According to around seven in 10 respondents, their media operations are only minimally efficient or not efficient at all.

Notably, 25 per cent of respondents highlighted the need to automate their entire operational value chain.

Bea Alonso, UK-based Ooyala’s business development director for Media Logistics in Asia Pacific and Japan, said: “To keep up with the consumer’s insatiable desire for video content today, broadcasters and media companies need to streamline their processes to balance consumer demand and production efficiencies. It is no longer productive to increase manual resources; we have to leverage technology and make it work for us.”

Additionally, 24 per cent of executives said that an improvement in workflow management was integral in upgrading current operations, while 23 per cent indicated that there was a need for some business functions to integrate with media operations.

Amongst other findings, human error and duplication of activity were cited by 25 per cent of respondents as the culprits for these media operation inefficiencies.

“Human error and duplication of activity is more than often preventable. If we can strike these out, additional resources can be channelled into other creative and value-adding tasks.” Alonso added. “Automation, as identified in our poll, can help media companies optimise operations.”

The poll responses in Thailand are consistent with the global results obtained from more than 600 respondents across similar events in 23 other markets worldwide.

Some 1.85 million items were sold, with a combined value of over Bt100 billion.

Striving to be the best market place for Thais, Kaidee is set to better facilitate the property industry with the best user experience on the platform, and is offering FarmKaidee to enable Thai farmers to connect with buyers and other businesses in the first half of the year.

Tiwa York, chief executive officer/head coach of Kaidee, said: “There are more than 35 million Thai people visiting Kaidee for over 361 million times. On average, Thai people visit Kaidee 30 million times each month. We have had 12 million new listings, of which 1.85 million ads were sold with a value of over Bt100 billion. This means 5,065 items were sold every day at Kaidee.”

“We have also seen growth in application usage. Over 50 per cent of visits were through the Kaidee application. In 2017, Thais downloaded the Kaidee app more than 3.3 million times. In total, we have had approximately 12 million downloads for usage,” the CEO said.

“This year, we will grow progressively and healthily. We will improve our platform to continue to facilitate Thai people in online buying and selling. Everyone and anyone can trade on Kaidee,” Tiwa added.

Information technology powerhouse South Korea is set to show off its latest innovations as it welcomes visitors to what could well be the most high-tech Winter Olympics ever.

From self-driving shuttle buses and 5G broadcasts to artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled robots and virtual reality (VR) headsets offering a taste of winter sports, the host city of Pyeongchang has it all.

“We want to use the Olympics to showcase South Korea’s strengths in IT,” said Mr Kim Yong Chul, spokesman of Gangwon province, where Pyeongchang is located.

The installation of the next generation of 5G wireless network around the Olympic venues, for one, will allow broadcasting to be done at speeds that are 40 to 50 times faster than the current LTE network and, at the same time, offer more vivid and realistic images.

The 5G network can also deliver massive data required for VR and hologram services.

Bobsleighs will be fitted with “sinkview” cameras that allow viewers to follow athletes travelling at 150km per hour in real time, while fans of cross-country skiing can track their favourite athletes through GPS-enabled sensors.

Figure skating fans, meanwhile, will be able to “freeze” a video and get a 360-degree view of their favourite skater’s signature pose.

This is made possible with surround cameras installed around the ice skating rink to capture athletes’ every move.

Unprecedented virtual experiences also await visitors at the 5G Village and an ICT (Information and Communications Technology) Centre, both helmed by telco giant KT Corporation, a main sponsor of the Olympics.

At the ICT Centre, for instance, one can experience how it feels like to ride a bobsleigh while seated in a simulator and wearing VR headsets. One can also “snowboard” the same way.

AI robots provide information on the Olympics in various languages.

KT senior vice-president Park Jong Ho said there are more than 1,000 KT employees directly or indirectly involved in the Olympics, and they will help resolve issues that may crop up as soon as possible. “KT has played major roles in international sporting competitions and we are prepared to serve the Pyeongchang Olympics with our expertise and knowledge,” he said.

“We also hope to introduce new technologies that are different from the previous Olympics.”

The first phase of the project involves improving traffic system with the help of artificial intelligence and cloud computing. This is the first project implemented outside China.Malaysia Digital Economic Corporation (MDEC), city hall and cloud computing arm of Alibaba Group are collaborating on a project named as Malaysia City Brain to improve on the governance of the city.

The first phase of the project is to use Malaysia City Brain to manage traffic and improve improve the speed of vehicles in the city.Based on Alibaba Cloud’s large-scale computing where it gathers traffic data in real-time including analysis of traffic conditions, volumes, lane speeds, optimisation of traffic signals by calculating the time to reach intersections, providing better city services.

The Malaysia City Brain is also capable of co-ordinating multiple systems managed in the city such as emergencies, ambulance service system, traffic navigation system and traffic light control system. By conducting integrating and analysis on data of these systems, vehicles on emergencies are given the fastest route and traffic volume along the route would be managed at the same time for the vehicles to reach destinations with fastest speed.

It is statement in the statement that the Malaysia City Brain is the first project used outside China.The statement also said functions of Malaysia City Brain would continue to expand while corporations, new start-ups, entrepreneurs, universities and research agencies would have opportunities to utilise the artificial intelligence technology of Malaysia City Bran for a series of innovations.

Alibaba Group senior VP and Alibaba Cloud president Simon Hu said cloud computing, artificial intelligence and smart data are part of basic tools for corporations and agencies to function effectively. Alibaba Cloud is extremely happy that Malaysia is the first country outside China to use city brain.“We hope through this collaboration, we can help to upgrade tool efficiencies needed by people in both private and government sectors, implement innovation and assist them to achieve success in digital economy. To Alibaba Cloud, this is the true meaning of generalising technology for the benefit of everyone.

The firm said the funding and a strategic partnership with oBike place SpherePay well to be among the top three payment platforms in Southeast Asia.

It currently serves five million users and has 10,000 merchants in the region.

SpherePay will integrate oBike’s operating system into its app so it can support all services available on oBike’s app, including its geofencing feature and crowdsourcing delivery service, oBike Flash.

“Since our inception last year, we have been making good progress to ensure that SpherePay will be one of the most highly utilised mobile payment apps in the region,” said chief executive Joseph Chen.

“The recent fundraising and partnership with oBike are testament to the commitment and rapid development of SpherePay. This partnership with oBike saw an immediate acquisition of over five million users in Southeast Asia and we are putting together new features that will bring even greater benefits to all our users.”

With the integration to be completed by March, users of oBike and SpherePay will be able to access both services on their preferred app.

Upcoming enhancements of SpherePay will include merchant-deals listings supported by LBS (location-based services). This means users will be notified of a deal available nearby and will also enable merchants to list their products and promotions on the SpherePay app at their convenience. Payment capabilities such as booking of events, courses and classes, paying for bills such as telco and utility bills and booking tickets such as cinema screenings, flights and hotels will be enabled later.

SpherePay announced in December plans to expand into Indonesia and Thailand.

It has now confirmed plans to rapidly expand throughout Southeast Asia, covering those countries and Singapore as well as Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Cambodia, by the second quarter of the year.

Blockchain, a new technology to help explore the various forms of crypto-currencies, could open up new attractive environment for all businesses and investors, said Nguyen Duc Cuong, head of consultancy division at Vietstock – a local financial-business media.

Cuong made the statement at the first summit in Vietnam on blockchain technology and digital money, called Vietstock Blockchain Summit. The event was held in HCM City on Sunday by Vietstock and FundYourselfNow – a Singaporean organisation that helps startup businesses to raise funds for their initial coin offering (ICO).

Vietnamese investors have caught up with the world trend and turned blockchain and crytocurrencies into a “hot” investment trend. For example, bitcoin and other cryptocurrency-related key words were among the top search targets on Google in Vietnam last year.

This means that local businesses and investors have a great demand to learn and access the new technology and cryptocurrencies.

The digital ledger, in which transactions made in various types of cryptocurrency are recorded chronologically and publicly, can open up new trends in the different fields of finance, banking, retail and telecommunications, Cuong said.

He added that being considered as the foundation of the industrial revolution 4.0, which was spreading around the world, this was the time for blockchain technology and digital money to provide additional cryptocurrency products.

The prospects of blockchain technology and technology-based digital money had become brighter as the technology could help firms replace traditional legal documents, which were handwritten and compiled on computers, with encryption.

Therefore, blockchain technology could minimise the chance of identity theft and strengthen personal data security. Recently, government agencies in Singapore, Canada, Switzerland and Estonia had started developing national identification systems using blockchain technology.

According to Kennett Tan, chief technology officer of FundYourselfNow, blockchain can remove the need for a centralised server to verify ownership and deals. He said the technology could help financial and banking businesses process their transactions faster without asking for assistance from any intermediary units. This would save time and costs.

In addition, blockchain technology could help businesses retain intellectual property rights and registrations, Tan said.

Liu Yusho, CEO of Vinaex.com, a bitcoin wallet service that assists customers to buy, sell and secure bitcoin, said that the total capitalisation of the cryptocurrency market was only US$2 billion a few years ago with bitcoin accounting for 90 per cent of the market value.

The numbers had increased to $550-600 billion with nearly 1,500 types of crytocurrency. Bitcoin now only dominated 35 per cent of the market value, he said.

Liu said that there were risks for investors when they purchased digital money or assets and they should take careful look at potential risks.

Investors needed to know that as the crytpocurrency market was booming, there would be projects, websites and companies trying to defraud them, he said.

The event was carried out to help investors, businesses and the public understand the nature of blockchain technology, its applications, how cryptocurrencies are managed and the nature of the world’s quickly rising cryptocurrency market.

Despite being a relative latecomer in the world of supercomputing, China has become a powerhouse in the field, overtaking the United States in speed and in numbers.

The country now has the world’s fastest and second fastest supercomputers. It also claims 202 of the top 500 fastest machines in the world, outstripping the US with the highest number of supercomputers in the latest TOP500 survey announced last November.

The US, in second place, has 143 systems on the list. Japan was third with 35 supercomputers and Germany fourth, with 20.

“China’s supercomputers developed very rapidly, especially in the past 10 years,” said Dr Gan Lin, 29, the assistant director of China’s National Supercomputing Centre in Wuxi, eastern China.

It is home to Sunway TaihuLight, the world’s fastest supercomputer. Known in Chinese as “Shenwei, Taihu zhi guang” or “Divine power, the light of Taihu Lake”, the machine has the ability to perform at 100 petaflop, or 100 quadrillion operations in one second.

The supercomputer occupies four floors in the building, with its main processors on the first floor, and an electricity system and a water system in each of the two basement floors below it. On the fifth floor, there is a cooling tower. Researchers and visitors are required to don anti-static suits and put on dust covers for their shoes to enter the 1,000sq m computer room on the first floor.

To put the computer’s power in perspective, Dr Gan explained: “Assuming that everyone on earth is given one calculator each, something that the Sunway TaihuLight takes one minute to compute will take all 7.2 billion people 32 years to compute collectively.”

He told The Straits Times that China started its supercomputing programme in the early 1980s after the country opened its economy.

Under the 863 programme, a government-sponsored national initiative started in 1986 for China to develop its own cutting-edge technology, the Ministry of Science and Technology had stipulated a two-pronged approach to developing its supercomputers.

One was to import advanced computer chips from abroad to build supercomputers, which was the technology behind Tianhe-2, the world’s second fastest computer.

The second was to build a fully home-grown supercomputer using made-in-China computer chips. This approach became the focus after a ban by the US government on the export of advanced computer chips to China in 2015, over concerns of their use in nuclear tests. That helped spur the birth of Sunway TaihuLight, which cost 1.8 billion yuan (S$373 million, US$285 million) and took two years to develop.

“The development of supercomputers was completely in line with our country’s economic development,” said Dr Gan. “In the past 20 years, as China’s economy has taken off in a big way, technology has also advanced rapidly and, along with it, supercomputers.”

The immense resources the government has poured into this area cannot be ignored. In the past decade, it has ramped up investments in research and development at a rate much faster than in the US and the European Union, according to a recent study by Brugel, a Brussels-based economic think tank. Chinese government spending now accounts for about 20 per cent of the world’s total spending in R&D in science and technology, just behind the US and the EU.

Last year, the Chinese government announced detailed plans to become the world leader in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning by 2030, which will create an industry worth 1 trillion yuan.

The country is now also racing against the US, the EU and Japan to develop the world’s first exascale supercomputer, which will be 10 times faster than Sunway TaihuLight.

Supercomputers can be used to foretell the future, and reconstruct the past, said Dr Gan.

“In the skies, we could predict the weather. Below the surface of the earth, we could figure out its structures, which is useful for the exploration of petrol and natural gases.”

Today, supercomputers are used in China for forecasting weather. Their immense computing power can also make complex calculations for developing nuclear weapons, going to outer space, designing cars, ships and planes, predicting earthquakes and more.

But for all its supercomputing prowess in terms of hardware, China still lags behind the US and Japan in terms of software applications, with some experts putting the gap at around 10 years.

Dr Cao Jianwen, a researcher at State Key Laboratory of Computer Science at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told South China Morning Post that speed is not everything when it comes to supercomputers. “The machines are ultimately made to realise programs designed by humans. Owning the fastest supercomputers lays a good foundation for China to catch up, but it could take another decade to see how China can maximise their use. ”

Dr Gan, whose main job at the centre is to develop applications for the supercomputer, lists the relative weakness in China’s software development as one of two key challenges for the industry.

However, he said in the 1 1/2 years since Sunway TaihuLight’s launch in 2016, his team of around 100 researchers was able to develop more than 100 applications in 13 fields, including climate change, manufacturing and big data.

Two of the applications even clinched the Gordon Bell Prize in 2016 and 2017, a global honour in applying high-performance computing to science, engineering and data analytics problems.

The other key challenge is talent, said Dr Gan.

The state-run China Daily recently reported the country produces more than 600,000 postgraduates and PhDs each year, as well as millions of college graduates, but not enough are opting to enter the field of supercomputing.

“Internet companies are able to pay a lot of money, so a lot of talents are willing to go to the corporate world,” said Dr Gan.

More talent may be attracted through earlier exposure. For instance, the supercomputing centre takes in computer science students from top universities for internships to give them access to the powerful machine.

Earlier this month, Facebook announced it will ask its two billion users to rank their trust in news sources as part of an effort to combat the spread of misinformation.

The changes come as the online giant seeks to address charges that it has failed — along with Google and Twitter — to prevent the spread of false news, especially ahead of the 2016 US presidential election.

“Local news helps build community — both on and offline,” Facebook co-founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said in a post on the social network.

“It’s an important part of making sure the time we all spend on Facebook is valuable.”

Zuckerberg traveled around the US last year, visiting with Facebook users.

“One theme people kept telling me is how much we all have in common if we can get past some of the most divisive national issues,” Zuckerberg said in the post.

“Many people told me they thought that if we could turn down the temperature on the more divisive issues and instead focus on concrete local issues, then we’d all make more progress together.”

He also cited research suggesting that reading local news prompted people to be more engaged in their communities.

Facebook is showing US members more stories from news sources in their cities or towns, and plans to begin doing the same in more countries later this year.

Recent changes at Facebook include a new “trusted sources” ranking intended to “make sure the news you see is high quality” and to foster “a sense of common ground” rather than sow division, Zuckerberg said in a previous post.

Facebook decided to rely on member surveys to rank trust in news sources.

A freshly-introduced update highlights what friends and family share on the network, over advertisements, celebrity and media posts.

The company cast the changes as part of a refocus on “community” — prioritizing social interactions and relationships, even if it means people spend less time on the platform.

Known for annual personal goals ranging from killing his own food to learning Chinese, Zuckerberg’s stated mission for this year is to “fix” the social network.

He plans to target abuse and hate, as well as interference by nation states.

An interactive sign stands outside a telco shop in the upmarket Gangnam district, calling out to potential customers.

“Handsome oppa in grey… pretty onni in red… look over here!” it beckons two passers-by, using the affectionate Korean terms for brother and sister.

The artificial intelligence-enhanced system, powered by a supercomputer and connected to sensors, cameras, speakers and a robot inside the shop, will then recommend cellphones or offer coupons to its captivated audience.

Such machine-human promotional interactions, could well be the future of telco shops, Mr Lee Jin Seok, a manager at South Korean telco giant, KT Corporation, told The Straits Times.

“It appeals to millennials and digital natives, who prefer to make their own decisions without much interaction with sales people,” he said, using a term to refer to those born in the digital age. The interactive sign has stood outside KT Corporation’s flagship store since Aug 31 last year as part of a trial programme.

Innovations like this are fast taking centre stage as South Korea gears up for the fourth industrial revolution and spends big on developing supercomputers and related technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), big data and the Internet of Things (IoT).

Although known for its tech advancements and fast Internet speeds, South Korea is a relative latecomer in the fields of AI and supercomputers. It was only in April 2016 that the Ministry of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) pledged to invest 100 billion won (S$123 million, US$94 million) in projects including the building of the country’s own 30 petaflop supercomputer by 2025.

South Korea has only five supercomputers ranked on the latest TOP500 list of fastest computers in the world, used mainly in its weather agency and by Internet providers. But none are Korean-made and the fastest is only 2.39 petaflop, as compared with China’s top-ranked 93 petaflop system, which is 39 times faster.

The decision to play catch-up came after Google’s computer AlphaGo beat one of South Korea’s best Go players Lee Se Dol in a historic machine-versus-man win, in 2016, triggering calls for the country to boost its AI development.

A spokesman for the Ministry of ICT told The Straits Times it has been working with two consortiums since May last year to develop and integrate the hardware and software needed for the supercomputer project.

It involves about 300 experts from IT companies, research institutes and universities.

The digital push is backed by President Moon Jae In, who hopes that government support for the fourth industrial revolution, combined with private efforts, can create thousands of new jobs and generate economic benefits worth some 40 trillion won.

The Ministry of ICT said AI is key in leading the fourth industrial revolution and that AI-related investments increased 47 per cent to 163 billion won last year, up from 110 billion won in 2016.

Supercomputers can help push AI advances, said Mr Lee of KT Corporation, which in July opened an AI research centre equipped with the country’s fastest computer. The system boasts a 720,000 graphic processing unit core, allowing it to process massive amounts of data and enable deep learning.

The KT sign, for one, is able to have “very natural interactions” with prospective customers because it is backed by a supercomputer with very fast processing speeds, he said. “We will be able to do more in the future, such as developing a multilingual system.”

For many, it is simply too lucrative an opportunity to pass up. Some have reported doubling or tripling their profits in less than a year.

A college kid, obviously a newbie, even claimed profits 45 times the initial investment.

David Kurniawan, who works at a mobile intelligence company, is a case in point.

The 27-year-old said he had made US$1,060 in profit on his $2,733 investment in Ethereum, a cryptocurrency originating from Russia, in the space of only seven months.

Compare that to 5 percent you would earn on a time deposit in a year, or the average of 10 percent profit on stocks, then you get the picture.

Ethereal was quoted at $393 a coin when David started, and now it is $944.

“Buy low, and sell high,” he said, adding that it was not all that different from investing in gold, real currencies and stocks.

Good advice for anyone contemplating to play in the cryptocurrency market: Watch the market closely. No one can rule out a bubble.

The volatility of bitcoin, the most popular cryptocurrency, has shown that trading is not exactly for the faint of heart and the reason why Indonesia, among other countries that include China and South Korea, have moved to ban cryptocurrency.

Starting at $9.37 at its launch in 2009, it jumped to $60.89 in March 2013 and to $936 in January 2017.

It reached its peak at $19,203 on Dec. 17 but has since been dropping. On Friday, it was still worth $11,470.

Bitcoin is one of 48 cryptocurrencies now being traded globally. Besides Ethereum quoted at $1,159 on Friday, other popular coins include Litecoin ($182.08), Zcash ($463.8) and Dash ($ 801.65).

The Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance said there were around three million active cryptocurrency users worldwide in May 2017.

But PT Bitcoin Indonesia said in December that 900,000 Indonesian users have traded in its currency in the last two years. It also claimed to have a 70 percent share in the Indonesian cryptocurrency market.

Aladincoin, a cryptocurrency issued by the United States-based financial institute Aladin Capital, held a conference last week to announce its entry into the Indonesian market, with claims of having the support of the World Bank.

The government had initially warned people about huge potential losses in cryptocurrency trading, but in December the central bank moved to ban it outright.

Any payment using cryptocurrency would be considered illegal because it violated Law No. 7/2011 on currency that states that the rupiah was the only legal currency for transactions in Indonesia.

Administrative sanctions would be leveled at financial services that facilitate these transactions.

“There are no regulators or administrators supervising bitcoin,” Bank Indonesia Governor Agus Martowardojo recently said. “Its value is not based on any underlying economic fundamentals.”