June 13 Event: IBM Watson – Beyond Jeopardy!

Interested in Watson and the supercomputer’s future? Then Don’t miss this webinar Thursday, June 13, 2013, at 1 pm ET/12 noon CT/11 am MT/10 am PT/5 pm GMT.

In 2011, IBM introduced Watson, a computer system capable of quickly and precisely answering natural language questions with accurate confidence estimation. In February of that year, Watson won a victory against the world’s best Jeopardy! players in a formal contest that was aired on national television.

That public performance heralded a future where we can efficiently tap into the wealth of knowledge buried in text and other unstructured data sources. IBM is now exploring new applications of the Watson technology including clinical decision support in healthcare.

Thursday’s webinar will cover:

• Architecture of the Watson Question Answering System
• Using the Apache UIMA framework for building natural language processing systems
• How IBM is addressing new challenges for Watson in the healthcare domain

Presenters are Adam Lally, Senior Technical Staff Member in the Watson Technologies department at IBM’s T. J. Watson Research Center; and Dr. Will Tracz, Lockheed Martin Fellow Emeritus and Chair of ACM SIGSOFT. Learn more and register.

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Related:

Watson at Your Service: The IBM Watson Engagement Advisor

IBM’s Ginni Rometty Reveals Watson’s Future

 

- Posted by Regan Kelly

The May Roundup – What We’re Talking About

In this issue:

• Best of the Blog: Your Top Five for May
• Why the World Thirsts for Smarter Water Management
• Join the Conversation

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The Best of the Blog: Your Top Five for May

What have you been reading and talking about recently? Here are the five most popular posts published in May on The Greater IBM Connection blog:

1. Now Playing: IBM Scientists Create a Movie by Moving Atoms
2. IBM CEO Ginni Rometty Touts Watson, New ‘Golden Era of Technology’
3. 50 Years of Innovation: IBM Honors 2013 Fellows 
4. Your LinkedIn Status Updates: 7 Do’s and Don’ts
5. Watson at Your Service: IBM Unveils the IBM Watson Engagement Advisor

Thanks for visiting and thanks for your comments on the blog – we like hearing from you.

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Why the World Thirsts for Smarter Water Management

Around the world, one in eight people lacks access to safe water supplies.

That’s 884 million people. The planet is thirsty. Not just for a drop to drink, but for information about how we can be smarter about water in the first place.

Managing this critical resource requires a smarter approach to deliver improved outcomes across the water management lifecycle. Governments, cities, utilities and businesses must take immediate action to deploy a smarter approach to water management to solve the world’s water crisis.

With advances in technology, we can be smarter about how we manage our planet’s water. We can monitor, measure and analyze entire water ecosystems. We can provide a single, reliable, up-to-the-minute and actionable view of water use.

But that’s just the first drop. Learn how IBM is addressing this global issue.

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Join the Conversation

Stay connected with The Greater IBM Connection by:

• Joining the The Greater IBM Connection LinkedIn Group
• Liking The Greater IBM Connection on Facebook
• Following @greater_ibm on Twitter:
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• Following the The Greater IBM Connection blog
• Bookmarking the The Greater IBM Connection portal

Why the World Thirsts for Smarter Water Management

Whether too much or not enough, the world needs a smarter way to think about water

Around the world, one in eight people lack access to safe water supplies.

That’s 884 million people. The planet is thirsty. Not just for a drop to drink, but for information about how we can be smarter about water in the first place.

The world’s water system  is vulnerable. Essential for health, food, energy, manufacturing and transportation, the global water system is suffering from stress, deteriorating quality, aging and insufficient infrastructure. Managing this critical resource requires a smarter approach to deliver improved outcomes across the water management lifecycle. Using information and analytics, governments, cities, utilities and businesses must take immediate action to deploy a smarter approach to water management to solve the world’s water crisis.

With advances in technology — sophisticated sensor networks, smart meters, deep computing and analytics — we can be smarter about how we manage our planet’s water. We can monitor, measure and analyze entire water ecosystems, from rivers and reservoirs to the pumps and pipes in our homes. We can give all the people, organizations, businesses, communities and nations dependent on a continuing supply of freshwater—that is, all of us—a single, reliable, up-to-the-minute and actionable view of water use.

But that’s just the first drop. Learn what IBM is doing to address this global issue.

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Related:

Visit the interactive Smarter Water experience

The Sights and Sounds of Smarter Water: check out the video playlist

Get  the report: Fixing the Future – Why we need smarter water management for the world’s most essential resource

Solutions

The CreekWatch App: Snap a photo, save a stream

IBM Turns Its Ads into Urban Furniture

Making communications useful – taking utility to the streets

Outdoor IBM ads now do double duty for urban residents.

When walking around in a city, have you ever needed a ramp for your luggage (or bike), or shelter from a sudden downpour, or just a place to sit down to tie your shoe? IBM believes that because city life can be inconvenient, cities should be designed with the needs of ordinary citizens in mind.

The company has now applied the idea of utility to the traditional outdoor ad. A new series of outdoor ads today double as functional surfaces for the “People For Smarter Cities Project.” The campaign’s goal, created in collaboration with Ogilvy & Mather France, is to encourage both forward-thinking citizens and local leaders to consider how to make their neighborhoods smarter and, therefore, better. Read more and see a photo gallery of the outdoor ads/urban furniture, in this story by Jennifer Miller at Fast Company.

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Related:

What is a Smarter City? IBM is working with cities around the world to use advanced technologies, like analytics, to help identify ways to tackle urbanization challenges, improve sustainability and deliver better services to their citizens.

Follow IBM Smarter Cities on Twitter: @IBMSmartCities

SmarterCities Tumblr

How to make YOUR city smarter

Welcome to the SmarterCity: Watch a Documentary and a TV Spot

 

The Cognitive Computing Era: IBM’s Vision for the Future

IBM Fellow Kerrie Holley

Computers won’t replace doctors, traffic analysts, or meteorologists anytime soon, but their real-time analytical capabilities can provide essential information to help people employed in these (and many other) fields make better, smarter decisions.

IBM today is testing its powerful cognitive computer systems – computers modeled on the human brain — around the world. The company sees a confluence of factors — Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud, or “SMAC” — that will combine with cognitive systems to have a major impact on 21st-century business, government, and society in general.

In a phone interview with InformationWeek, IBM research fellow Kerrie Holley gave an high-level overview of IBM’s take on SMAC, machine learning, and the sensor-driven Internet of Things, all expected to play starring roles in the new era of cognitive computing. Read more in this article in Information Week.

Related:

Meet IBM’s Watson Engagement Advisor

SMAC

All about Watson

New CAI Study on Smarter Policing

- from the IBM Center for Applied Insights

Police agencies, wherever they are, have some things in common: they are sworn to keep those they serve safe and secure, an essential prerequisite for a stable and prosperous society. And regardless of where an agency serves, in a cosmopolitan North American city or in a fast-growing population in South Asia, digital information sources and social media generate a great deal of data to be mined, plus new ways to engage with the community.

To justify investments in technology, though, police in rapidly developing economies must build a business case that is relevant to their situation and challenges. This study – based on data relating to 56 police agencies from around the world and the communities they serve – suggests the potential returns for rapidly developing economies can be dramatic. The study identifies four distinct profiles of police agency in rapidly developing economies and shows that each should prioritize different investments and anticipate different profiles of agency and societal benefits. Get the study.

Download the infographic

Infographic: What Inspires IBM Fellows to Build the Future?

What inspires IBM Fellows to build the future? In their own words:

Related:

The World Is Our Laboratory: IBM Research

Like IBM Research on Facebook

Follow IBM Research on Twitter: @IBMResearch

Meet the Class of 2013: Eight new Fellows join a distinguished tradition of
excellence and innovation