Today’s topics include why business travels are worried about a Trump administration proposal to ban laptops and tablets from airline passenger cabins, Linkedin is bringing its job-matching feature to mobile devices; SAP’s new CoPilot Intelligent Assistant for SAP S4/HANA Cloud, and Google is partnering with Particle to enable Internet of Things devices to become location aware.
Airlines and business travelers are pushing back against the Department of Homeland Security’s proposed ban on laptops, tablets and e-readers in airline cabins.
The proposal would bar passengers from bringing devices aboard planes. Depending on the airline, passengers will either receive a secure container for their devices or be asked to check them with their luggage.
Opponents of the proposal say relegating these devices to checked luggage could cost businesses billions in lost productivity. The ban is still being discussed. However, it could go into effect at anytime. U.S. officials have begun meeting with European Union representatives in Brussels on May 17, and will continue their meetings in Washington next week.
Linkedin is bringing its Today’s Job Matches feature to mobile devices. Expanding the job-matching tool’s reach will help job seekers find work and recruiters fill open positions.
The feature takes into account several factors including skill sets, personal preferences, location and salary requirements to aggregate job matches.
Machine learning technologies help Linkedin parse user feedback about job matches and fine-tune suggestions over time. The company, now owned by Microsoft, indicated more than half its users explore the job market with mobile devices.
Dr. Hasso Platner, co-founder of SAP announced his company is endeavoring to “make all applications intelligent.” The May 17 reveal at the SAPPHIRE NOW conference in Orlando, Florida, after the release of SAP’s own take on intelligent apps.
The new CoPilot feature in an update to SAP S4/HANA Cloud, the company’s cloud-based enterprise resource planning platform, is now generally available.
CoPilot is a context-aware digital assistant that can improve collaboration by collecting and sharing business objects in the SAP system. Users can leverage a chat-based interface and the features guidance capabilities to discover insights, resolve issues and streamline workflows between business units, according to SAP.
Google’s new partnership with IoT platform vendor Particle will eliminate the need for organizations to integrate energy-consuming GPS modules into IoT devices, according to the company.
Google will team with Particle to develop a new approach for achieving the same functionality using the Google Maps Geolocation API instead. GPS modules can be expensive and can drain energy.
The new approach pioneered by Particle and Google will allow enterprises to make their IoT devices location aware by simply connecting them to Google’s geospatial database of cellular and WiFi networks. The feature may also be used to improve the performance of existing GPS modules.