We were watching the WWDC keynote address last night and the term “Machine Learning” came up so ofter, that if you were taking a shot each time, it would have been very detrimental to your health. There were at least 12-15 references during the 2.25 hour keynote.

Apple have seriously embraced Machine Learning/Deep Learning across many apps and have introduced a Machine Learning framework for running developer designed learning algorithms, even providing conversion tools for migrating from other AI platforms.

Or course, this comes as no surprise, as I wrote about the many ways Apple were integrating machine learning back in October 2016.

UPDATE: Wired also noticed just how key Machine Learning has become to Apple.

Today we released a new version of the Lumberjack iOS Logger – version 3.

iOS Logger for iPhone and iPad has been completely rewritten for increased speed and stability. New features include a warning for logs not uploaded, the ability to add a note to a keyword range upon completion, the ability to review logged (but not uploaded) keywords and the ability to add or edit a note to logged keyword ranges.

Thanks to Robert Desauger.

I’ve written here before, and Terry Curren and I have discussed repeated on The Terence and Philip Show, that many jobs are likely to be replaced by the combination of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics/Automation. It’s good to see people thinking and writing about these things, as does Caitlin Fitzsimmons of the Sydney Morning Herald (Australia), in an article – How to prepare for the jobs of the future when you don’t know what they are – that features an interview with Pulitzer prize-winning author and New York Times columnist, Thomas Friedman, who writes about the age of acceleration in his new book, Thank You For Being Late.

The whole article (and likely the book, which I’m about to buy) are worth the read, but I loved this paragraph from Ms Fitzsimmons:

That’s because the only way to equip children for the future of work is to develop their imagination, creativity and emotional intelligence. If the world is changing, the best thing you can do is equip them for change. They need to be emotionally resilient with a habit of self-directed lifelong learning.

An article on Tubefilter caught my eye: The Most-Desired Career Among Young People Today Is ‘YouTuber’ (Study).

The top 10 jobs kids want, per the First Choice study, are as follows: YouTuber, blogger/vlogger, musician/singer, actor, filmmaker, doctor/nurse, TV presenter, athlete/teacher, writer, and lawyer.

The one thing that the top jobs have in common is fame!

The thing is, it works. Not for everyone but it works.

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We’ve recently added new features to SendtoX – named Favorite ranges from Clips in a Sequence – and Lumberjack System where we developed a workflow for backLogger to support RED R3D media.

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Because I am researching my journey through my earlier writings on metadata and interactive story telling I came across my ‘review’ of NAB 1998 thanks to the Wayback Machine. This was the year everyone was coming to terms with ATSC – digital broadcast – and how it was to be implemented. From my review it seems my attention was on interactivity and QuickTime 3, neither of which is surprising.

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A few years ago, we considered supporting transcripts in Lumberjack System. At the time our goal was to quickly prepare for an edit, and transcriptions took days and cost serious money.

Two years ago we supported the alignment of time-stamped transcripts to Final Cut Pro X Clips and a year ago, introduced “magic” keywords, derived by a cognitive service. Since Lumberjack doesn’t (yet, I might emphasize) support a speech to text service internally, what are the options and what do they tell us about the state of play for transcription in April 2017?

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With the announcement of Resolve 14 today at NAB 2017, it seems that Blackmagic Design have their sites clearly on Avid’s Media Composer: intentionally or not.

I’ve long wondered what apps would be most threatened by Blackmagic’s rapid development of Resolve.

Adobe’s suite of tools and dynamic link makes a powerful argument for that platform. Although Resolve has improved integration with Fusion, it’s not yet at the level of Dynamic Link. Not that Dynamic Link is the most robust of Adobe tech. Despite being free, it’s hard to see Resolve directly threatening Premiere Pro, After Effects et. al.

Apple’s Final Cut Pro X/Motion combination features a new look at the editing interface – probably the reason it’s the most used professional NLE now –  and those who use it, love the Magnetic Timeline. The most common response to today’s Resolve announcements was “but it’s track based.”  Once you’re a fan of the Magnetic Timeline it’s hard to go back.

There are other players like Media 100, Edius and Vegas that will definitely be threatened by Resolve Free or the full version for just $299, but the one company that – mid term – is most threatened is Avid.

Resolve has already replaced Avid’s excellent (but left to die) Symphony grading and with major audio improvements – integrating their Fairlight purchase – and shared project upgrades directly threaten core focuses of Media Composer and ProTools.

Fortunate or not, while these are key parts of Avid’s current software lineup, there are a small percentage of Avid’s overall business.

Very interesting to see how the new features and pricing affect adoption, and who will be most threatened. If you’re looking for a modern, track-based NLE with good audio, great color grading, and excellent DIT tools and collaborative workflows gaining maturity, Resolve deserves a version 14 look.

Alex Gollner (aka Alex4D) has seen the same issues: Blackmagic Design has sights set on Avid with DaVinci Resolve 14

While researching the anecdotal history of some local property, I did what I’ve done previously: ask Siri. In this case, asking about actors dates of birth and death. In the past, these type of questions would have pulled up the relevant IMDB or Wikipedia page with Siri saying “I’ve found some links for you on the web” or similar.

It took several rounds before I realized that, while the pages were still being pulled up as before, Siri was parsing out the answer to the question I’d asked, and gave that to me directly. I never had to glance down or open my phone.

Similarly, in Mail, there is now a predictive mailbox making suggestions (usually accurate) into which email box I might want to move the selected email.

In Calendar, I find addresses being suggested for my events, based on whether I’ve been there or not, address book entries, or other information.

It’s clear to me that these are all improvements related directly the Apple’s increased use of Machine Learning across it’s software products.

As I’m trying to figure out how and where we might use Machine Learning (ML) in our software businesses, I thought I’d review all the uses I can find beyond the more general cognitive services (like speech to text, image recognition, keyword extraction, etc) that I’ve already talked about and that – by themselves – are incredibly valuable and offer a near-immediate payoff.

I was a little shocked at the diversity of ways ML is being used. According to TechCrunch there has already been over $10 billion in Venture Capital to 1500 AI/ML startups in 70 countries, which is predicted to rise to more than four times that in 2017!

Since I was compiling this list, I thought I’d share it with you, but it’s just a sampling. Even so there are more than 40 applications described here, in addition to the Cognitive Services as stand alone ML tools.

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