VR Services Competing

Relatively inexpensive service for trying out ideas.      And for VR you need lots of try-outs.  Games Mostly? 

Meta: Facebook owner launches $7.99 a month virtual reality service

By Annabelle Liang,  Business reporter   in the BBC.

Facebook owner Meta has launched a virtual reality (VR) subscription service as it tries to make that part of its business profitable.

Meta says paying users will get access to two new games a month.

For the first three months of the year, the parent company of Instagram saw a $4bn (£3.1bn) loss at its VR unit.

Meta faces competition from firms including technology giant Apple, which unveiled its highly anticipated mixed-reality headset this month.

On Monday, the company said the Meta Quest+ service, which costs $7.99 a month or $59.99 for an annual subscription, was compatible with its Quest 2, Quest Pro and upcoming Quest 3 headsets. ... ' 

DHS Promises Help for States Struggling with Digital Attacks on Critical Services

 Notable are the recent increases in ransomware, and the broad issues with Microsoft servers, and how much we depend on digital systems.   This will have to be the solution until we develop others. 

The Cybersecurity 202: DHS Official Promises Help for States Struggling with Digital Attacks on Critical Services   By The Washington Post,  March 23, 2021

State and local governments have been begging the government for more resources since they are on the front lines of a growing number of cyberattacks that lock up the computer systems of government services even more critical in a pandemic – including hospitals, schools and benefit distribution systems.

A surge in efforts by hackers holding data hostage in exchange for a fees has become a top concern for the Department of Homeland Security's cybersecurity division, its acting director now says.

"Because right now, if there was a catastrophic cyber incident affecting states and they did lack the resources to address it, we would not be able to move as quickly and expeditiously as we need to respond and recover," acting Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency director Brandon Wales said at an event hosted by the Auburn University Center for Cyber and Homeland Security yesterday.

From The Washington Post

View Full Article

Honeywell Provides Quantum as a Service

More available services for quantum available.

Honeywell Introduces Quantum Computing as a Service with Subscription Offering  By ZDNet

The tech world may have to make room for a new acronym, perhaps qubits-as-a-service, QaaS, or some such, as Honeywell has introduced what appears to be the first subscription-based plan for quantum computing usage.

With the introduction Thursday of the company's Model H1 quantum computer, with 10 qubits and a logical quantum volume of 128, the company detailed a plan to charge in a subscription fashion based on monthly access to the machines. 

Quantum computers offer great promise for cryptography and optimization problems. ZDNet explores what quantum computers will and won't be able to do, and the challenges we still face

The subscriber license gives a company access over the course of a month to blocks of "dedicated time," in two different flavors, standard and premium, with eight hours per month of dedicated time or sixteen hours, respectively.     ..."

Microsoft Spins off Chinese Chatbot

Somewhat surprising, the demos I had seen looked interesting.

Microsoft Spins Off Chinese Chatbot Xiaoice  by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, July 14, 2020
Microsoft is spinning off its AI-based chatbot technology, Xiaoice, into a stand-alone company after nurturing it for about six years.

It is aimed at Chinese consumers and has the personality of a teenage girl. Microsoft will retain a stake in the new company, Xiaoice or Xiaobing, and will license technologies from Microsoft for future efforts in research and development.

The chatbot became available to consumers in China in 2014, but now the service is available across many social networks, with about 660 million users, and offers more than 280 skills.

"Morning News," a Chinese live program in 2015, introduced Xiaoice as a trainee anchor where it took charge of the daily weather report.  ... " 

Breaking Down Service Prototyping

Upcoming Talk:

ISSIP Service Design Speaker Series: Breaking Down Service Prototyping  on Wednesday, April 15, 2020, 11.00 - 11.45 AM US EDT

It is believed that a prototype of a service will never match an actual, real-world scenario. The breakdown of service prototyping into prototypes, experiments, tests and pilots as phases can be a solution to provide more clarity and commitment during a service design project.

Speaker:

Maurício Manhães is the Service Design Graduate Program Coordinator and a Professor of Service Design at the Savannah College of Art and Design (Georgia, U.S.) and an Associate Design Researcher at Livework. He is also the Group Lead of the Service Design Network Academic Task Force. In 2015, he obtained a Doctoral degree in Knowledge Management with a focus on service innovation at the Federal University of Santa Catarina (Brazil) in partnership with the Koeln International School of Design (Germany), with the thesis "Innovativeness and Prejudice: Designing a Landscape of Diversity for Knowledge Creation." He often works on consultancy projects, conducts workshops, courses and lectures on design, design research, and service innovation in several countries.

ISSIP Service Design Speaker Series Chair - Payal Vaidya

Zoom information provided via email after registration.

Register

Note these are usually recorded and archived here:

Webinar from iRobot, IFTTT on the Smart Home

Recently signed up for this and missed it, of interest: 

Checking in to see if you watched the replay of our smart home webinar featuring iRobot.

It features iRobot's CTO, Chris Jones, talking in-depth about the future of the smart home, and how they were able to solve the dual challenges of customer experience and integrations by working with IFTTT.

Smart Home hardware companies are placing increased strategic importance on software services to address future opportunities.
Join IFTTT Founder and CEO, Linden Tibbets and iRobot Chief Technology Officer, Chris Jones, as they discuss the integration choices Smart Home companies face and the future of the Smart Home.

In this webinar we discuss:

The ongoing transition of hardware companies to software services companies
Connecting Smart Home products to other products in the Smart Home and beyond
Direct integrations, Developer platforms and iPaaS
IFTTT Data Insights – Integration trends in the Smart Home
Why customer experience will ultimately decide .... 

Best, Skyler
Skyler Saulovich, Sales at IFTTT ... "

Designing Services for Utility Ecosystems

Upcoming Talk:

ISSIP Service Design Speaker Series: Designing Services for the Future of Utility Service Ecosystem   on Wednesday, March 4th 2020,     11:00 AM - 11.45 AM US Eastern Standard Time

The utility service ecosystem dynamic changes at a rapid pace in recent years and monopolizing the utility industry is not the only business strategy in today’s dynamic market. The utility regulation of liberalized market allows the entrance of new players and together with technological change, it alters the innovation process in the utility industry. 

Triggered by the above challenges, this study implements a Service Design approach to understand the current context of utility service ecosystem and to design the future services for the ecosystems. The presenters will share their experience and results of their study with the biggest utility player in Portugal.

Speakers:
Nabila Asad, Dr. Nina Costa, Dr. Jorge Teixeira, Dr. Lia Patrício

About the speakers:
Nabila Asad is a researcher at INESC TEC and a PhD student at the University of Porto, Portugal. She is exploring new methods for designing service platforms for the service ecosystems while analyzing the dynamics of the utility and air transportation service ecosystem respectively.

Dr. Nina Costa is a researcher currently based in Aveiro University, an integrated member at the Research Institute of Design, Media and Culture (ID+). Currently working on the DesignOBS project, “For a Design Observatory in Portugal”.

Dr. Jorge Teixeira is a researcher and assistant professor of the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management at the University of Porto. His research interests are in the field of technology-enabled services, with a special focus on customer experience, service design and interaction design.

Dr. Lia Patrício is Associate Professor at the School of Engineering of the University of Porto, where she is director of the Master in Service Engineering and Management. She is the Principal Investigator of the Service Design for Innovation Marie Curie Network. Her research focuses on service design and customer experience, particularly the design of technology-enabled services and complex service systems and value networks.

Service Design Series Chaired by - Payal Vaidya and Daniela Sangiorgi

Zoom information provided on registration.

Register Here

Gaming as a Service for Hospitality, Decisions? Defense?

Intriguing possibility.  Branded gaming, say in a assistant device in a hotel.  Or including gaming in an analytics sense to simulate multiple assistive options?

SMART Embedded Computing Releases PCIe Card to Enable Cloud Gaming-as-a-Service in 5G and FTTH Networks

SMART Embedded Computing, a subsidiary of SMART Global Holdings, Inc., (NASDAQ: SGH) and a leading manufacturer of embedded computing solutions offering high-reliability platforms for Industrial, Defense and Communication, and low-profile embedded
SMART EC’s PCIE-7217 features Intel’s latest processor for cloud gaming

Integrated with SMART EC’s MaxCore® MC4100 high-performance server and running cloud gaming software such as that offered by Gamestream®, the new PCIE-7217 add-in card will enable telecom/cable operators and hospitality providers the ability to create branded gaming-as-a-service offerings for their customers.

SMART Embedded Computing

NEWARK, Calif., Sept. 13, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- SMART Embedded Computing, a subsidiary of SMART Global Holdings, Inc., (NASDAQ: SGH) and a leading manufacturer of embedded computing solutions offering high-reliability platforms for Industrial, Defense and Communication, and low-profile embedded computing modules for connected devices, today announced the availability of a powerful new PCI Express card, the PCIE-7217. SMART EC’s PCIE-7217 features Intel’s latest processor for cloud gaming, the Intel® Core™ i7 processor, along with Radeon™ RX Vega M graphics, which will bring the transition to cloud gaming into the mainstream.

Integrated with SMART EC’s MaxCore® MC4100 high-performance server and running cloud gaming software such as that offered by Gamestream®, the new PCIE-7217 add-in card will enable telecom/cable operators and hospitality providers to create branded gaming-as-a-service offerings for their customers. Enabled by 5G and fiber-to-the-home networks currently in deployment, consumers would have access to premium games through an internal OTT-like service.  .... " 

Helium: a Wireless Network for a Coin

Here is a new thing, the users pay for service with cryptocurrency.  Cryptocurrency as token of service payment?

Helium’s trial balloon: A new peer-to-peer wireless network goes live in Austin
Napster creator Shawn Fanning’s new company Helium flips the switch on an innovative wireless network for the Internet of Things.

By Guillermo Jimenez in decrypt.co

There’s a new way for Internet-of-Things devices to connect to the digital world—a low-power, wide-area network that no single entity controls, called Helium.

Nicknamed “the people’s network,” Helium is owned and operated by the network’s users, who earn money in the form of a new cryptocurrency, in exchange for providing coverage to the network. .... " 

Who Will Win the SmartHome Wars?

Have now been using and testing both the Amazon and Google home ecosystems in the Smart Home since their inception.  As a user, designer  and developer.   And before that as well, how assistants can provide smart services in stores and supporting employees.    And also how services support brand equities.   How new AI advances,  especially in conversation interaction are changing this.    Watching Chinese and Korean efforts.   All these topics have often been covered in this blog.   Had not heard the term 'Service Tether'  before,  but do see the idea.      Below article covers that recent topic, with supporting graphics:

Why Amazon Will Win the Smart Home Wars  by Gideon Rosenblatt  in  The Vital Edge.

You may not realize it yet, but the tech giants are battling to gain entry into your home by making it smarter. So far, Amazon is in the lead but Google is fighting back. Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, and Intel all have bets in the “smart home” market as well, and a number of Chinese firms could emerge as important players in the decade ahead.

The reason for all this investment in the smart home market isn’t just because these companies want to sell you a bunch of cool devices. It’s because they know that over the next decade your home will be turned into a suite of very lucrative services.

A service tether is an intelligent user interface that connects a product to the company behind it. Service tethers turn products into services. The battle for the smart home is thus actually a battle to own the future of service tethers into your home.

You may not realize it yet, but the tech giants are battling to gain entry into your home by making it smarter. So far, Amazon is in the lead but Google is fighting back. Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, and Intel all have bets in the “smart home” market as well, and a number of Chinese firms could emerge as important players in the decade ahead.

The reason for all this investment in the smart home market isn’t just because these companies want to sell you a bunch of cool devices. It’s because they know that over the next decade your home will be turned into a suite of very lucrative services.

A service tether is an intelligent user interface that connects a product to the company behind it. Service tethers turn products into services. The battle for the smart home is thus actually a battle to own the future of service tethers into your home. .... " 

ISSIP December 2018 Newsletter

The December 2018 ISSIP Newsletter:  Institute of Service Systems Innovation Professionals

I often promote their work here, which includes work that often deals with AI, expertise, human Assistance, people and machine interaction.  Lots of links to presentations we sponsor, papers, slides.  Join us!

Selling Consumables within Alexa Skills

This opens some interesting applications to skills.   Perhaps in the area of services that are tailored to needs?   Business applications?   What else can work this way?  Good description below.

Now You Can Sell Consumables to Enrich Your Voice Experience and Make Money with Alexa Skills

Starting today, developers can sell consumables in their Alexa skills in the US to further enrich the skill experience with in-skill purchasing. A consumable is an in-skill product that customers can purchase, use, and then purchase again. In addition to one-time purchases and subscriptions, consumables give developers more ways to deliver premium experiences to customers. With consumables, you can sell products that are relevant in the moment to customers as they experience your skill.

For example, consider a trivia skill that offers customers a pack of hints. If a customer gets stuck on a question, rather than get the question wrong, they can purchase and use hints to keep the round going. When they run out of hints, they have the option to purchase again. Consumables are a great way to keep your customers engaged during pivotal moments of your skill and drive revenue for your voice business.

How Developers Are Building Skills with Consumables
As part of a private beta, developers used consumables to elevate their voice-first experience. While consumables are most common in the game and trivia space, Alexa developers are using this feature creatively across various categories to drive engagement with their skills. See below for some examples:

Would You Rather for Family (Voice Games) – In this family-friendly game, you have to make a choice between two lighthearted and silly situations, such as “Would you rather have bad breath or smelly feet” or “Would you rather forget to pack your neck pillow or your headphones.” The free version of the skill contains general questions and the premium version offers themed questions, such as Superheroes, Travel, and Halloween. You can purchase a 7-day pass to access all of the available themed premium packs. After 7 days, your access returns to the free version.  .... "

ISSIP Monthly Newsletter

The most recent issue of the ISSIP newsletter.    Worth a look.   Have been a member for years.   More here:

The International Society of Service Innovation Professionals, ISSIP (pronounced iZip),  is a 501 (C) (3) professional association co-founded by IBM, Cisco, HP and several Universities with a mission to promote Service Innovation for our interconnected world.  Our purpose is to help institutions and individuals to grow and be successful in our global service economy.

Service innovations improve the quality-of-life of individuals and the wealth of institutions, from businesses to nations that are increasingly dominated by service revenues and economics. Advances in information technology and policy support the rapid scaling of new service innovations in health, education, government, finance, hospitality, retail, communications, transportation, energy, utilities; even in advanced agricultural and manufacturing systems viewed as socio-technical systems, in which community-oriented recycling behaviors improve the economics, sustainability, and resilience of these human-serving systems.

We define service as the application of knowledge for the benefit of others, and service science as the study of diverse, interconnected, complex “human-centered value-cocreation systems” in business and society. Service innovations impact individuals and institutions at all levels, from family to community to enterprise to district, city, county, state, nation, and continent. In fact, these human-serving systems or service systems are the diverse, interconnected, complex systems that we live in, we study, and we work to change to benefit ourselves and future generations of humanity. ... " 

ISSIP Board Meeting

From the ISSIP Board meeting today      See ISSIP.org

The International Society of Service Innovation Professionals, ISSIP (pronounced iZip),  is a 501 (C) (3) professional association co-founded by IBM, Cisco, HP and several Universities with a mission to promote Service Innovation for our interconnected world.  Our purpose is to help institutions and individuals to grow and be successful in our global service economy.

Service innovations improve the quality-of-life of individuals and the wealth of institutions, from businesses to nations that are increasingly dominated by service revenues and economics. Advances in information technology and policy support the rapid scaling of new service innovations in health, education, government, finance, hospitality, retail, communications, transportation, energy, utilities; even in advanced agricultural and manufacturing systems viewed as socio-technical systems, in which community-oriented recycling behaviors improve the economics, sustainability, and resilience of these human-serving systems. ... 
---------------

ISSIP Open Datasets

Welcome to the ISSIP Open Data sets page! Here you will find a compiled list of hundreds of useful sites that have data sets to use for AI and Machine Learning. ...

Will follow with more information about our group.  Join us.

ISSIP Speaker Series: Digital Workers and Role of Meta in Digital Services

Via Sorin Ciornei, Series Chair, Cisco Systems
___________________________________
The digital worker and technological implications: The critical role of "meta" in digital services innovation and employment

Speaker:  Stephen F Heffner,

When:  Wednesday, July 25, 4:30pm - 5:15pm (UTC+01:00) Amsterdam, Berlin, Bern, Rome, Stockholm, Vienna  10:30 AM ET

Background:    An Expert witness, with report, deposition, & court testimony experience, in legal cases involving Enterprise & IT Architecture, software development & engineering, forensic analysis of code / data / text, Intellectual Property issues involving software, and contractual fulfillment / performance failure issues involving software.

Talk Overview Description: 

As a software inventor on the leading edge of automating software engineering, He has observed that the overall trend in technology is toward "meta" -- information about information.  Meta represents a level of abstraction thatprovides great power when dealing with any kind of pattern in manufacturing, scientific, commercial, and especially IT processes.  It is at the heart of all automation, and is a prerequisite for success in the application of Artificial Intelligence.

The implications for employment are profound.  It means that lower-level, repetitive tasks will be automated.  (As the creator of an Expert System that automates software engineering, He is one of the change agents in that process.) Those who can't handle the necessary abstraction to raise their level on the "meta" spectrum will lose out.

The implications for education are equally profound.  The educational establishment has seriously damaged our educational system; in particular, the ability to think clearly, analyze problems, and solve them has been virtually eliminated in favor of ideological indoctrination.  The result is that workers who can handle the new requirements of a "meta" economy will be harder and harder to find.

Zoom meeting Link:   https://zoom.us/j/314764585

Talk: System for Generating New Service and Business Models

Please join us for the next ISSIP Digital Transformation Speaker Series (see details below, or click here).

via Sorin Ciornei, Series Chair, Cisco Systems
___________________________________
Edu4Inno: A service system for generating new services and corresponding business models

Dr. Christoph Peters, Project Manager, Postdoctoral Researcher, University of St.Gallen, University of Kassel

When:  Wednesday, July 11, 4:30pm - 5:15pm (UTC+01:00) Amsterdam, Berlin, Bern, Rome, Stockholm, Vienna   (10:30 AM ET)

Background:
Dr. Christoph Peters is a project manager and postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Information Management (IWI-HSG) at the University of St.Gallen in Switzerland and the Interdisciplinary Research Center for Information System Design (ITeG) at the University of Kassel in Germany. Christoph studied Business Informatics at the University of Mannheim, Germany (M.Sc.-equivalent) and at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia. Christoph holds a doctoral degree from the University of Kassel, Germany (Dr. rer. pol.). He coordinates several research projects and heads a research group of eight doctoral candidates.
His research focuses on service innovation, the systematic design and management of services and work systems, their digitization and respective business models.

Task Description:
Edu4Inno: An service system for generating new services and corresponding business models” presents an educational service system that enables students to learn about service innovations and service systems from a theoretical background on the one hand and on the other hand, to systematically design new services and corresponding business models. Therefore, partners from practice present their real-world challenge at the beginning of a semester and commit themselves for some interview and interaction time slots. The students work in teams and with the partner while trying to master this challenge by systematically designing new and innovative services as well as corresponding business models. Thereby, each team works out predefined artefacts such as a service model, a functioning prototype, a business model, etc. The elaborated service innovations are pitched in a startup environment in front of the practice partners at the end of the semester. We consider our submission and the overall “Edu4Inno” concept as a highly impactful service innovation that continuously “produces” service innovation competences (for students) and service innovations (for practice). The “Edu4Inno” concept has been implemented several times in the last 3 years at two universities leading to an enthusiastic and innovative atmosphere among students as well as to award-winning service innovations.

During this talk Dr. Christoph will present Edu4Inno and key results from its last years' implementations.

Date and Time : July 11 2018 - 4:30pm (UTC+01:00) Amsterdam, Berlin, Bern, Rome, Stockholm, Vienna     (10:30 AM ET)

Zoom meeting Link:   https://zoom.us/j/984551771

Zoom Callin: (415) 762-9988 or (646) 568-7788 Meeting id 984551771
Zoom International Numbers: https://zoom.us/zoomconference

Sentiment Analysis Uses and Comparisons

A look at various sentiment applications and services.    Have used a couple of these.

Machine Learning as a Service: Part 1  from Towards Data Science. By Sebastian Kwiatkowski

Sentiment analysis: 10 applications and 4 services
What is sentiment analysis?

The explosive growth in user-generated content and the digitization of archive material have created massive data sets containing opinions expressed by large numbers of people on just about every single topic.

In some cases, the generation of this data is structured through the user interface. It is, for example, relatively easy to process customer reviews on e-commerce sites, because users are required to post a rating alongside the text of the product review.

Most data, however, is available in an unstructured form. It does not contain a standardized summary saying “This content expresses a positive, negative, mixed or neutral view.”

WordPress.com, for example, reports that bloggers using their platform have published more than 87 million posts just in May of 2018.[1] According to YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, more than 400 hours of content are uploaded to the video-sharing site every minute.[2] Meanwhile, the Google Books project has digitized at least 25 million volumes in 400 languages.[3]

Whenever a user types into a free text field or speaks into a microphone, an inference is required to categorize the sentiment.

Sentiment analysis is the field that focuses on exactly this task. It is a branch of natural language processing that studies functions designed to map a text document to a representation of a sentiment.

With the advent of accurate speech and text recognition, the reach of sentiment analysis extends beyond readily accessible digital text data and covers an increasing number of media. ... "

Pets and Machine Learning Interactions

In Pete Warden's Blog, interesting views.   Have seen some of that in my own menagerie of chatbots and responsive assistants.    But I think ultimately we will want assistant than amusement.  Machine learning is collaborative in the sense that it solves narrow problems.  So does a 'Push Button' model of tech.  So will a 'pet model' be attentive and responsive?  A neighbor has a guide dog, which has been trained to be more attentive and responsive, rather than pet.   Seems more the model we will see.

Why ML interfaces will be more like pets than machines

When I talk to people about what’s happening in deep learning, I often find it hard to get across why I’m so excited. If you look at a lot of the examples in isolation, they just seem like incremental progress over existing features, like better search for photos or smarter email auto-replies. Those are great of course, but what strikes me when I look ahead is how the new capabilities build on each other as they’re combined together. I believe that they will totally change the way we interact with technology, moving from the push-button model we’ve had since the industrial revolution to something that’s more like a collaboration with our tools. It’s not a perfect analogy, but the most useful parallel I can think of is how our relationship with pets differs from our interactions with machines.

To make what I’m saying more concrete, imagine a completely made-up device for helping around the house (I have no idea if anyone’s building something like this, so don’t take it as any kind of prediction, but I’d love one if anybody does get round to it!). It’s a small indoors drone that assists with the housework, with cleaning attachments and a grabbing arm. I’ve used some advanced rendering technology to visualize a mockup below:

Convergence of Analytics Products, Services

Below contains a link to a complimentary report. Inescapable direction.  Few would buy a single capability.

Continued Convergence Of Analytics Products And Services

By Boris Evelson,  Vice President, Principal Analyst
I’ve been watching this trend with great curiosity (first wrote about it in 2007).

On the one hand, software product vendors are slowly but surely migrating from just selling products to selling solutions. And solutions always require professional services. IBM led the trend when it acquired PwC in 2002. For the last few years GoodData has also been concentrating on building embedded BI solutions with a strong emphasis on professional services. Most recently MicroStrategy (and I hope other BI/analytics/big data vendors will follow soon) made a significant investment into its management consulting capabilities hiring hundreds of consultants and coming out with a “BI/analytics maturity assessment” service offering – formerly solely the realm of management consultants.  80% of BI projects success depends on people/process part of the equation and that’s why strong management consulting capabilities are key. .... " 

Amazon Pickup Service in Whole Foods

Witnessed the set up of this in a nearby Whole Foods today.  No additional crowding as yet.   Can see it as a specialized service offering, volume involved unclear.  Other uses when the infrastructure is operating?

Amazon/Whole Foods planning store pickup service from third-party retailers  by George Anderson in Retailwire.  with further expert comments:

Amazon.com wants to negate one advantage that rivals such as Walmart, Target, Kroger and others have — store pickup. The e-tailing giant is looking to offer a pickup service at Whole Foods’ stores that will not only include orders from the organic grocery chain, but also from a host of other retailers.

According to the reports, Amazon is seeking a finance manager that will help build a pickup business from the ground up. The job posting, which was first reported on by the Puget Sound Business Journal, said the person hired would be behind “the Whole Foods delivery and pick-up service on the ultra-fast Prime Now app and enable our Prime customers to shop from a set of marquee third-party retailers.”

What potentially makes the described service different from those offered by Walmart and others is that it would appear to offer pickup from online orders placed with Whole Foods, Amazon and perhaps others, as well.  ... "