Category: Content creation and design (Page 36 of 69)

Technologies and strategies for authoring and editing, including word processors, structured editors, web and page layout and formatting, content conversion and migration, multichannel content, structured and unstructured data integration, and metadata creation.

Microsoft Build — selected news

May 27, 2021 / NewsShark

Lots of news this week at the annual Microsoft Build developer conference. They did produce a very helpful “Book of News” (at about 8,800 words) with a table of contents to cover it all. Below is a selection of announcements our readers are most likely to be interested in, followed by a link to the complete list.

Azure AI

Azure Cognitive Services, a family of AI services to deploy high-quality models as APIs, has multiple updates, including:

Document Translation, a feature of Translator in Azure Cognitive Services announced in preview in February, is now generally available. Document Translation enables developers to quickly translate documents while preserving the structure and format of the original document. This feature helps enterprises and translation agencies that require the translation of complex documents into one or more languages.
Text Analytics for health is now generally available with Text Analytics in Azure Cognitive Services. It enables developers to process and extract insights from unstructured medical data. Unstructured text includes doctors’ notes, medical journals, electronic health records, clinical trial protocols and more. Another new feature of Text Analytics is Question Answering. Now in preview, Question Answering helps users find answers from a passage of text without saving or managing any data in Azure.

Azure Data

With the introduction of the partial document update for Azure Cosmos DB, developers can modify specific fields or properties within a document without requiring a full document read and replace. This gives developers more flexibility to update only certain portions. Partial document update is available for Core (SQL) API and via .NET SDK, Java SDK and stored procedures. Developers can sign up for the partial document update preview.

Azure Cosmos DB serverless is now generally available for all APIs (Core, MongoDB, Cassandra, Gremlin and Table). Developers can now optimize costs and more easily run apps with spiky traffic patterns on Azure Cosmos DB. Serverless is a cost-effective pricing model that charges only for the resources consumed by database operations. It is ideally suited for apps with moderate performance requirements and frequent periods with little to no traffic.

Microsoft 365

Microsoft Graph data connect is now offered on Microsoft Azure as a metered service. Microsoft Graph data connect is a more secure, high-throughput connector designed to copy select Microsoft 365 productivity datasets into the Azure tenant. It’s a tool for developers and data scientists creating organizational analytics or training AI and machine learning models. Although most Microsoft 365 products are offered on a per-user/per-month basis, the company is offering Microsoft Graph data connect as a metered service, so developers pay for only the data they consume.

Microsoft Search Federation, which connects information from across platforms, will be generally available later this year. It creates a unified search experience across Microsoft Azure Cognitive Search and Dynamics 365. Microsoft 365 customers use several search options, from Microsoft Search to Azure Cognitive Search. Microsoft Search Federation connects these systems, making finding information much simpler.

Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams apps for meetings, launched last year, gives developers the tools to build collaborative apps that help connect people to solve common goals and design experiences across the full lifecycle of a meeting. Now, developers can build even more unique scenarios with new features that include:

Shared stage integration, in preview, provides developers with new access to the main stage in a Teams meeting through a simple configuration in their app manifest. This provides a new surface to enable real-time, multiuser collaboration experiences for their meetings apps, such as whiteboarding, design, project boards and more.
New meeting event APIs, in preview, enable the automation of meeting-related workflows through events, such as meeting start and end, with many more planned for later this year.
Together mode extensibility, coming soon, empowers developers to create custom scenes for Teams meetings and share them with users. This provides an easy design experience, within the Developer portal, so developers can make meetings more engaging.
Media APIs and resource-specific consent, coming soon, provide developers with real-time access to audio and video streams for transcription, translation, note-taking, insights gathering and more.

Fluid components in Microsoft Teams chat is now in private preview and will expand to more customers in the coming months. Fluid components are powered by the web, can be edited in real-time or asynchronously and work across surfaces, such as Teams and Office apps. Fluid components in Teams chat allow users to send a message with a table, action items or a list that can be co-authored and edited by everyone in line, minimizing the need for long chat threads and meetings. Fluid components can be copied and pasted across Teams chats, helping users become more efficient.

Power Platform

Microsoft Power Fx, a low-code open-source programming language, is adding new features that allow developers to build apps using natural language — no coding required.

The new experience centers around three key scenarios: natural language transforms to Power Fx code, Power Fx code transforms to natural language and programming by example where a user inputs an example of a data pattern that trains the model.

This experience is powered by GPT-3, the world’s largest natural language model from OpenAI, running on Azure Machine Learning. Microsoft also is announcing the PROgram Synthesis using Examples SDK (PROSE), which can train models to do certain tasks by typing in a few examples.

Microsoft Power BI users can now embed Microsoft Power BI analytics reports in a Jupyter Notebook. Jupyter Notebook, an open-source development tool featuring documents with live code, equations, visualizations and narrative text, is often used for data visualization and more. Power BI Embedded Analytics enables data app developers to engage directly with data, explore analytics and generate reports. These Jupyter Notebook integrations are now in preview.

Power BI Premium, which enables analysts, developers and business users to create, develop and turn data into insights, has added Automation APIs to its deployment pipeline capabilities. This allows developers to use tools, such as Microsoft Azure DevOps and Azure Pipeline, to automate the deployment of Power BI assets and integrate into their existing app deployment framework.

https://news.microsoft.com/build-2021-book-of-news/

Librestream enhances knowledge-sharing with AI Connected Expert

May 27, 2021 / NewsShark

Librestream, provider of augmented reality (AR) and remote collaboration solutions, launched new capabilities for its Artificial Intelligence (AI) Connected Expert vision giving industrial workers access to the content, people, smart data and guidance needed to efficiently and safely perform their work.

The new components to the Onsight platform include natural language processing (NLP) with real-time translation capabilities to bridge language barriers amongst global workers, and an industrial-first AR experience for the Microsoft HoloLens 2 platform. The advancements build on the AI Connected Expert workforce vertically-trained computer vision, reducing human cognitive load, and enabling faster time to competency for employees, as well as IoT sensor data visualizations within the Onsight experience.

Onsight Translator, Librestream’s NLP capability, enables users to simply and securely translate “speech to text,” including live transcription (captions) displayed on-screen and live translation of calls from one language to another. Whether a field technician works with a subject matter expert on an asset repair task, communicates with a supplier in a different country or assists with a remote inspection, Onsight Translator’s speech recognition and machine translation bridges language gaps.

Onsight Connect for HoloLens 2 provides hands-free experience across collaborators, incorporating the mixed reality features of the HoloLens 2 such as holographic visual interface and support for gestures, voice-driven commands, and 3D audio experience.

https://librestream.com/press-releases/librestream-unveils-workforce-collaboration-and-knowledge-sharing-enhancements-as-part-of-ai-connected-expert-vision/

Quickbase and Lucid Partner

May 25, 2021 / NewsShark

Quickbase, a no-code platform for operational agility, announced a new partnership with Lucid, a provider of visual collaboration software, allowing anyone to visualize complex ideas and bring them to life. Quickbase and Lucid help eliminate complexity by connecting Lucidchart to the Quickbase platform. Lucidchart is an intelligent diagramming application within the Lucid visual collaboration suite that empowers teams to clarify complexity and align insights. Ideas structured and developed in Lucidchart can serve as a strong foundation to diagram a Quickbase no-code application, helping collaborate on new ideas and adopt technology-driven solutions to business challenges. Lucid and Quickbase are working together to build cross-platform integrations that will make it possible to transform Lucidchart diagrams into fully operational business applications in Quickbase. More seamless integration helps citizen developers to:

Deliver Value Faster: Visualization capabilities allow for clarity and streamlined decision-making, helping accelerate pace of new solutions
Collaborate Easier: Visualizing processes, requirements and potential workflows improves communication and collaboration with stakeholders
Build Applications Users Love: User feedback is faster and easier to incorporate throughout the application lifecycle

https://www.quickbase.com/lucid#s3

Pitch raises $85 million to build presentation platform

May 20, 2021 / NewsShark

Pitch, a collaborative presentation platform for modern teams, announced that it has raised an $85 million Series B funding round led by Lakestar and Tiger Global, and joined by existing Pitch investors Index Ventures and Thrive Capital. Pitch plans to use the new funding to develop its core technology and product, grow its global team, and extend its software platform across the entire presentation workflow.

A publishing and content ecosystem: Pitch is building a dedicated home for publishing and exchanging presentations and templates. Users will be able to discover content from creators and brands, and publish their own work directly to public profile pages.
Advanced presentation analytics: Pitch is building new integrated solutions for users to better distribute presentations and monitor performance. Rolling out this summer, these new features will enable secure sharing and advanced analytics within Pitch, and will give users detailed insights into the reach and readership of a presentation, and engagement levels on specific slides.
Narrative recording and playback: Pitch is building new ways to highlight, record, and play back presentations in any context. Designed for a more remote, asynchronous world of work, these tools will ensure presenters and recipients can engage across an expanded range of meeting formats and team workflows.

https://pitch.com

Netlify acquires FeaturePeek

May 19, 2021 / NewsShark

Netlify, a cloud for collaborative web development, has acquired FeaturePeek, a startup that enables developer teams to preview frontend content. Netlify has added FeaturePeek’s developer collaboration product as a core capability in the next generation of Netlify Deploy Previews. Available today, Deploy Previews make it easy for developers to gather feedback with their web teams, including internal and external business stakeholders, product managers, designers and marketers. Teams share URLs to review a preview of the website or web application and can leave contextual feedback directly on a UI that overlays the site. All feedback is synced in the pull request or productivity tool of choice. Deploy Previews offer:

Live automated previews: Netlify automatically builds a new Deploy Preview as a unique permanent URL for each pull/merge, posted as a commit status.
A floating UI that overlays the deploy: Without leaving the browser, reviewers can make comments, take and annotate screenshots, record videos and reply to teammates asynchronously on web projects.
Feedback automatically synced to the Git repo host.
Integration with productivity tools: Progress can be synced to tools like Clubhouse.io, GitHub, Linear and Trello.
Testing and troubleshooting on different devices: Netlify records browser metadata for every review so engineers can reproduce bugs.

https://www.netlify.com/

Globaledit adds creative workflow features for automation

May 17, 2021 / NewsShark

Globaledit, provider of creative workflow management solutions, helps creative teams produce and distribute content. Globaledit’s cloud based digital asset management platform already provided project management for creatives and marketers focused on producing visual Assets. Now, the company announced a way for creative and marketing teams to automate steps throughout the entire creative & marketing workflow. Globaledit’s Marketplace and Workflow Automation Recipes optimize workflow through the complete lifecycle of an asset, ingest to distribution. This allows users to create workflow rules based on business logic to automate tasks within production processes and demonstrate how the entire technology stack can communicate.

Globaledit’s Marketplace allows organizations to choose from hundreds of apps that natively integrate with Globaledit. The Globaledit marketplace encompasses turnkey integrations with partners across project management, digital asset management and content management systems. Globaledit also is introducing iterations of existing features, including:

Projects allow for a customizable dashboard so project managers, creative leaders or stakeholders can manage workflows across multiple productions, teams & product lines.
Sync 2.0, new additions to Globaledit’s Sync tool allow creatives to automatically sync full capture sessions.
Enhanced Search allows users to search for assets via metadata with expandable search terms and asset recommendations.

https://www.globaledit.com/blog/globaledit-introduces-creative-workflow-features-focused-on-automation/

Progress announces new release of Telerik

May 12, 2021 / NewsShark

Progress announced the R2 2021 release of Progress Telerik .NET developer tools collection. Progress now provides over 75 native components for Microsoft Blazor. Progress also announced expansion of its UI library for Microsoft WinUI and support for the newest .NET 6 preview.

Progress Telerik UI for Blazor developer tool features a set of new components, including PanelBar, Form, Card, Color Palette, Arc Gauge, Linear Gauge, Circular Gauge, Radial Gauge, Validation Summary, Validation Tooltip, Validation Message and MediaQuery. New Grid features such as multi-column headers, rows drag and drop and Excel-like editing help developers visualize data and customize their apps.

Progress Telerik UI for WinUI enables developers to build modern Windows desktop apps. This release includes Scheduler, ListView with support for extended selection, Shadow, HubTile, NumericBox and SideDrawer. The suite also ships PdfProcessing, WordsProcessing, SpreadProcessing, SpreadStreamProcessing and Zip Library document processing libraries for creation and editing of various document formats.

Telerik Reporting delivers a new Blazor Report Designer, enabling embedding of report designing capabilities into Blazor applications. The Reporting Web Designer has been improved to include drag-and-drop functionality for data fields in the Explorer tab to generate text boxes and updates. A new Swiss barcode is introduced to the Barcode component to support Switzerland’s latest QR Bill regulations.

https://www.telerik.com/

Pegasystems new low-Code capabilities

May 4, 2021 / NewsShark

Pegasystems Inc. announced new low-code capabilities in Pega Platform that enable both professional and citizen developers to design modern user interfaces (UI) for their apps. By combining enhanced front-end design features with its back-end processing abilities, Pega helps any enterprise user to create more complete digital experiences from a single low-code platform.

The new Pega Platform capabilities combine Pega’s app authoring capabilities with out-of-the-box UX best practices to deliver a complete low-code app design and development solution. With a new UI architecture, enhanced design capabilities, and open APIs, users can both configure and design their app in the same easy-to-use low-code platform. In addition, built-in industry standards help enable front-end developers to readily integrate new UXs into their existing front ends. The new capabilities provide benefits for both businesspeople and professional developers looking to build applications, including: faster and more productive app interfaces, easier-to-use low-code design capabilities, and context-aware APIs that dynamically update as processes change.

The new Pega Platform design and development features will be available by the end of this quarter (Q2 2021) as part of the Pega Infinity 8.6 product release, which was also announced.

https://www.pega.com/products/platform/ux