Category: Uncategorized
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Spotify Voice Translation: pick your (podcast) language
A couple of months ago Spotify launched Voice Translation; a tool that enables podcasters to translate their spoken content into a language of their choice. Spotify. Using OpenAI’s voice generation technology to match the speaker’s original style, so that it sounds more authentic than classing dubbing. There will no doubt be limits to the authenticity…
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Michael Margolis: “user research, quick and dirty” (1)
Why do I keep coming across businesses that struggle to engage with their (prospective) customers, to learn about their needs and behaviours? Too often for my liking, I hear comments like: “Marc, we’re a startup, we don’t have the time and budget to do customer research!” “I’m not allowed to talk to customers.” “In my…
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Some good conversational UI examples to learn from
It was Dennis Mortensen – CEO/Founder of x.ai – who made me aware a few years ago of the concept of ‘invisible interfaces’. He talked about applications no longer needing a graphical user interface (GUI), taking “Amy” – x.ai’s virtual personal assistant as a good example (see Fig. 1 below). Fig. 1 – Amy, x.ai’s virtual assistant…
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Lending revisited: Bond Street
Bond Street lends to small businesses that might typically struggle to get a loan from traditional banks. In a recent talk on a MIT Fintech course that I was doing, David Haber – Bond Street’s CEO/Founder – mentioned how Bond Street saw a clear niche in the market for small business loans and acted on it.…
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Abra (Product Review)
The main reason why I’m excited about Abra – a US-based peer-to-peer payments startup – is that people become tellers or ‘human ATMs’ who expense cash at hand to the recipient. The Philippines is a key target market for Abra, and it facilitates seamless payments between residents of the US and the Philippines. Recent stats show…
As I learn ... 