SeaVoice Stories

Source: https://seasalt.ai/blog/3-modern-meetings/From Demo to Success: Implementing Microsoft's Modern Meetings and BeyondThroughout this blog series, follow Seasalt.ai’s journey to creating a well rounded Modern Meetings Experience, starting with its humble beginnings, to optimizing our service on different hardware and models, to integrating state-of-the-art NLP systems and finally ending on the full realization of SeaMeet, our collaborative modern meeting solutions.Future of Modern MeetingsAt Microsoft Build 2019, Microsoft roused the audience when they unveiled the latest in their cloud computing solutions: the Azure Speech Services, more specifically their Meeting Transcription application. After its introduction, this conversation transcriber immediately landed on everyone’s radar and earned mentions among top tech blogs and periodicals. The demonstration, illustrated in the video below back in 2019, showed off a lot of muscle from the Azure Speech Services. Little did we know that it quickly became a prelude of how modern meetings would be held in a global pandemic and post-pandemic setting: going from physical to virtual to hybrid.Advertised as a conversation transcription platform, Microsoft’s showcase for Azure’s meeting transcription service, aptly introduced as “The Future of Modern Meetings”, established their new service as a robust, efficient speech-to-text (STT) platform suitable for all businesses looking for a way to quickly and neatly capture all of their important conferences.What makes this service the pinnacle of meeting transcription? First, Real-time performance. As technology becomes faster and faster, patience grows ever thinner where even a few seconds delay is more than enough to irk the average user. Yet Microsoft proved that their conversation transcriber is more than fast enough, providing accurate transcriptions faster than some closed captioning services, making it completely feasible to follow along with a concurrent conversation with the text alone.Next, Microsoft also displayed their speaker identification capabilities. Ending up with a mess of unorganized conversational text is frustrating and useless, but speaker identification automatically labels each utterance with the speaker creating an easily consumable format.Everyday, computing hardware grows more powerful by the day and companies look to squeeze every last core from the latest CPUs and GPUs. Oftentimes older tech drifts into obsolescence and customers are forced to upgrade every couple of years just to stay relevant in society. In “Future of Modern Meetings”, Microsoft optimized Azure Speech Service to run on consumer-grade hardware while keeping the heavy computation on their end, further expanding the already vast population who can benefit from this service.Azure’s meeting transcription service stands to optimize the way we conduct business. Every single organization would do well to incorporate a product like this in their workflow. On an average day, information is constantly flowing and every bit is just as significant as the last, whether it’s reminders, tasks, or updates. Too often things get lost in the cracks and that means wasted time and wasted profits. What Microsoft’s solution offers is a complete, automatically generated record delineating exactly what was said and who said it, so gone are the days of missing information and blindly hunting through lengthy audio recordings for a specific section. Now, all the information you need is neatly laid-out for you to reference as often as you need. This technology is more important than ever. If the year 2020 taught us anything it is the need for flexibility, especially in the workplace. People get sick and unforeseen events arise so it is virtually impossible to expect employees to attend every discussion.With Modern Meetings, we are one step closer to being able to accommodate these unexpected developments by essentially giving everyone the ability to be there without actually being there.Implementing Modern MeetingsIn mid 2020, we received a request for proposal from a government client in Singapore. Yes it was still pandemic. But Singapore had it under control so government meetings still happened in physical conference rooms. They wanted a modern solution that can transcribe speech from up to 12 different speakers. Furthermore, speaker identification would play an important role here.On speaker identification, one significant difference between what Azure offers and what the client needs is the voice “enrollment”: Azure requires some pre-recorded voice from all the speakers to enroll their voiceprint in the system. However, it is impossible to ask some presumably very important government officials to sit in front of a microphone to be recorded. We did some adaptation to the process by doing unsupervised speaker clustering first (also called speaker diarization). The idea is that if a speaker had spoken once in our system, we would recognize them the next time they speak.Then we quickly assembled our arsenal for the whole project. The first step was to source a high quality microphone array that would deliver crystal clear audio data to our recognition models. We were immediately allured by the Azure Kinect: a stylish, 7 microphone array housed in a full aluminum casing with the added bonus of a high definition camera and depth sensors.By the looks alone, this is a truly sophisticated device that would complement any conference room, but more importantly the powerful microphone array promised the quality we were after. With the circular arrangement, the seven microphones opened the possibility of using state-of-the-art signal processing techniques such as source localization and beamforming. This microphone was also the perfect pairing with our backend which utilized Azure’s Speech Services, an established speech-to-text platform giving our product the power it needed to be a top of the line meeting transcriber.While Azure did not make the final cut of SeaMeet, it gave us the start we needed to be able to realize our vision. Finally we tied this all together with a user interface. In our first iteration, we made do with a generic, Java-based design that, while plain, was perfectly functional. Because the Kinect device cannot run external code, all this had to run on an extra single Windows laptop. Even though it was a little rough around the edges at first, we were proud to say that we had a fully functional meeting transcription product.Deploying Modern MeetingsIn May 2021, our engineers arrived in Singapore to deploy our modern business solution as a proof of concept. Pitted against two other competitor companies, we were each tasked to demonstrate our vision of the future of meetings.Despite the fact that wireless had become the norm over the last decade, we found that our competitors still opted for a wired solution. As you can see from the picture, each of the 12 speakers were anchored to an individual microphone.. A speaker had to speak directly into the microphone in a close-talk setting for the system to pick up their voice. Not only does this severely hinder flexibility, but such a set up also multiplies the complexity with convoluted AV equipment. Our solution, on the other hand, is fully powered by far-field capabilities, thanks to the 7 microphone array and signal processing algorithms.To some extent, our solution was very much like “Alexa For Business”: one device covers the whole room, with only a power cable required. Compared to our competitors’ solution, our solution is generations ahead in the sense that we truly understand the needs of modern businesses while they are still fully strapped into the dated wired generation.The team was pumped seeing the huge difference. With a few hours of tuning, the final PoC went very smoothly. The team also enjoyed a tour in Singapore after the PoC, in a country where Covid-19 was strictly contained so that life and business ran as usual.Beyond Modern MeetingsDuring our time in Singapore, our thoughts went beyond a successful PoC: compared to other competing solutions, ours was 10x better. But how could we do 10x even better than ourselves? Please follow our steps to the next blog in this series.Leave a comment and share your thoughts: https://open.firstory.me/story/ckz7wlhpw0pvu0982fk2ma6q0?m=commentPowered by Firstory Hosting

Source: https://seasalt.ai/blog/8-hubspot/AI-Enabled Contact Center Automation: Virtual Agent Collaboration with CRMIntegrating HubSpot with SeaXEasy and seamless access to both your contact center interface and your customer data in a CRM is vital to efficient customer support. In SeaX, Seasalt.ai’s collaborative contact center product, you can facilitate this by integrating a CRM like HubSpot directly into your contact center interface, giving you direct access to all of your information and tools.Many businesses are not taking advantage of the powerful automations made possible by integrating these platforms. Tools like AI-enabled virtual agents simplify your workflow and leverage your data in HubSpot.Empower Your Virtual Agents.SeaX’s omni-channel support means that you can interact with your customers across many platforms, all in one interface. Virtual agents connected to the Twilio platform can contact your customers across channels, providing basic support 24/7. These virtual agents handle routine tasks and queries, freeing up your live agents to focus on more complex calls and other tasks. Currently SeaX supports the following channels: Discord, SMS, Webchat, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Google Business Messages, LineIntegrating HubSpot gives your virtual agents access to the same customer information as your live agents. Your virtual agent’s knowledge of your customers grows in real time as you record customer information in HubSpot.Streamline Workflow with AutomationsThere are many routine tasks and customer interactions that your live agents handle on a daily basis. HubSpot has tools for keeping track of all of your tasks, and even automating certain things like sending marketing emails.SeaX’s omni-channel support adds the ability to automate messages to SMS, voice calls, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and more. Combined with the HubSpot Webhooks API, which allows you to track changes in your HubSpot objects, you can send a message to customers on any channel with a simple action like clicking a button or moving a support ticket. In addition, a virtual agent can handle the customer’s response, so the live agent only needs to start the conversation.Make Your Data Work for You EverywhereIntegrating SeaX and HubSpot gives you straight access to your customer data directly in your contact center interface. It also gives automations and your virtual agents the ability to interact with and add to that pool of data as well.When you finish a conversation with a customer in SeaX, an automation can directly add the interaction to the customer’s contact in HubSpot, so the live agent does not need to waste time writing up the conversation. Virtual agents can add their interactions to a customer’s information too, as well as updating a customer’s contact information or appointment time based on their conversation with the customer.One Convenient PlatformIn short, the integration between SeaX and HubSpot simplifies your customer support interface and gives your live agents more easier access to your customer information. Employing AI-enabled virtual agents and automations that utilize this integration frees up your live agents to be more efficient and streamlines your workflow and CRM processes.Want to see how SeaX powered by Seasalt.ai can help your business? Book a demo today.Leave a comment and share your thoughts: https://open.firstory.me/story/ckz7wkbkufp7q08592cnf92ke?m=commentPowered by Firstory Hosting

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamara_WilsonTamara Wilson. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.Tamara Wilson is an American operatic soprano who has had an active international opera career since 2007. She has performed leading roles at the Canadian Opera Company, the English National Opera, the Houston Grand Opera, the Liceu, the Metropolitan Opera, and the Sydney Opera House among others. She is particularly known for her performances of heroines in the operas of Giuseppe Verdi. In 2016 she was nominated for the Laurence Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in Opera and was awarded the Richard Tucker Award, an award described by Opera News as "one of the most prestigious prizes in opera".Early life and education. Born in Arizona, Wilson grew up in the Chicago area. Her mother is a retired choir director and accompanist and her father has a career in the railroad industry. She earned a Bachelor of Music degree in vocal performance from the University of Cincinnati – College-Conservatory of Music in 2004 where she was a pupil of soprano Barbara Honn. That same year she was a finalist in the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions; a competition she entered on a whim without any serious intent in pursuing an opera career. Her performance in the Met finals drew the attention of Diane Zola, the then General Manager at the Houston Grand Opera (HGO), and she subsequently joined the Young Artist Program at the HGO in 2005.Career. Wilson's big break came in 2007 when she made her opera debut replacing Patricia Racette for the entire run of the HGO's opening production of the 2007–2008 season as Amelia in Verdi's Un ballo in maschera to critical success. She has since returned to the HGO stage as two more Verdi heroines; Elisabetta in Don Carlos (2012) and Leonora in Il trovatore (2013). In 2008 she portrayed Countess Almaviva in The Marriage of Figaro with the Berkshire Opera Company and was awarded a Sara Tucker Study Grant from the Richard Tucker Music Foundation. She was later a recipient of the Richard Tucker Career Grant in 2011.In 2009 Wilson portrayed the title role in Verdi's Aida at the Sydney Opera House for Opera Australia; the first of many performances of that role. Later that year she portrayed Alice Ford in Falstaff for her debut at the Washington National Opera; returning to the WNO in 2010 as Amelia. She also appeared at the Canadian Opera Company (COC) in 2009–2010 as Amelia Grimaldi in Verdi's Simon Boccanegra, and as Elettra in Mozart's Idomeneo.In 2011 Wilson made her debut at Carnegie Hall singing the role of the Virgin Mary in Honegger’s Jeanne d'Arc au bûcher with conductor Marin Alsop leading the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, and made her debut at the Los Angeles Opera as Miss Jessel in Britten's The Turn of the Screw. That same year she made her European debut as Ada in Wagner's Die Feen at the Opern- und Schauspielhaus Frankfurt and performed Aida for her debut at the Municipal Theatre of Santiago. Her performance as Ada was recorded for the Oehms Classics label.In 2012 Wilson made her debut at the Théâtre du Capitole as Leonora, returned to the Canadian Opera Company as Rosalinde in Die Fledermaus, and made her debut at the Ravinia Festival as Elettra in Mozart's Idomeneo with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under conductor James Conlon. She later returned to Ravinia in 2014 to perform the role of Donna Anna in Mozart's Don Giovanni. In 2013 she returned to Carnegie Hall to perform the role of Malwina in Heinrich Marschner's Der Vampyr with the American Symphony Orchestra.In 2014 Wilson made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera as Aida. In 2015 she made her debut at the English National Opera as Leonora in Verdi's La forza del destino; a performance which earned her an Olivier Award nomination. Also that year she performed Aida at the Aspen Music Festival and the Teatro Principal de Palma de Mallorca. She is scheduled to perform the role of Amelia at the Deutsche Oper Berlin in 2016 and the role of Elisabetta at the Bayerische Staatsoper in 2017.Leave a comment and share your thoughts: https://open.firstory.me/story/ckz60m8qqndpj0814daa6r6kx?m=commentPowered by Firstory Hosting

Source: https://www.androidcentral.com/t-mobile-and-other-carriers-still-havent-covered-rural-areas-regardless-what-they-sayT-Mobile and other carriers still haven't covered rural areas, regardless of what they sayI wrote a plea in December 2020 for 5G to be the technology that saved my rural broadband situation in 2021, that situation being that it is essentially non-existent. While there was a brief period in which I was able to use T-Mobile Home Internet to bolster my connectivity situation, ultimately, my internet salvation is beamed to my home from space thanks to SpaceX Starlink Home Internet. Even with 2021's 5G expansion, it's a struggle to get even 4G LTE outside metropolitan eras despite seemingly comprehensive carrier coverage maps.In these ads that sprawl across our TVs, webpages, and social media, we constantly see how one carrier is the fastest or covers the most people—usually accompanied by a map of some form displaying brand colors shading essentially the entire United States. This is to persuade consumers to pick that carrier because it has the best coverage. If you hadn't noticed, all of these ads look eerily similar in that each of the carriers says they have nationwide coverage. Yeah, that's not entirely accurate.I spoke with Roger Entner, a telecom analyst and founder of Recon Analytics. When I asked him about the requirements for a carrier to state its coverage in an area, he told me, "mapping that is provided is for information purposes only and is not representative of actual things on the ground. In rural America, the map is approximated by a calculation."As someone who lives in rural America, this calculation is frustrating because it's largely inaccurate. Entner told me that as long as a carrier covers at least 200 million people, it can state nationwide coverage in its marketing. I reached out to cell providers for clarifications but haven't heard back at the time of publication.I'm a T-Mobile subscriber on my personal phone, and according to the map, I should not only have a good 4G LTE signal at my home, but I should also have good 5G coverage. This is simply not true.When I'm in my yard, my signal will quickly fluctuate between two bars and none at all. Inside of my home, I'm lucky to get any reception. Results are the same whether I'm using my Pixel 6 Pro, recently crowned the fastest Android smartphone, or with my Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3.The Federal Communications Commission is attempting to give a bit more clarity to these coverage maps by offering maps of its own. These seem to be slightly more accurate than what the carriers themselves provide. However, much of the data used by the FCC is self-reported directly from the carriers, so real-world results are still fuzzy.It's 2022 in America, but fast, consistent cellular coverage is still a crapshoot.I have tried every carrier available to me — Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and US Cellular. The only one that gets me an excellent signal is AT&T using its FirstNet service that I have through my day job as a technical analyst for a natural gas utility company. The service quality lines up with what Roger Entner said when he told me, "The carrier that will provide the best coverage in rural areas is ATT because of FirstNet." It's just unfortunate that everyone can't have access to its excellent service quality.Yes, I know this is a pie-in-the-sky dream that I have, but really — is it so hard to provide reliable service to everyone?Well, yes and no. In the United States, we are down to three major wireless carriers that maintain a stranglehold on the bulk of the spectrum available for cellular usage. These carriers spend billions of dollars each time more of this precious frequency is auctioned off, with smaller carriers left to fend for scraps.While these radio waves that provide connectivity to our devices aren't tangible, the hardware used to transmit them is. To expand the signal to more people, it takes more towers. Carriers are balancing the need for more frequency to bolster their service with building new towers that broadcast that signal — and neither is cheap.I asked Bill Ho, a principal analyst at 556 Ventures, what could be done to help relieve dead spots in coverage across rural areas; he told me, "It does come down to money and deployment. From a carrier's view, the cost to serve a smaller population relative to material and operational costs may be a money loser. That's why there are federal rural subsidy programs that service providers help defray some of that cost."The cost of a tower is expensive, and so is its cost of operation, but the money required to get fiber to the building is another story.These programs that Bill speaks of are out there and can help those entities that take advantage of them. But even in conversations that I had with my local electrical and internet companies asking what they were doing to access these programs to bring internet to their customers, I was told that there were many roadblocks in the programs. Aside from those, the main hurdle was the high cost of bringing in fiber to serve the homes.The problem of bringing fiber to serve broadband customers is one and the same for cellular providers. Currently, the costs to build a cell tower, get fiber to it, and its regular operation are so high that it's hard for carriers to justify their construction without significant users to support it. But, it could be a case where companies like SpaceX and its Starlink do more than just save my home broadband.In continuing his response as to what could be done to help relieve dead spots in coverage across rural areas, Ho said:"Also, many carriers, if they don't have their own equipment, count on rural carriers to roam on those networks. Some dead spots could be terrain-related. At least addressing mobile coverage in the US, that's partly why Verizon (Amazon Project Kuiper) and AT&T (OneWeb & AST Mobile) have looked ahead and forged pacts with satellite players. The satellite tech is looking to address the fixed and mobile equation. As we have seen, Musk's Starlink doesn't use 5G but looks to address fixed rural connectivity."Removing one of the high-cost barriers to building a new cell tower is a big step towards bringing coverage to rural areas that more closely resembles what the carrier maps show where they all try to claim the best 5G network. However, while this is a good start, it will be up to these cellular providers to realize that even though these towers won't be covering millions or even hundreds of thousands of users, they will be helping solve a major pain point that a lot of rural Americans face.Leave a comment and share your thoughts: https://open.firstory.me/story/ckz57w4w7057z0858lium930p?m=commentPowered by Firstory Hosting

Source: https://medium.com/veve-collectibles/disney-mickey-and-friends-nft-collection-3de468cfe5e6Disney Mickey and Friends NFT CollectionThe Mickey and Friends NFT CollectionFeaturing First Edition character lenticular-style interactive cards, we’re celebrating some of our favorite friends: Goofy, Pluto, Daisy Duck, Donald Duck, Minnie Mouse, and of course, Mickey Mouse! The faces of these cards, which were designed and hand-painted by Disney artists Morgane Keesling and Naty Kosloff, feature backgrounds dreamed up specially to fit this grand occasion. Each room is personalized to match every character, and lenticular technology allows you to get a closer look at the character on the card by viewing it from a new angle. Discover custom music for each character within the space, and flip the card over to see a special autograph. These cards will make a colorful and imaginative addition to your showroom!Blind BoxesGet ready to add to the excitement of drop day with our blind box offerings! This drop is available for purchase as a blind box, meaning you won’t know which amazing rarity you have acquired until after your successful purchase. From there, you can continue to expand your collection with additional blind boxes, or interact with other users in the Market to complete your set.Mickey Mouse Drop Date: 29 January, 2022 at 8 AM PT; List Price: 40.00; Editions: 13,928; Edition Type: First Edition; Rarity: Common; License: Disney; Brand: Mickey and Friends NFT Collection; Series: Mickey and Friends — Series 1; Available: Globally.Minnie Mouse Drop Date: 29 January, 2022 at 8AM PT; List Price: 40.00; Editions: 13,928; Edition Type: First Edition Rarity: Common License: Disney Brand: Mickey and Friends NFT Collection; Series: Mickey and Friends — Series 1 Available: Globally.Disney Parks, Experiences, and Products. Disney Parks, Experiences and Products brings the magic of The Walt Disney Company’s powerful brands and franchises — including Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, ESPN, Twentieth Century Studios and National Geographic — into the daily lives of families and fans around the world to create magical memories that last a lifetime.When Walt Disney opened Disneyland in Anaheim, California, on July 17, 1955, he created a unique destination built around storytelling and immersive experiences, ushering in a new era of family entertainment. More than 60 years later, Disney has grown into one of the world’s leading providers of family travel and leisure experiences, with iconic businesses including six resort destinations with 12 theme parks and 53 resorts in the United States, Europe and Asia; a top-rated cruise line with four ships and plans for three more to be completed in 2022, 2024 and 2025; a luxurious family beach resort in Hawaii; a popular vacation ownership program; and two award-winning guided tour adventure businesses. Disney Imagineers are the creative force behind Disney theme parks, resort hotels and cruise ships globally.Disney Consumer Products, Games and Publishing includes the world’s leading licensing business; one of the largest children’s publishing brands globally; one of the largest licensors of games across platforms worldwide; and consumer products at retail around the world.Secondary Market Fees A 6% licensor fee will be applied to Disney sales in the secondary market in addition to the existing VeVe 2.5% secondary market fee.Leave a comment and share your thoughts: https://open.firstory.me/story/ckz57uzqr19v90a10368az3dt?m=commentPowered by Firstory Hosting