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

Category: Computing & data (Page 70 of 92)

Computing and data is a broad category. Our coverage of computing is largely limited to software, and we are mostly focused on unstructured data, semi-structured data, or mixed data that includes structured data.

Topics include computing platforms, analytics, data science, data modeling, database technologies, machine learning / AI, Internet of Things (IoT), blockchain, augmented reality, bots, programming languages, natural language processing applications such as machine translation, and knowledge graphs.

Related categories: Semantic technologies, Web technologies & information standards, and Internet and platforms.

Gilbane Advisor 9-9-20 — schema.org, AI ops, IT arch, NLP

Who benefits from schema. org?

Schema.org, linked data, and knowledge graphs are powerful tools for organizing and navigating vast amounts of information. Much of the current energy around these tools is related to SEO and search engines, especially Google, who depend on them to provide a better search experience. These same tools help commercial and corporate publishers deliver better, and more unique, web experiences to researchers and other content consumers.

We all have a stake in how well these tools work, so we need to understand the process of creating and managing them, and how stakeholders share the cost, risk, and benefit of the raw material, technical development, and maintenance.

schema.org logo

Content strategist Michael Andrews’ deep dive into the history and process behind schema.org’s management is an enlightening read for stakeholders.

Taming the tail: adventures in improving AI economics

Martin Casado and Matt Bornstein focus on the business models and challenges of machine learning companies and products, which are more unique than you might realize and something we need to learn a lot more about. We recommended an earlier article of theirs on the differences between the business models of AI companies and software companies. This article is a follow-up and provides some guidance on how to deal with some of the challenges previously identified. Especially interesting is their example of long-tailed distributions to illustrate the importance problem understanding. 

Headless meets serverless – a tierless architecture for frictionless enterprise

The components of modern enterprise IT architectures have changed considerably in the last few years.  The use of APIs, microservices, XaaS (everything as a service), headless, and serverless approaches have, individually and especially in conjunction, become strategically critical. As Phil Wainewright puts it…

As these connected digital technologies mesh together, they begin to reshape the nature of the enterprise, opening up new ways to collaborate, connect and do business. We are still at the very beginning of adjusting to what this means for how we live and work.

Wainewright explains what these technologies are, describes related activity and trends, and makes a case for a tierless model. His article is relevant and will be helpful to both IT and business managers.

The field of natural language processing is chasing the wrong goal

Researchers are too focused on whether AI systems can ace tests of dubious value. They should be testing whether systems grasp how the world works.

Also…

The Gilbane Advisor is curated by Frank Gilbane for content technology, computing, and digital experience professionals. The focus is on strategic technologies. We publish more or less twice a month except for August and December. We do not sell or share personal data.

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Xanadu releases Quantum Cloud platform

Photonic quantum computing company, Xanadu, announced the release of the first publicly available photonic quantum cloud platform. Developers can now access Xanadu’s gate-based photonic quantum processors, in 8, 12, and soon 24 qubit machines. 

Photonics based quantum computers have advantages over older platforms. Xanadu’s quantum processors operate at room temperature. They can easily integrate into existing fiber optic-based telecommunication infrastructure, enabling a future where quantum computers are networked. It also offers great scalability supporting fault tolerance, owing to robust error-resistant physical qubits and flexibility in designing error correction codes. Xanadu’s unique type of qubit is based on squeezed states – a special type of light generated by their own chip-integrated silicon photonic devices.

Xanadu’s partners and customers are currently testing solutions on the pre-release Xanadu Quantum Cloud. These include academic institutions, quantum startups, and national labs including Creative Destruction Labs, Scotia Bank, BMO and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). Now the company will be extending access to a number of new enterprise clients who are seeking to leverage quantum computing to solve their most complex problems.

In addition to Xanadu Quantum Cloud, developers will use Xanadu’s open-source tools widely available on Github. These include Strawberry Fields, its cross-platform Python library for simulating and executing programs on quantum photonic hardware and PennyLane, its software library for quantum machine learning, quantum computing, and quantum chemistry. The community includes a vast array of tutorials and educational materials for users of all levels of experience to begin developing and experimenting with quantum applications. 

The enterprise adoption of quantum computing is in the early stages of development, but access to photonic quantum computing over the cloud will give developers across industries and academia the chance to explore potential business applications. Open access educates and drives interest towards new, concrete implementations that demonstrate the future of computing. Xanadu’s processors provide researchers and developers with novel approaches that are unique to solve problems in finance, quantum chemistry, machine learning, and graph analytics. 

https://xanadu.ai

Quantum computing

Computing based on quantum mechanics. It promises to dramatically change computing power, uses, and perhaps the political balance power. It is not quite ready for widespread enterprise or research use but it is coming (see Xanadu releases Quantum Cloud platform) and companies and countries are accelerating investment in efforts to be ahead of the curve.

Where traditional computing is based on bits representing either 1 or 0, basic particles in quantum mechanics, “quantum bits”, or “qubits” can take on a third state that is not 0 or 1 but one of any probable number of undefined in-between states before being detected. This undefined state is referred to as “superposition”.

These superpositions can be “entangled” with superpositions of other objects no matter the distance. This is at least part of why Einstein was uncomfortable with quantum mechanics’ threat to his special theory of relativity and what he called “spooky action at a distance”. Entanglement may seem spooky but it has been demonstrated plenty of times.

Postman launches new web client to simplify API development

Postman announced the launch of Postman for the web, a new browser interface for Postman that offers users simplified access and superior collaboration. The move marks somewhat of a return to Postman’s original roots. Until today, Postman users have accessed Postman through a desktop application. Accessing Postman through the browser has been one of the most-requested features from users; they say that downloading a desktop app can slow down onboarding, and can also make it challenging to stay on the latest version. Plus, the browser approach allows certain collaboration capabilities that aren’t possible within the app. The web version of Postman solves these issues by providing the following:

  • Simplified user access and onboarding: Users get instant access via browser with no app installation required, automatic updates, and faster user onboarding (i.e., just paste in the URL and go).
  • Optimized collaboration through deep linking: Now that Postman is on the web, everything in Postman has a URL, so users can easily share URLs to granular API elements for superior collaboration.
  • The ability to send requests at scale from the browser: A unique agent architecture, developed exclusively by Postman engineers, facilitates scalable sending of API requests from the browser.

Tightly connected to the Postman for the web client launch is the Postman agent. The agent was specifically designed to overcome the cross-origin resource sharing (CORS) limitations of browsers to allow for API requests to be scalably sent from a browser interface. By creating a proxy micro-application to facilitate API request-sending at scale, the agent addresses this browser challenge in a way that’s never been done before.

https://www.postman.com

ThoughtSpot launches ThoughtSpot 6.2

ThoughtSpot launched ThoughtSpot 6.2 to help enterprises connect, share, and utilize insights faster. New features include DataFlow, Embrace for SAP and Teradata, and improvements in user experience, data exploration, and data loading. ThoughtSpot’s search and AI-driven analytics platform was designed to unlock insights for employees at every level of an organization, from frontline employee to C-suite executive. Features include:

  • Answer Explorer 2.0: Leverages AI to guide users to unasked questions and new insights for which they would not have thought to look, automatically curating suggestions, recommended additional searches, and unexpected anomalies or trends insights directly in a pinboards, charts, and answers. Built in machine learning continuously improves Answer Explorer, tailoring insights for users.
  • DataFlow: DataFlow makes it easier to bring data into Falcon, ThoughtSpot’s in-memory database, through a no code point and click UX, enabling enterprises to utilize search and AI-driven analytics even for data sources too slow to run search queries directly.
  • Embrace Expansions: ThoughtSpot Embrace is now available for both Teradata and SAP HANA, allows users to run search and AI-driven analytic inquiries directly in these databases without the need to move or cache any data. Improved user experience makes it to connect Embrace directly to Snowflake, Amazon Redshift, Google BigQuery, Microsoft Azure Synapse, SAP HANA, and Teradata.
  • API-Powered Bulk Load Connector: A new API-based feature enables the smooth and secure transfer of data to Falcon, ThoughtSpot’s in-memory database, by allowing users to load data in bulk from ETL tools and custom programs.
  • Caffeine for Advanced Data Caching: Caffeine gives users the freedom to choose which pinboards are pre-cached and when, allowing them to optimize the performance of the most important pinboards.
  • Scriptability Support for Worksheet Filters: Worksheets with filters can be exported and imported to the same environment or between environments.
  • Improved Visualizations: ThoughtSpot’s high cardinality charts now accommodate up to 35,000 data values, an increase from 1,000 previously. The high cardinality chart legend limit has also increased from 40 items to 250 items, giving pinboard creators the ability to display much richer data for their users.
  • Data Compression: New in-memory data compression makes it possible to leverage more data without increasing storage, reducing costs as organizations scale their data footprint.

Current ThoughtSpot customers will have access to ThoughtSpot 6.2 today.

https://www.thoughtspot.com

Arria NLG introduces Arria for Excel

Arria NLG introduced Arria for Excel, a Microsoft Office add-in that brings natural language generation (NLG) functionality to users of Microsoft Excel. Arria for Excel gives you the ability to instantly narrate Excel spreadsheets and export directly to Word or PowerPoint, and adds natural-language summaries and report automation within the worksheet, turning volumes of data into narratives. Users can tailor narratives to specific audiences, providing contextual commentary and explanatory analyses like those created by subject matter experts. Arria augments existing Excel workflows with:

  • Consistency and accuracy. A next-generation report writer that dynamically automates data-driven financial summaries.
  • Timeliness of reporting. Financial reports can now be published quickly after the end of the reporting period.
  • Team sharing. Provides insightful information delivery across the enterprise.

https://www.arria.com/excel/

Yext releases “Milky Way” search algorithm with BERT

Yext, Inc. announced “Milky Way,” the latest upgrade to the natural language processing (NLP) algorithm that powers Yext Answers, Yext’s site search product. Headlining this milestone update is the adoption of BERT, (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers). Developed by Google, BERT is an open source machine learning framework for NLP designed to better understand user searches. By leveraging BERT within Named Entity Recognition (a process to locate and classify named entities mentioned in unstructured text into predefined categories), Yext Answers improves its ability to distinguish locations from other types of entities, including people, jobs, and events. The update includes:

  • Improved Named Entity Recognition: By leveraging BERT, Yext Answers can now better understand the contextual relationship between search terms. Answers will return a more relevant result by taking into account the correct classification, whether a location, person or product.
  • Improved Location Detection: The update leaves behind location biasing. Now, Yext Answers will filter through locations stored by a business in their Yext knowledge graph to surface the best match.
  • Updated Healthcare Taxonomy: More than 3,000 new healthcare-related synonyms, conditions, treatments, and procedures have been added to the algorithm’s taxonomy.
  • Improved Stemming and Typo Tolerance.

https://www.yext.com/resources/about/news-media/2020-08-yext-releases-milky-way/

Microsoft releases Immersive Reader and improvements to Azure Cognitive Services

Microsoft announced the general availability of Immersive Reader and new improvements to Azure Cognitive Services. Immersive Reader is an Azure Cognitive Service within the Azure AI platform that helps readers read and comprehend text. Through today’s general availability, developers and partners can add Immersive Reader right into their products, enabling students of all abilities to translate in over 70 languages, read text aloud, focus attention through highlighting, other design elements, and more. With the general availability of Immersive Reader, we are also rolling out the following enhancements:

  • Immersive Reader SDK 1.1: Updates include support to have a page read aloud automatically, pre-translating content, and more.
  • New Neural Text-to-Speech (TTS) languages: Immersive Reader is adding 15 new Neural Text to Speech voices.
  • New Translator languages: Translator is adding five new languages that will also be available in Immersive Reader—Odia, Kurdish (Northern), Kurdish (Central), Pashto, and Dari.

With Immersive Reader, all it takes is a single API call to help users boost literacy. Learn more at:

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/empowering-remote-learning-with-azure-cognitive-services/

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