"Today, Purple Forge Corp, a provider of community engagement and self service solutions to governments and enterprise organizations, announced it has become a Watson Ecosystem Partner.

Purple Forge’s Powered by IBM Watson solution leverages Watson QA and natural language processing capabilities in order to allow users to ask questions and receive evidence-based answers using a website, smartphone or wearable devices such as the Apple Watch, without having to wait for a call agent or a reply to an email.

The City of Surrey in British Columbia will be the first public sector organization to pilot the Purple Forge Powered by IBM Watson solution. The solution will be offered to city residents as part of the ‘My Surrey’ mobile and web apps that citizens currently use to obtain information for a wide range of government services such as recycling schedule, job opportunities, and recreational activities.

“IBM Watson’s learning abilities are such that the technology builds its knowledge and improves as citizens use it, much in the same way humans learn,” said Councillor Bruce Hayne, Chair of Innovation & Investment Committee. “This pilot is expected to enhance customer experience by increasing the accessibility of services, while providing City with insight into opportunities for improvement and reduction to service delivery costs.”"

To read more: Pressreleaserocket

The companies said last July they were working together to build apps for industries like health care, retail, and insurance. IBM also said it would sell and support Apple hardware.

The first 10 apps came out in December, with further batches following in March andApril. With the latest announcement, the companies have launched almost three dozen apps.

There are four in a new category called “employee experience.” The Travel Plan iPhone app helps workers plan business travel by reviewing their calendar and identifying possible trips. The app can also look over a person’s travel history and suggest bookings for things like hotel accommodation."

To read more, head over to PC World

"When creating real world, non-digital advertisements, you can pretty much guarantee that when the viewer sees them, they will have their mobile with them. This is becoming more and more true in developing nations too, as mobile penetration rises.

The tricky part is the link. There are many ways to link offline and mobile marketing, driving users to enter details, share, buy and engage digitally, but how many of them work well? We spoke to a number of industry professionals to find out which methods of bridging the gap they see as being the most effective. As always, please do comment below if you have any input.