Sammi Wei's Blog

Among all the buzz and noises generated recently by companies like Apple and Google, who brought wave after wave of innovation to the table, IBM had just stepped up the game. The research team at IBM have made a tremendous breakthrough in the field of artificial intelligence as they introduced Watson in the game of Jeopardy!. Watson, a powerful question answering AI, “walked” out of the game with $1 million of winnings.

The buzz was generated even before Watson appeared on the show, anticipation was built up intensely due to IBM’s brand equity after the success of Deep Blue the chess-playing AI in 1997.

Presumably named after the IBM founder, Watson runs Linux with 15 TB of RAM and 2880 processing cores which enables him to run 1 million tasks simultaneously. For reference, a typical personal computer runs four processing cores, out of which two can run concurrently. Watson is named the Question Answering AI because his main functionality is to find the answers to…ANY question. He parses the English language into natural language, and uses extremely advanced searching algorithms to search for all possible answers, then eliminates based on his confidence given the amount of found evidence. In other words, Watson can not only give answers, but also back them up by telling you WHY. IBM envisions Watson to be the pioneer in opening a whole realm of possibilities in the medical field by reducing the time needed for physicians to solve their everyday problems.

IBM has traditionally been focused on a target market of industrial and commercial technology users; however, with Watson, the IBM team is expecting to take a leap forward in consumer technology. In the next few years, Watson, combined with IBM’s developing nanosystem technology, will be extremely affordable and mobile, making it THE next big consumer mobile device.

So the Ozzy commercial for Brisk we watched in class really had me interested, and I went home and looked up “brisk super bowl commercial” on YouTube; and this what I found:

After some Googling, I learned that Eminem actually contributed to the script himself, which would explain “I NEED SOME CHICKS” and “SHUT UP AND DRINK IT”. I must say, this commercial really blew me away! I would so totally become a loyal Brisk drinker if I didn’t hate iced tea. When I watched the Ozzy version in class, I must admit I didn’t really catch anything funny in it if there was any, then I decided that I probably wasn’t part of Brisk’s “target market” and that it was stupid of Brisk to not make a commercial that university students would understand. But now I see that they had actually made two different commercials to appeal to different consumer segments, which is brilliant given that Super Bowl watchers are greatly diversified in age.

Now enough about Brisk, I also wanted to share another commercial I had found, the winner of Doritos Crash the Super Bowl contest:

I watched most of the finalist videos including this adorable Pug Attack video, and I must say that every single second of the winning entry hit GOLD. The commercial sends several strong messages to the viewers: 1) Doritos chips are SO good that you could neglect even the most important tasks and 2) their amazing taste can perform revival miracles on all types of lifeforms (creative dramatization).

What an eventful past week! The marketing midterm, the chaos in Cairo, and the issue which I will talk about today: the increasing force that is standing up against Usage-Based Billing internet services. This recent, and IMHO, horrid decision by the CRTC has taken the internet community by storm. Through joint efforts by consumers all across Canada, the issue has been brought to the immediate attention of MP’s in every district, of every party. Of course, the parties who are not currently in power saw this as an excellent opportunity to tear down the Conservative government, as the Liberals and the NDP have both officially committed themselves to reversing the CRTC decision.

This is not the first time that these two parties have demonstrated that their vision is aligned with advancement. With the Generation X-ers all coming of voting age, it is indeed wise for them to do all they could to win support of the young and technology-savvy generation who are looking for a modernized government. Aside from marketing largely on their pro-net neutrality stance and modernizing copyright law movements, the Liberals and the NDP have continuously criticized the Conservatives for “reject[ing] serious efforts to move the legislation forward” (NDP Press Release) and allowing “CRTC … to mean ‘Consumers Rarely Taken into Consideration” (Liberals News & Blog).

Personally, I would very much love to support our Canadian corporations, but if they continue to treat their consumers like cash cows, then I say let American competition come in and send Rogers/Bell/Telus straight to hell.