The Gilbane Advisor

Curated for content, computing, data, information, and digital experience professionals

Gilbane Advisor 1-14-26 — Context Graphs, Claude code

January 14, 2026 /

This week we feature articles from Kurt Cagle, and Ethan Mollick.

Additional reading comes from Jacob Steinhardt, Tony Seale, and Tom Krazit.

News comes from Microsoft, Snowflake & Observe, WP Engine & Big Bite, and Squirro.

Our next issue arrives 1/28/26.

All previous issues are available at https://gilbane.com/gilbane-advisor-index

Opinion / Analysis

Context Graphs, Data Traces & Transcripts

Some thoughts on the latest buzzwords

Kurt Cagle: “A knowledge graph is a valuable tool… and a critical part of AI infrastructure moving forward. However, the central idea of context graphs is that you should be able to determine exactly when a decision was made and why, and that is something that a knowledge graph by itself can only give you VERY indirectly…”. 

However, Cagle provides a “stunning” example of context capture with “a graph, a schema, and a bit of a taxonomy.” (15 min)

https://ontologist.substack.com/p/context-graphs-data-traces-and-transcripts

Claude Code and what comes next

With the right tools, AI can accomplish impressive things

With a single prompt, Ethan Mollick asked Claude Code to create an idea for a new business with a working website where you could purchase the product — it took a little over an hour. (Link provided with actual purchase function turned off).

This is an easy, non-technical read that illustrates current AI coding capabilities. (10 min)

https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/claude-code-and-what-comes-next

More Reading

All Gilbane Advisor issues

Content Technology News

Microsoft announces agentic AI capabilities for retail

Built for the full retail value chain, Microsoft’s agentic AI streamlines workflows to accelerate decisions by augmenting human expertise across the enterprise.
https://news.microsoft.com/source/2026/01/08/microsoft-propels-retail-forward-with-agentic-ai-capabilities-that-power-intelligent-automation-for-every-retail-function/

Snowflake to acquire Observe

Observe’s observability platform will integrate directly into Snowflake to allow enterprises to ingest and retain all their telemetry data at lower cost.
https://www.snowflake.com/en/news/press-releases/snowflake-announces-intent-to-acquire-observe-to-deliver-ai-powered-observability-at-enterprise-scale/

WP Engine acquires Big Bite

Strategic acquisition of a go-to partner for global publishers adds media industry and technical expertise to provide new solutions to enterprise customers.
https://wpengine.com/blog/wp-engine-acquires-big-bite/

Squirro announces Squirro Release 3.14.4 

Squirro Release 3.14.4 introduces new capabilities designed to close the gap between structured enterprise knowledge and ad-hoc user workflows.
https://squirro.com/news-and-events/new-release-december-2025-enhanced-chat-multimodal-reasoning

All content technology news

The Gilbane Advisor is authored by Frank Gilbane and is ad-free, cost-free, and curated for content, computing, data, web, and digital experience technology and information professionals. We publish recommended articles and content technology news most Wednesdays. We do not sell or share personal data.

Subscribe | View online | Editorial policy | Privacy policy | Contact

Microsoft announces agentic AI capabilities for retail

January 8, 2026 /

Microsoft announced a set of agentic AI capabilities aimed at supporting automation and decision-making across retail operations, including merchandising, marketing, store operations, and fulfillment. The tools are designed to connect data and workflows so teams can act on context in real time.

Copilot Checkout, now available in the U.S. on Copilot.com, allows shoppers to complete purchases directly within Copilot without being redirected to a retailer’s website, while merchants remain the merchant of record. The service integrates with partners including PayPal, Shopify, and Stripe, and supports participating retailers such as Urban Outfitters, Anthropologie, Ashley Furniture, and Etsy sellers.

Microsoft also introduced Brand Agents for Shopify merchants and a personalized shopping agent template in Copilot Studio. These tools enable conversational shopping experiences using a retailer’s product catalog, with options ranging from turnkey deployment to fully customizable implementations.

In public preview, a catalog enrichment agent template automates product onboarding and categorization by extracting attributes from images and enriching data for search and recommendations.

For physical stores, a store operations agent template provides natural-language access to inventory, policies, and operational insights, helping staff manage workflows, staffing, and day-to-day decisions using internal and external data signals.

https://news.microsoft.com/source/2026/01/08/microsoft-propels-retail-forward-with-agentic-ai-capabilities-that-power-intelligent-automation-for-every-retail-function

Snowflake to acquire Observe

January 8, 2026 /

Snowflake, an AI Data Cloud company, has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Observe, a provider of AI-powered observability. With this acquisition, Snowflake will deliver their next generation of AI-powered observability, built on open standards and designed for the scale, complexity, and economics required by modern AI-driven enterprises. Snowflake and Observe will provide enterprises with: 

  • Agentic AI for faster troubleshooting: The combination of Observe’s AI-powered Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) with data in Snowflake enables a shift from reactive monitoring to proactive, automated troubleshooting. Observe’s AI SRE leverages a unified context graph that correlates logs, metrics, and traces, allowing teams to detect anomalies earlier, identify root causes, and resolve production issues faster.
  • An open-standard architecture built for scale: The acquisition also establishes a unified, open-standard observability architecture based on Apache Iceberg and OpenTelemetry. Enterprises can manage massive telemetry volumes using economical object storage, elastic compute, and interoperable standards.
  • Full telemetry data retention with efficient economics: As AI-driven applications generate volumes of logs, metrics, and traces, enterprises have increasingly been forced to rely on sampling and short retention windows to manage cost. By unifying Observe’s AI-powered observability platform with Snowflake’s scalable data foundation, organizations may eliminate these tradeoffs.

https://www.snowflake.com/en/news/press-releases/snowflake-announces-intent-to-acquire-observe-to-deliver-ai-powered-observability-at-enterprise-scale

WP Engine acquires Big Bite

January 7, 2026 /

WP Engine, a global web enablement company providing products and solutions for websites built on WordPress, today announced its acquisition of Big Bite, an enterprise agency known for the development of advanced editorial tools to improve how global brands and media organizations create and share digital content.

A longstanding WP Engine agency partner, Big Bite has over a decade of experience developing newsroom platforms, publishing workflows, and specialized tools that combine editorial flexibility with technical excellence. Their publishing expertise has helped transform the digital ecosystems of some of the world’s biggest media brands, including The Times, The Wall Street Journal, New York Post, Metro, and Macworld. As part of this transaction, Big Bite’s agency business will be wound down, and its team will transition into WP Engine’s Engineering organization to help build products that enhance publishing solutions for customers and agency partners. 

Big Bite’s publishing expertise, focused on navigating the rapidly changing digital landscape with innovative solutions, will seamlessly integrate into the premium service WP Engine provides its network of global agency partners.

https://wpengine.com/blog/wp-engine-acquires-big-bite/

Squirro announces Squirro Release 3.14.4

December 15, 2025 /

Squirro, a global supplier of enterprise-grade Generative AI and knowledge graph technology, announced the general availability of its latest Long-Term Support (LTS) platform update. Squirro Release 3.14.4 introduces new capabilities designed to close the gap between structured enterprise knowledge and ad-hoc user workflows.

Most notably, the update includes direct file uploads, multimodal image reasoning, and an enterprise-grade prompt library – features that help organizations extract insights from complex documents, whether stored in enterprise repositories or sitting on a user’s desktop.

The centerpiece of the latest Squirro Platform Release is an enhanced chat experience designed for versatility and depth. Direct file uploads let users bypass traditional indexing workflows by dragging contracts or reports directly into the chat for on-the-spot analysis. For complex long-form content, a new “Chat with Item” agent maintains deep memory context retaining the first 100 pages plus a summary to support Q&A sessions without losing the thread.

Multimodal image reasoning enables the AI to interpret charts, tables, and images contained within documents, while newly introduced table rendering capabilities automatically format structured data outputs into clean, readable tables.

By combining deep context memory, multimodal reasoning, and dynamic ad-hoc analysis, the upgrade enhances reasoning capabilities of auditable agentic workflows.

https://squirro.com/news-and-events/new-release-december-2025-enhanced-chat-multimodal-reasoning

Gilbane Advisor 11-19-25 — AI interviews, benchmarks, coding tools

November 19, 2025 /

This week we feature articles from Nicolas Ethan Mollick, and Dharmesh Shah.

Additional reading comes from Luke Wroblewski, Pete Warden, Jon Udell, and Michael Iantosca.

News comes from Snowflake, Bloomreach, Google, and Sitecore.

Reminder: We don’t publish in December.

All previous issues are available at https://gilbane.com/gilbane-advisor-index

Opinion / Analysis

Giving your AI a job interview

As AI advice becomes more important, we are going to need to get better at assessing it

Ethan Mollick explains why AI benchmarks, while valuable, are in general not sufficient for determining which AI model would be best for your business needs. What to do? Mollick argues that while “vibe benchmarking” can provide some limited insight into model differences,  assessing models for real world applications requires interviewing / testing model skill sets before hiring. Mollick discusses and links to OpenAI’s recent GDPval paper on the topic with examples. (8 min)

https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/giving-your-ai-a-job-interview

The AI coding tool landscape (and why I just switched tools)

A breakdown of what’s available and what’s actually working

Developer Dharmesh Shah created a helpful table categorizing the different types of AI coding tools. (5 min)

https://simple.ai/p/the-2025-ai-coding-tool-landscape

More Reading

All Gilbane Advisor issues

Content technology news

Snowflake to acquire Datometry Migration Solution

Snowflake enhances data migration with Datometry technology, integrating it into SnowConvert AI to move legacy data faster and reduce costs.
https://www.snowflake.com/en/blog/accelerate-data-migration-datometry-technology/

Google introduces the File Search Tool in Gemini API

File Search accelerates development workflow by handling the complexities of RAG with a user-friendly alternative to a self-managed setup.
https://blog.google/technology/developers/file-search-gemini-api/

Bloomreach launches Personalized Media in-Grid

The new capability unites search, storytelling, and personalization, integrating placement and conversation inside the shopping journey.
https://www.bloomreach.com/en/news/2025/bloomreach-unites-search-storytelling-and-personalization/

Sitecore unveils SitecoreAI

SitecoreAI is the evolution of XM Cloud, unifying content management, customer data, personalization, and search in a single scalable platform.
https://www.sitecore.com/company/newsroom/press-releases/2025/10/sitecore-unveils-sitecoreai-ushering-in-the-ai-first-era-of-digital-experience

All content technology news

The Gilbane Advisor is authored by Frank Gilbane and is ad-free, cost-free, and curated for content, computing, data, web, and digital experience technology and information professionals. We publish recommended articles and content technology news most Wednesdays. We do not sell or share personal data.

Subscribe | View online | Editorial policy | Privacy policy | Contact

Bloomreach launches Personalized Media in-Grid

November 13, 2025 /

Bloomreach, an agentic platform for personalization, introduced Personalized Media in-Grid, a new capability that turns static product grids into intelligent storytelling surfaces, powered by its AI-powered search solution Bloomreach Discovery and amplified through its marketing and conversational shopping solutions. The feature transforms product-listing pages into dynamic, story-driven experiences, showcasing Bloomreach’s connected suite. Personalized Media in-Grid brings the compound value of the platform to life, uniting placement, personalization, and conversation inside the shopping journey.

Today’s product-listing pages are largely static and transactional. Personalized Media in-Grid changes that by allowing retailers to insert videos, images, buying guides, seasonal promotions, and cross-sell messages between products on search and category pages. With slot selection, in-context preview, audience targeting, and scheduling capabilities, merchandising teams can manage and optimize content, and

  • Blend storytelling with commerce: Insert rich media, buying guides, promotional banners, and cross-sell content directly into product grids at specific slots.
  • Manage content: Apply rules globally across queries or categories, preview in context, and schedule campaigns..
  • Target specific audiences: Deliver tailored messages by integrating with Bloomreach Engagement for segmentation and 1:1 personalization, and with Bloomreach Clarity for conversational experiences.
  • Measure impact: Track performance through Discovery’s built-in analytics and extend reporting through Engagement dashboards.

https://www.bloomreach.com/en/news/2025/bloomreach-unites-search-storytelling-and-personalization/

Snowflake to acquire Datometry Migration Solution

November 10, 2025 /

From the Snowflake blog…

We’re thrilled to announce Snowflake has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the technology powering the Datometry software migration solution, which makes moving from legacy data warehouses like Teradata to Snowflake up to four times faster while reducing costs by 90%. This new venture will enable our current and future customers to accelerate their data journey with faster migrations.

Datometry’s solution translates queries, scripts and workloads in real time, allowing applications built for legacy systems to run on Snowflake with minimal code changes.

We’re eager to start integrating the power of Datometry into SnowConvert AI. In addition to bringing Datometry’s capabilities to Snowflake, we’re thrilled to also welcome many talented Datometry employees, including Datometry founder and CEO Mike Waas, CTO Michael Duller, and VP of Customer Success Rima Mutreja. With their deep knowledge and expertise, we’re looking forward to collaborating to bring innovative developments in data migration to the Snowflake AI Data Cloud.

Snowflake’s free solutions, SnowConvert AI and Snowpark Migration Accelerator, reduce migration risks and costs and simplify code conversion to help customers realize more value from their data from day one.

https://www.snowflake.com/en/blog/accelerate-data-migration-datometry-technology

« Older posts

Policies

Contact

twitter   rss   Mastadon   Bluesky   Medium

Contact • customerservice@gilbane.com

© 2026 Bluebill Advisors (except for contributed posts which are licensed under creative commons)

Banner photos: Sakonnet Harbor, Little Compton, RI, Fort Point Channel, Summer St bridge, and Northern Ave bridge, Boston

Bluebill Advisors Inc logo

© 2026 The Gilbane Advisor

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑