As she watches her workers haul in this year’s harvest, the 35-year-old is in a triumphant mood, ascribing her victory over the seasonal scourge to advice received via the app about effective pesticide use.

This photo taken on December 27, 2017 shows farmers working in a rice field on the outskirts of Yangon. New smartphone apps are providing farmers with up-to-date information on everything from weather, climate change, crop prices to advice on pesticides and fertilisers. / AFP PHOTO 

“We used to just farm the way our parents showed us,” she told AFP, in her village of Aye Ywar west of Yangon.

“But after getting the app, I now see how we should be doing it… it’s better to use proper techniques rather than just working blindly.”

San San Hla is among a growing cohort of farmers who are turning to tech to address the knowledge gap in a country where two thirds of the workforce are employed in agriculture.

The sector accounts for some 28 percent of the country’s GDP, but yields are low with farmers cut-off from modern technology under decades of isolationist junta rule.

For people like San San Hla apps could be the answer.

They are providing farmers with up-to-date information on everything from weather, climate change, crop prices to advice on pesticides and fertilisers.

Chat forums are connecting farmers, allowing them to swap tips while experts are on hand to answer queries.

The “Green Way” app is the brainchild of two former agricultural students, who in 2011 set up a website for farmers, often working through the night to keep it updated.

This photo taken on December 27, 2017 shows farmer San San Hla using a mobile app as she works in a rice field on the outskirts of Yangon. A free app on San San Hla’s smartphone is her new weapon in the war against the dreaded stem borer moth that blighted her rice paddy in southern Myanmar for the last two years. New smartphone apps are providing farmers with up-to-date information on everything from weather, climate change, crop prices to advice on pesticides and fertilisers. / AFP PHOTO

But at the time few farmers had internet access, recalls Yin Yin Phyu, 28, explaining the “idea just didn’t take off.”

Then smartphones arrived and everything changed.

As Myanmar opened its doors, telecoms companies rushed in to grab market share, thrusting Myanmar beyond the era of desktop computers and old-style mobile phones.

The cost of sim cards, once the tightly-controlled reserve of the well-connected, or special branch spies, plummeted from an unattainable $3,000 in 2005 to $1.50 in 2013.

Competitors practically gave away smartphone handsets as they fell over themselves to build up brand loyalty.

Mobile penetration stood at just seven percent in 2012. By the end of 2017, smartphone penetration had rocketed to 80 percent.

A nascent tech hub followed and outside of agriculture, apps were created for everything from healthcare to Myanmar’s parliament.

Farmers, many among the country’s poorest, today find themselves with a mobile computer in their hands — a game-changer for the entrepreneurs behind ‘Green Way,’ who launched their app in 2016 and now employ 18 full-time staff.

“‘Green way’ is my dream to link farmers and experts,” Yin Yin Phyu told AFP. “The farmers can get help whenever they need.”

Some 70,000 farmers have already downloaded the app although she hears far more are accessing it through phone-to-phone sharing.

– Field work –

Greater productivity at Myanmar’s farms could reshape both its economy and society, says 71-year-old agricultural expert Myo Myint.

“Many workers migrate to other countries because they can’t make enough money to live from agriculture in Myanmar,” he says.

“Farmers need technology and investment.”

A 2017 World Bank study found farmers in some areas of the country still earn as little as $2 per day.

Productivity is also relatively low with only 23kg of rice paddy generated in one day of work in Myanmar compared to 62kg in Cambodia, 429kg in Vietnam, and 547kg in Thailand.

The founder of the “Golden Paddy” app says the new tech is not best suited to struggling farmers at the bottom of the ladder.

They do not have the time or resources to implement advice on changing seeds or fertiliser.

Instead, the apps are aimed at smallholder farmers to allow them to “become a little more commercial,” Dutchman Erwin Sikma explains.

Similar projects in other developing countries – in India and parts of Africa – are still reliant on old-style phones and information by SMS.

Myanmar now has the chance to leapfrog that era to become an agricultural trailblazer.

But that also means the country is in uncharted territory.

“We have a lot of first-mover disadvantages,” Erwin Sikma says.

“It’s a start-up in a completely new model in a completely new market or economy so we need all the help we can get.”

IT’s lunchTIME at the Siam Commercial Bank headquarters canteen and a lot of hungry people lined up in a long queue are peering down at their smartphone screens. At a first glance, they appear to be chatting or socialising via social networks, but in fact they are opening a mobile application as they prepare to pay for their food once they reach the front of the line. The scenario plays out daily at this canteen.

Thana Thienachariya senior executive vice president and chief marketing officer at Siam Commercial Bank Public Co Ltd (SCB), recalled the company’s first trial after launching its QR code, “Mae Manee”, at its canteen in October 2017. Only eight per cent of total transactions used the QR code option.

SCB decided to force a conversion by allowing only payment by QR code at the canteen. As the result, the total spending at the canteen immediately crashed 30 per cent.

The restaurants were, of course, not happy. A different approach was clearly required.

“So, we turned to using a ‘carrot and stick’ strategy to convince employees to use the QR code as their main type of payment at the canteen by offering promotions and creating brand value for the QR code under the ‘Mae Manee’ restaurant label,” recalled Thana.

“The total sales volume turned back to normal.”

And the company now uses the canteen as a laboratory to test QR code marketing ideas, Thana added.

Around 80 per cent of total transactions – average of around Bt150,000 to Bt160,000 per day – were paid through the QR code in January. At the SCB canteen, named “Ruen Mae Manee” (Mae Manee’s house), there are 22 restaurants providing food and beverages for about 3,000 people each working day, 70 per cent of whom are SCB employees.

Success at its canteen inspired SCB to deploy the entire Ruen Mae Manee (Mae Manee’s house) concept, including restaurant decoration and the QR code payment solution, at other food courts.

SCB takes a strategic approach to deploying their QR code payment system. They focus on four groups of venues: university cafeterias including Chiang Mai University, Khon Kaen University, and Kasetsart University; shopping centres including Platinum Fashion Mall and The Mall’s Gourmet Markets; markets including Chatuchak Weekend Market, NiNJa Bazarr night market in Chon Buri; and Shell oil stations. Planning is underway to expand to 20 restaurant chains including Bar B Q Plaza (now under negotiation), and hospitals.

“We focus on community malls nationwide, universities, and food street merchants that contribute both numbers of transactions and public awareness,” said Thana.

SCB is aiming for 1 million shops accepting QR code by the end of 2018, an ambitious increase from the current 300,000 shops. The planned leap requires SCB to expand its retail customers while also having financial data about them. The bank could then initiate and develop new innovative products to specifically target segmented customer groups. The bank could instantly approve customer loans thanks to the power of big data analytics.

“From the launch until now, around four months, transaction are around Bt1 billion and around 65 per cent of payers are SCB’s customers [using SCB Easy app],” said Thana. “We can make loans to these people because we can follow their transactions. That [instant access to customer details] helps us to offer new way of lending to small retail banking customers. The QR code payment system helps us to know our customers.”

Next up is to expand adoption of the SCB Easy app, increasing uptake from the current 6 million or so users to 10 million by the end of 2018. SCB’s total retail customer count is now around 14 million.

“We do not compete with banks but we are now competing with giant platforms including Facebook, Line, Joox and so on. We need to have at least 10 million customers we daily interact with on the digital platform.”

The company aims to be a medium-sized platform that adds new businesses to those already on-board. Smaller platforms with fewer than 10 million customers would be unable to survive in the future, said Thana.

In the future, banks will be accessible far beyond their bricks and mortar buildings, with as many services as possible pushed onto digital platforms and accessible by smartphones.

Merchants will benefit from QR code as it helps them reduce the cost and time needed for cash management and reduce the risk from carrying cash. They would also have increased opportunities for easier access to financial services, especially getting bank loans. Meanwhile, the bank will customise interest rates for different customers according to their financial information.

“Banks will have better credit scoring that allows them to provide loans to large numbers of people without collateral, but uses financial information, and their ability to incur debt, through big data analysis,” said Thana.

Nantharat Thuamthiasong, a beverage shop seller at the “Mae Manee” restaurant, said that QR code payment helps him to more easily and quickly provide beverage service to customers, especially in the lunchtime rush hour.

“We do not need to scan cash cards or return the change, but just scoop ice and bring water, – and that helps us to offer services to more customers at certain periods of time,” said Nantharat.

Jirat Sirirattanatakool, owner of Cha Wang, a famous Southern food shop located at Mae Manee restaurant, said that QR code is a very convenient way to receive payment. Cha Wang receives over Bt30,000 per day, mostly paid via QR code.

Another giant bank, Kasikornbank (KBank), is also focusing on cashless payments through expansion of its mobile app and QR code payment system.

Patchara Samalapa, senior executive vice president, of Kasikornbank, said that with their K Plus QR code and mobile app, the bank is aiming to build big data analysis to help them understand customers’ needs and lifestyles. Kbank is planning to bring innovation and technologies to offer machine lending and machine commerce in the future.

To achieve this goal, it is repositioning its mobile app, K Plus, which now has 7.5 million users, to be a “Lifestyle Platform” offering the full gamut of lifestyle solutions for all customers, while satisfying retail clients’ requirements and creating new opportunities for small businesses.

K Plus now has 3 billion transactions a year, Bt6.3 trillion in transaction value and 7.5 million users, 80 per cent of them regular users. KBank aims to increase the number of K Plus users to 10.8 million within 2018.

It now has about 800,000 merchants using QR code via their K Plus Shop, with 1.4 million transaction items and totalling Bt1.1 billion. It aims to increase to one million merchants by the end of 2018.

The bank’s strategy is to focus on selective marketing to reach corporate customers such as cafeterias in courts and Siam Cement Group (or SCG) cafeterias. It has also worked with PTT to offer QR code payment services for all retail transactions at PTT gas stations, including at Cafe Amazon, Texas Chicken, Daddy Dough, Huasenghong Dimsum, Fit Auto, and Jiffy.

Additionally, KBank will in March introduce an e-marketplace through a mobile app called Shopping on K Plus. It will be the first e-marketplace in Thailand where customers could select a diverse range of goods on a mobile banking app (K Plus), including agricultural produce from the Pruanfun project and farmer groups across the country, products from small retailers and SMEs, and other merchandise from KBank’s business partners.

KBank is planning to feature more than 30 million products via K Plus, with a total Bt600 million turnover made via this e-marketplace within one year of its introduction. Moreover, KBank is planning to use big data to analyse business issues and streamline the back-office processes in order to upgrade its service potential.

Patchara said that important tasks include data analyses, efficiency enhancement of risk management, and improvement of personal and business credit extension, in order to satisfy the desires of each customer segment.

It has also launched the K-Personal Loan service via K Plus – a personal loan service via a mobile banking app.

KBank uses a system that calculates interest rates by taking into consideration the risk factors of each individual customer to customise and offer loan products via the K Plus application. It has now started testing the system with a group of pre-qualified customers with appropriate creditworthiness. The customers can enter the amounts that they want to borrow, and the system will show their credit limits. After a customer click in agreement, the loan funds would be wired to their accounts immediately.

KBank has also recently developed a Social Payment function to enable sellers to receive payments instantly from their customers via social media platforms such as Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, Line and WhatsApp. The merchants simply send their QR code bills, so that customers can pay for goods and services via K Plus or other mobile banking application of any commercial bank.

Brain Dynamics and MEiD won Bt2 million after their demonstration-day pitches won over the judges from the event, which was hosted by the Thailand Centre of Excellence for Life Sciences (TCELS) in cooperation with Expara, a Singaporean venture capitalist.

Brain Dynamics is an innovative medical device company that has developed a brain monitoring system to enhance post-stroke rehabilitation efficiency. MEiD is a cloud-based healthcare information platform.

TCELS’ deputy director, Chairat Sangchan, said that Brain Dynamics and MEiD were two among eight teams that attended the three-month accelerate programme, which provided mentorship and incubation on the life sciences and biotechnology as well as business and marketing.

The winners distinguished themselves on product and scalability, as well as in intellectual property (IP) and having deep technology, which increased the strength of their innovation and the chances of growth success in the global market.

The role of TCELS is to match researchers and investors as well as to facilitate the journey to commercialise their research and development in the market.

“TCELS plays a key role in developing, supporting and encouraging entrepreneurs to initiate life-science start-up businesses pertaining to the government policy,” said Chairat.

Meanwhile, Douglas Keith Abrams, founder and director of Expara (Thailand) said that developing a life-science start-up in Thailand is a great start for those Thai companies developing products and services related to the global trends in life-science technologies. They are also playing an important part that helps in Thailand’s drive to become the medical hub of Asia, said Abrams.

The 2017 iteration was the second batch of the TCELS Life Sciences and MedTech Acceleration Programme. TCELS first started the program in 2016 under the name Mini Life Science Mentorship Program 2016, but without a co-host or pitching programme on the demo day.

“We got 13 potential life science and bitotechnology teams in our mentorship programme,” said Chairat. “Only three teams were winners – two of them have now commercialised their research.”

One winner’s hair-related business has expanded to the Vietnam, Indonesia, and Bangladesh markets, helping generate economic value of Bt50 million, said Chairat.

In 2018, Chairat said, TCELS will expand features of the programme by adding a “global connect programme” that will help winning teams to go global through TCELS’ connection network.

The Asean-Australia Cybersecurity Workshop entitled “Strengthening Legal Implementation in Tackling Cybersecurity Challenges in the Region” was held in Bangkok and sponsored by Thailand’s ministries of Foreign Affairs, and Digital Economy and Society, along with Australia.

It was part of Thailand’s continued efforts to strengthen cooperation between Asean member states and dialogue partners as they seek to tackle cyberthreats through enhancing coordination between cybersecurity-related agencies.

Workshop participant nations and speakers focused on strengthening the implementation of existing legislation, legal frameworks, and offences related to cybercrime, and other transnational crime in Asean member states.

The workshop aimed to deepen understanding of each participating country’s legal mechanisms related to cybercrime and facilitate collaboration on criminal justice procedures on the issue.

Workshop participants took part in a tabletop exercise simulating a situation involving an imminent threat to the security and stability of countries in the region.

The exercise highlighted the need to identify appropriate points of contact at the policy and technical levels to address serious ICT incidents in a timely manner.

At the core of the success of K-pop or K-dramas are record labels or management agencies, allowing their artists‘ works to be distributed to global audiences and helping them earn their star status through vigorous marketing.

The commanding presence of such intermediaries in raising world-famous artists here may have been successful thus far, but it has also come with adverse effects and inefficiencies, such as frequent claims of artists being exploited or excessive financial burdens of agencies to train musician-aspirants.

A blockchain-powered decentralized platform can offer an alternative to the current system for the sake of both parties, by helping empower an individual artist and make local agencies more cost-effective, Zach Lebeau, chief executive and co-founder of SingularDTV, said in an interview with The Korea Herald during his recent brief stay in Seoul.

“(Blockchain) would raise the standard overnight in the K-pop industry here,” the 42-year-old Lebeau said. “It takes a visionary in the K-pop industry to do it, but the danger is if they don’t do it, they could lose the industry.”

The key to empowering artists is to bring the revenue flow of the intellectual properties under the control of the individual artists, instead of the intermediaries. Artists will be able to have their IPs represented and protected by issuing encrypted tokens.

One example is a token called GRMTK, issued by a musician using the stage name Gramatik, since November 2017. The copyright of his works is guaranteed on GRMTK, and those buying the tokens can have a fair share to the rights of music he created. Gramatik made the token public through a platform called Tokit that is within SingularDTV’s ecosystem.

Gramatik‘s works will be on Ethervision, a platform where users can access the artists’ content. It is set for launch in the second half this year,

“The number one thing we are building is a rights management system that gets rid of the need of gatekeepers and intermediaries.” said Lebeau, the head of Zurich-based operator of decentralized entertainment platform created on ethereum. Ethereum is a public blockchain designed to create a computer protocol to facilitate, verify and enforce the performance of a contract, called smart contract.

Such tokens cannot be purchased using fiat money, like the US dollar or the Korean won. Users have to pay using either SNGLS, a token by SingularDTV that was initially offered starting 2016, or ether, issued on ethereum blockchain.

Encrypted virtual tokens by the musicians or producers will trade on SingularX, a cryptocurrency exchange within SingularDTV ecosystem, which is undergoing an open beta test period.

Unlike coins, tokens can verify the copyright of the artist, as it can contain multiple layers of information other than financial ones, Lebeau said.

Lebeau expected that Korea could be one of the next destinations for his business in Asia, following China, Japan and Hong Kong, adding some Korean artists have been in talks with listing their works on SingularDTV blockchain.

But SingularDTV’s business entrance into Korea does not mean a challenge against the powerhouses leading the K-pop and K-drama industry, he said, as the decentralized platform will not only give artists a chance to be independent, but also will help cut costs of the talent management agencies in the long run.

“A lot of artists don’t want to deal with this responsibility of business in blockchain,” Lebeau said. “This is where the record companies or management companies, intermediaries can come on to the blockchain to help, because the distribution cost and the way of doing it is so expensive, while blockchain makes it cheaper.”

Formerly a globetrotting scriptwriter, musician and filmmaker, Lebeau in 2013 first met Kim Jackson, formerly involved in a film production industry, and began to lay out a concept of a decentralized entertainment industry.

At around 12:30 p.m. Monday, SingularDTV‘s token SNGLS was the 148th-largest cryptocurrency — including coins and tokens — in market cap worth $82.9 million out of over 1,200 of its kind, according to a global coin price tracker CoinMarketCap.

Of all, 60 percent of SNGLS are open to public, Lebeau said. The other 40 percent of the tokens belong to four co-founders — Arie Levy-Cohen, Joseph Lubin, Jackson and Lebeau — and the encrypted assets will have been frozen for two years in the ethereum-powered “vault contract” until October 2018.

“We wanted to show people that we weren’t doing this to get rich quick and it wasn’t a pump and dump.”

Lebeau stressed it‘s up to Korea on whether to embrace the blockchain platform to cope with what remains in the dark now.

“We are not going to come and plant our flag,” he said. “It’s a choice. We offer choice.”

The briefing was delivered by Siti Nurjauinah binti Haji Kula, Nor’adliatul Hidayah binti Haji Mohd Zaidi and Pengiran Hajah Nor’ Azmeena binti Pengiran Haji Mohiddin of the Criminal Justice Division of the Attorney General’s Chambers.

Nur’adliatul in her briefing highlighted on several well-known social media used for cybercrime including WeChat, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, YouTube, Tumblr, WhatsApp and Telegram.

She explained that those social media platforms can provide the opportunity and easy path for cyber-bullying including online fraud and extortion.

She stressed that individuals who share their personal information on social networks should be aware of the danger of sharing doing so as others or strangers can easily take advantage of what they are sharing.

The briefing aimed to provide awareness and knowledge on matters related with cybercrimes increasingly widespread among teenagers and help the teenagers to be more cautions on sharing information while communicating with others through social media.

Last November, a high-level Chinese delegation had proposed to train at least 20 government engineers from the two departments.  According to Prakash Bhakta Upadhyaya, the training will facilitate concerned bodies in developing required expertise for expansion of railway in the country.

“Such trainings, especially in railway field, are necessary if we are thinking of developing our railway. This is how we are going to strengthen our capacity,” said Upadhayaya.

The department which is responsible for development of railway networks has no railway engineers. The department has 40 officials, including eight engineers– four civil, three mechanical and one electrical.

The government had also sent engineers from the DoR and the DoRW to China for training in railway technology last year. Although the railway department has said that it will soon send its technicians for training, the date of departure has not been fixed yet.

The DoRW officials blame the previous government for not taking the achievements of the visiting Chinese delegation last year seriously. The high-level Chinese delegation, led by Zheng Jian, the deputy director (Vice-Minister) of National Railway Administration of the People’s Republic of China, had come to Nepal to study the possibility of railway networks in the country.

Submitting their preliminary feasibility report, prepared after conducting field trips to Kerung, Pokhara and Lumbini, the team had concluded that two rail routes – Kathmandu-Kerung and Kathmandu-Pokhara-Lumbini–could be developed in the country.

The Chinese side had also pledged technical support, including training to Nepali engineers then. However, there could be no progress on the deal, largely due to the indifference on the part of Nepal government, said Upadhyaya.

“As per the understanding, both sides were to meet in China in December last

year, but that did not happen. The previous government did not do anything serious regarding the project,” he said.The DoRW is counting on the new government to realise the country’s railway dream.

A report by the White House Council of Economic Advisers sought to quantify what it called “malicious cyber activity directed at private and public entities” including denial of service attacks, data breaches and theft of intellectual property, and sensitive financial and strategic information.

It warned of malicious activity by “nation-states” and specifically cited Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea.

The report noted particular concern over attacks on so-called critical infrastructure, such as highways, power grids, communications systems, dams, and food production facilities which could lead to important spillover impacts beyond the target victims.

“If a firm owns a critical infrastructure asset, an attack against this firm could cause major disruption throughout the economy,” the report said.

It added that concerns were high around cyberattacks against the financial and energy sectors.

“These sectors are internally interconnected and interdependent with other sectors as well as robustly connected to the internet, and are thus at a highest risk for a devastating cyberattack that would ripple through the entire economy,” it said.

The report offered little in the way of new recommendations on improving cybersecurity, but noted that the situation is hurt by “insufficient data” as well as “underinvestment” in defensive systems by the private sector.

The document was issued a day after US officials blamed Russia for last year’s devastating “NotPetya” ransomware attack, calling it a Kremlin effort to destabilize Ukraine which then spun out of control, hitting companies in the US, Europe and elsewhere.

It said Russia, China, North Korea and other nation-states “often engage in sophisticated, targeted attacks,” with a specific emphasis on industrial espionage.

“If they have funding needs, they may conduct ransom attacks and electronic thefts of funds,” the report said.

But threats were also seen from “hacktivists,” or politically motivated groups, as well as criminal organizations, corporate competitors, company insiders and “opportunists.”

In an oft-repeated recommendation, the White House report said more data sharing could help thwart some attacks.

“The field of cybersecurity is plagued by insufficient data, largely because firms face a strong disincentive to report negative news,” the report said.

“Cyber protection could be greatly improved if data on past data breaches and cyberattacks were more readily shared across firms.”

These advances better enable brands to reach consumers across the full range of devices and channels, Adobe said in a press statement.

Adobe Sensei, the company’s AI and machine learning framework, further automates the delivery of personalized content, empowering marketers to work smarter and faster. New ways to pull creative content instantaneously from Adobe Creative Cloud into Marketing Cloud let brands integrate content and data more closely and deliver a seamlessly integrated experience, the statement added.

“Content will always play an integral role in building brand loyalty, with personalization, authenticity and design reigning supreme,” said Aseem Chandra, senior vice president, Digital Experience Strategic Marketing at Adobe. “The new content capabilities we are announcing today empower brands to deliver digital experiences that delight consumers and uniquely integrate content and data.”

Accoding to the statement, Experience Manager’s new intelligent content capabilities will be available next month and empower marketers to:

– Intelligently discover images: Smart Tags helps marketers discover relevant images in an instant. The capability leverages an algorithm to automatically add metadata keywords that can be easily trained to recognize a company’s image attributes and add relevant tag values. As a brand’s library and taxonomy expand, Adobe Sensei continues to learn and recognize business-specific image features more quickly.

– Automatically personalize content: Marketers can deliver content that intelligently adapts to individuals’ behavior and channels with new personalization capabilities. With Adobe Sensei, Smart Layout automatically generates the most effective layouts and assets for individuals. A restaurant can automatically serve up different images, menus and offers to someone who’s vegetarian or gluten intolerant, for instance. New fluid experiences combine Experience Manager’s ability to deliver content across marketing channels with Adobe Target for personalization and automatically adapts messages to specific situations. For example, a retailer can email customers to promote a store opening with personalized invitations to its launch party and targeted offers. That same content can be leveraged for Facebook and the retailer’s mobile app.

– Intelligently tailor images for different screens: With intelligent Dynamic Media capabilities, marketers can automate tasks in bulk and deliver experiences faster. Smart Imaging detects the type of device and available bandwidth, minimizing the file size of images by as much as 70 percent to ensure smooth and quick loading without loss of visual fidelity. Smart Crop uses Adobe Sensei to detect and crop to the focal point in any image, capturing the intended focus regardless of screen size. Within Smart Crop, marketers can automatically locate and generate high quality swatches from product imagery that show color or texture, for example.

– Adapt forms for a better experience: Filling out forms for enrollment can make or break a customer’s experience. With Automated Forms Conversion, organizations can automatically identify and quickly change input fields from a traditional PDF into a great mobile experience, reducing customer frustration and abandonment.

Adobe said new integrations between Marketing Cloud and Creative Cloud in 2018 will unify creative and marketer workflows:

– More easily access assets stored in Experience Manager from within Creative Cloud apps: Finding, modifying and reviewing enterprise assets requires creatives and marketers today to toggle back and forth between different solutions. To streamline collaboration, Adobe is enabling creatives to find the digital assets they need in Experience Manager Assets natively from Adobe Photoshop CC, Adobe Illustrator CC and Adobe InDesign CC through powerful search. Creatives can also enjoy cloud-based collaboration without leaving their creative apps as they work on work-in-progress to production-ready assets. Through this native flow of content, only Adobe lets brands seamlessly bring assets into the industry’s leading content management solution.

– Use 3D and source Adobe Stock content from Creative Cloud: To help marketers easily create and repurpose 3D models to bring new and engaging experiences to market faster, Adobe is integrating Experience Manager with Adobe Dimension CC. Marketers can seamlessly leverage 3D content designed in Creative Cloud and turn them into marketing assets. For example, a car manufacturer can upload a 3D model of a car in Experience Manager, make adjustments like changing the color and rendering the model into an image. Each rendered version can be saved as a marketing asset in minutes, bypassing costly photo shoots. Additionally, Experience Manager’s connection with Adobe Stock enables marketers to pull in Stock images and publish them across any channel.

Experience Manager, part of Adobe Experience Cloud, is leveraged by enterprise and mid-sized brands such as Hyatt, Mastercard, Nissan, Informatica, Philips, Manulife, Morningstar, Progrexion, UBS, Constellation Energy Group, Qantas Airlines and T-Mobile. Adobe’s leadership in content management is unrivaled (see Gartner and Forrester Research leadership rankings). Experience Manager integrates with Creative Cloud to seamlessly manage content and asset workflows at scale and Adobe Document Cloud to digitize document workflows. Integration with Adobe Analytics and Adobe Target provides deep insights into customer behavior and personalizes content.

He said Astra was highly impressed by Go-Jek’s effort to keep on innovating.

“I felt very proud when I read Fortune’s “Change the World” list and saw Go-Jek’s name there,” Prijono said, referring to the list of influential companies compiled by Fortune in 2017.

Go-Jek founder and CEO Nadiem Makarim said the investment from Astra was the largest the company had ever received.

“With this fund, our company will be able to create more innovations and make Indonesia a powerful country in Southeast Asia and the world,” he said.

Nadiem further explained that the partnership between Astra and Go-Jek will involve vehicle supply and financing.

Google announced through its blog on http://www.blog.google that it had invested in Go-Jek on Jan. 29.

Although the website did not specify the investment amount, two sources have told Reuters that Google was investing about $100 million in the company. (dpk/bbn)