time customer feedback platform, unitQ empowers companies with AI-powered, actionable insights from user feedback to help them craft high-quality products, services and experiences. unitQ centralizes feedback from all sources and automatically groups it into thousands of granular categories to help organizations discover what matters most to users — all in real time. Category-leading companies like Spotify, Bumble, Pinterest, Chime and HelloFresh rely on unitQ for actionable insights to drive growth, reduce churn and build brand loyalty. Want to know what users think about your organization? Get your free unitQ Score or request a demo to learn more about unitQ.

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Android

Evinced Launches Accessibility Tools for iOS and Android Igniting a New Era of Inclusion

Evinced | September 15, 2021

Evinced, a market leading accessibility software company specializing in providing automation to enterprise developers, today announced the launch of the industry's first complete portfolio of products to enable enterprise developers to weave accessibility into their iOS and Android mobile app development process. In recent years, web and mobile app accessibility has become increasingly important to enterprises. Mobile tech giants like Apple and Google have made significant investments in making their core platforms accessible to over a billion people globally living with a disability. However, there has never been a consistent set of accessibility testing tools available across both iOS and Android ecosystems, hindering the ability for enterprises to ensure that the apps they build take advantage of the underlying platform accessibility capabilities. As technology becomes more integrated with our lives than ever before, we risk certain communities feeling overlooked and falling behind. It is imperative that enterprises with mobile apps and the mobile industry at large help pioneer a new era of inclusion with accessibility top of mind. In doing so, we'll build a more connected world, inclusive future, and not to forget, the benefits for enterprises are tremendous. co-founder and CEO Navin Thadani In a Gartner® report, it is stated that, "By 2023, digital products in full Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Level 2 compliance will outperform their market competitors by 50%." Further, it is added, "By 2025, all G20 countries — which account for 90% of the global world product 2 — will establish enforceable legal standards for digital accessibility, leading to a "GDPR moment" in which businesses scramble to achieve compliance." [1] Offering the broadest range of coverage for mobile apps on the market today, Evinced mobile accessibility solutions are built for enterprise scale and can be used by any enterprise developer looking to test a mobile app for critical accessibility issues. Even more distinctive, its products do not require a software development kit (SDK) installation on the target mobile app, can easily be added into an existing continuous integration process, and apps under test can be run on real devices or emulators in a local environment or a device cloud. These features make Evinced the first solution that's easy to use. The product portfolio contains: Flow Analyzer for Mobile: Enables a developer or test engineer user to easily connect their mobile phone (or simulator) to the Evinced desktop client and scan any app for accessibility issues, and generate actionable reports. Software is compatible with native iOS (SwiftUI, UIKit, and React Native) and Android (Android View and ViewGroup, Jetpack Compose and React Native) frameworks. This is offered as a free product for the community. Automation for Mobile: Allows developers to integrate accessibility into existing mobile UI automation tests. Full support for automation for iOS (XCUITest and Appium) and Android (Espresso and Appium). This solution is available for enterprise customers. Mobile experiences continue to be a major focus for Capital One, and the pandemic has illuminated the need for accessible mobile experiences. We applaud Evinced for continuing to innovate new ways to integrate and automate accessibility into every aspect of the software development lifecycle. Mark Penicook, Director of Digital Accessibility, Capital One About Evinced Founded in 2018, Evinced is a web accessibility software company focused on providing accessibility automation to enterprise developers by going beyond legacy static/syntax analysis. Built with advanced rule-sets, computer vision and AI algorithms, Evinced automatically detects and pinpoints accessibility problems and suggests fixes. Leading enterprises use Evinced to weave accessibility into their software development process - including design, development, automated testing and production/compliance monitoring.

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AI Tech, General AI, Software

TribalScale Partners With Senso AI to Unleash Generative AI Technology for Enhanced Software Customization

Accesswire | August 02, 2023

TribalScale, a leading software development firm known for crafting world-class digital products, is thrilled to announce its strategic partnership with Senso AI, a trailblazing provider of cutting-edge AI solutions. This collaboration is set to transform the employee experience at TribalScale by harnessing the power of Senso AI's advanced solution to enhance the company's wiki support. TribalScale's internal repository of information will evolve into an intelligent and dynamic knowledge hub, revolutionizing information retrieval and empowering employees like never before. Gone are the days of sifting through heaps of documents or getting lost in an ocean of data. The integration of AI empowers employees to swiftly access relevant information, leading to a more efficient and empowered workforce. Beyond the transformative impact on TribalScale's internal operations, this partnership will also pave the way for the software development firm to revolutionize the industry itself. TribalScale aims to empower businesses with a head start in embracing Generative AI, offering custom software implementations that cater to the unique needs of both current and prospective clients. Sheetal Jaitly, CEO of TribalScale, commented on the collaboration: "An unprecedented wave of hockey stick growth awaits those who harness the power of Generative AI. Surprisingly, 99% of organizations we engage with are uncertain where to begin. With Senso as our strategic partner, we have the edge to make a profound impact in this market, leading to substantial software implementations for our current and prospective clients. Reminding us of the early days when we championed 'Mobile First', now we embrace the transformative force of Generative AI and its indispensability in every customized software implementation moving forward." Saroop Bharwani, CEO of Senso AI, also expressed his excitement about the partnership: "In today's global landscape, organizations of all sizes face a common challenge: an abundance of untapped, unstructured data buried within PDFs, Word Documents, and more. Employees spend considerable time daily seeking answers. For example, finding an answer for a client, or seeking employment and benefits information. This invaluable knowledge awaits liberation. "Senso has achieved remarkable success, collaborating with financial institutions to consolidate institutional knowledge, reduce costs, and elevate customer satisfaction through the power of AI. This success has unlocked an array of new use cases. Within a matter of weeks, we can seamlessly integrate this transformative solution across an organization, delivering maximum value in record time and generating substantial near-term revenue. "To remain competitive, organizations must proactively embrace Generative AI in their workflows, empowering their teams to envision fresh perspectives on their roles. Our pioneering partnership with TribalScale positions us as frontrunners in providing your customers, prospects, and employees with these services promptly, presenting a remarkable opportunity for all." About TribalScale TribalScale is a global innovation firm that helps enterprises adapt and thrive in the digital era. Through agile practices, we transform teams, build best-in-class digital products, and create disruptive startups. TribalScale has consistently been recognized for its excellence and has now added Fast Company's Best Workplaces for Innovators 2023 list to its accolades. About Senso AI Senso AI is a pioneering provider of advanced AI solutions, pushing the boundaries of what's possible with AI. Their enterprise-grade product makes it easy for organizations to ingest institutional knowledge and improve information retrieval capabilities for a variety of use cases, opening up new possibilities for businesses seeking to unlock the potential of their data.

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AI Applications, Software, Future Tech

unitQ Unveils AI Analysis of User Feedback for OpenAI's New ChatGPT iOS App

Prnewswire | June 02, 2023

unitQ, the leading AI platform empowering organizations to take a user-centric, real-time data-driven approach to craft high quality products, services, and experiences, announced today that its AI-powered user feedback software has analyzed what users like, dislike, and want from OpenAI's new ChatGPT iOS application. unitQ's advanced AI translated, categorized, and summarized ChatGPT App Store reviews, providing a comprehensive and unbiased perspective on areas of success and opportunities for improvement for OpenAI's revolutionary generative AI mobile application. unitQ's analysis revealed that the ChatGPT iOS app, which has been routinely updated following the app's May 18 debut, has been well-received by users for its clean interface and copy/paste functionality. Users also love the app for its speed, simplicity, reliability and lack of ads and fees. However, users have complained about overheating, battery drain, syncing issues, haptic feedback and accessibility issues. Users want plugin and Siri support, as well as math formula rendering features, and improved account creation. OpenAI has clearly been listening to its users, and in just two weeks' time, has included iPad support, upgraded right-to-left language support, altered its haptic feedback, enhanced speech recognition, and added a host of other features and refinements such as the ability to clear chat history while expanding to more countries. "unitQ's goal is to help companies improve the quality of their products, services, and experiences by providing real-time, actionable AI-powered insights into user feedback," said Christian Wiklund, unitQ CEO. unitQ's analysis filtered out thousands of reviews in which users only left stars, but did not provide written comments. Of these written reviews, more than half revealed feature requests. The remainder of reviews concerned bugs and quality issues, many of which OpenAI has been addressing. Here are some key bugs in order of frequency, according to written reviews: Overheating issues Can't sign up Device not compatible Excessive battery drain Difficult to navigate UI Crashing Force closing Subscription upgrade not recognized Fails to launch Can't login with Google Voice mode not working No customer support Unsatisfactory behavior *Following a recent ChatGPT update on iOS last week, the user reviews were erased from the App Store. unitQ had parsed the reviews before they were reset. The power of AI to understand real time user feedback at scale unitQ's AI analysis of ChatGPT's iOS application's user feedback underscores the power of unitQ's platform to surface insights from real time user feedback by automatically categorizing and summarizing user pain points, product gaps, trending issues and bugs to empower organizations to deliver high-quality experiences. In unitQ's Spring 2023 State of Mobile Applications benchmarking report, released today, unitQ has analyzed 22,225,825 pieces of publicly available Google Play Store and Apple App Store user reviews for more than 5,300 top Android and iOS mobile applications. Real time insights from user feedback were translated, categorized and summarized using unitQs proprietary AI and ML algorithms to surface: Top Quality Issues Top feature requests Trending 4-star reviews on brink of a 5-star review Top 50 apps driving quality excellence Top user complaints across all verticals are slow performance, force closing or crashing, and too many advertisements with a combined total of 421,954 pieces of user feedback left for these issues. Top Quality Issues by vertical are nuanced with unique categories appearing such as "Subscription too expensive" for education apps, "Can't transfer funds" for finance apps, and "Excessive storage usage" for gaming apps. Of the 22,225,825 pieces of feedback analyzed, 566,796 surfaced feature requests. A few examples include gamers wanting more individual analytics about their performance for gaming apps, students wanting a more customized user experience for education apps, and listeners wanting the ability to exclude certain artists from music apps. Apps with the highest quality excellence in Spring 2023 include: TikTok, Coursera, Rocket Mortgage, Turo, 23andMe, Ten Percent Happier and more. See the Top 50 Quality Excellence Awards winners: Quality Excellence Awards here. Artificial intelligence to identify gaps, growth opportunities Becoming a user-centric organization requires a deep and personal understanding of the people using today's products. Powered by machine learning and AI, unitQ captures real time user feedback in more than 100 languages from more than four dozen sources — including Amazon, the Apple App Store, Discord, Google Play Store, Reddit, Twitter, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and more. unitQ also integrates with productivity tools such as GitHub Issues, Jira, PagerDuty, Slack and Zendesk to alert users on key customer issues in any language, location or platform. Now, with unitQ, product, engineering, support, and customer experience leaders get access to a single source of truth for real-time user feedback to inform their product roadmap, alert on bugs, proactively resolve support issues, and gauge sentiment to ensure the best possible customer experience. unitQ is providing companies with a new way to stay close to their users with real-times insights into what their users think, feel, and experience. About unitQ As the leading real time customer feedback platform, unitQ empowers companies with AI-powered, actionable insights from user feedback to help them craft high-quality products, services and experiences. unitQ centralizes feedback from all sources and automatically groups it into thousands of granular categories to help organizations discover what matters most to users — all in real time. Category-leading companies like Spotify, Bumble, Pinterest, Chime and HelloFresh rely on unitQ for actionable insights to drive growth, reduce churn and build brand loyalty. Want to know what users think about your organization? Get your free unitQ Score or request a demo to learn more about unitQ.

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Android

Evinced Launches Accessibility Tools for iOS and Android Igniting a New Era of Inclusion

Evinced | September 15, 2021

Evinced, a market leading accessibility software company specializing in providing automation to enterprise developers, today announced the launch of the industry's first complete portfolio of products to enable enterprise developers to weave accessibility into their iOS and Android mobile app development process. In recent years, web and mobile app accessibility has become increasingly important to enterprises. Mobile tech giants like Apple and Google have made significant investments in making their core platforms accessible to over a billion people globally living with a disability. However, there has never been a consistent set of accessibility testing tools available across both iOS and Android ecosystems, hindering the ability for enterprises to ensure that the apps they build take advantage of the underlying platform accessibility capabilities. As technology becomes more integrated with our lives than ever before, we risk certain communities feeling overlooked and falling behind. It is imperative that enterprises with mobile apps and the mobile industry at large help pioneer a new era of inclusion with accessibility top of mind. In doing so, we'll build a more connected world, inclusive future, and not to forget, the benefits for enterprises are tremendous. co-founder and CEO Navin Thadani In a Gartner® report, it is stated that, "By 2023, digital products in full Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Level 2 compliance will outperform their market competitors by 50%." Further, it is added, "By 2025, all G20 countries — which account for 90% of the global world product 2 — will establish enforceable legal standards for digital accessibility, leading to a "GDPR moment" in which businesses scramble to achieve compliance." [1] Offering the broadest range of coverage for mobile apps on the market today, Evinced mobile accessibility solutions are built for enterprise scale and can be used by any enterprise developer looking to test a mobile app for critical accessibility issues. Even more distinctive, its products do not require a software development kit (SDK) installation on the target mobile app, can easily be added into an existing continuous integration process, and apps under test can be run on real devices or emulators in a local environment or a device cloud. These features make Evinced the first solution that's easy to use. The product portfolio contains: Flow Analyzer for Mobile: Enables a developer or test engineer user to easily connect their mobile phone (or simulator) to the Evinced desktop client and scan any app for accessibility issues, and generate actionable reports. Software is compatible with native iOS (SwiftUI, UIKit, and React Native) and Android (Android View and ViewGroup, Jetpack Compose and React Native) frameworks. This is offered as a free product for the community. Automation for Mobile: Allows developers to integrate accessibility into existing mobile UI automation tests. Full support for automation for iOS (XCUITest and Appium) and Android (Espresso and Appium). This solution is available for enterprise customers. Mobile experiences continue to be a major focus for Capital One, and the pandemic has illuminated the need for accessible mobile experiences. We applaud Evinced for continuing to innovate new ways to integrate and automate accessibility into every aspect of the software development lifecycle. Mark Penicook, Director of Digital Accessibility, Capital One About Evinced Founded in 2018, Evinced is a web accessibility software company focused on providing accessibility automation to enterprise developers by going beyond legacy static/syntax analysis. Built with advanced rule-sets, computer vision and AI algorithms, Evinced automatically detects and pinpoints accessibility problems and suggests fixes. Leading enterprises use Evinced to weave accessibility into their software development process - including design, development, automated testing and production/compliance monitoring.

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Events