Curated for content, computing, and digital experience professionals

Category: Content technology news (Page 93 of 624)

Curated information technology news for content technology, computing, and digital experience professionals. News items are edited to remove hype, unhelpful jargon, iffy statements, and quotes, to create a short summary — mostly limited to 200 words — of the important facts with a link back to a useful source for more information. News items are published using the date of the original source here and in our weekly email newsletter.

We focus on product news, but also include selected company news such as mergers and acquisitions and meaningful partnerships. All news items are edited by one of our analysts under the NewsShark byline.  See our Editorial Policy.

Note that we also publish news on X/Twitter. Follow us  @gilbane

Microsoft 365 updates for Mac users

Microsoft announced a number of updates for Macs and new versions of Microsoft 365 for Mac apps that run natively on Macs with M1. Office apps, Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote will take full advantage of the performance improvements on new Macs. The new apps are Universal so they will continue to run on Macs with Intel processors, and have been redesigned to match the new look of macOS Big Sur. Microsoft Teams is currently available in Rosetta emulation mode on Macs with M1 and the browser. We are working on universal app support for M1 Macs and will share more news as our work progresses.

The new Outlook for Mac is redesigned to match the look of macOS Big Sur, and an updated Office Start experience for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote for Mac that incorporates the Fluent UI design system. There is now support for iCloud accounts in the new Outlook for Mac. Other office productivity tools include natural language search, data extraction from photos to Excel, voice command additions, additional synchronization and sharing tools, a new modern commenting experience in Word for Mac, and Microsoft Information Protection sensitivity labels to classify and protect data through manual and automatic content labeling. For more details and availability see:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2020/12/15/4-ways-microsoft-365-is-improving-the-experience-for-mac-users/

Quantum acquires CatDV maker Square Box Systems

Quantum Corp. announced it has acquired Square Box Systems Ltd, a specialist in data cataloging, user collaboration, and digital asset management software. The acquisition builds on Quantum’s portfolio that classifies, manages, and protects data across its lifecycle by adding technology to enrich video, digital images and other forms of unstructured data. This acquisition will help companies unlock the business value contained in their data, both on-premises and in the cloud. Square Box Systems’ main product is CatDV, a media management and workflow automation software platform that helps organizations with large volumes of media and metadata to organize, communicate and collaborate more effectively. CatDV leverages artificial intelligence and machine learning technology to make it easier for businesses of any size to catalog and analyze digital assets such as video, images, audio files, PDFs, and more; enable advanced search across local and cloud repositories; and provide access control across the full data lifecycle for secure sharing and data governance.

https://www.quantum.com/catdv

Cambridge Quantum Computing advances ‘meaning-aware’ quantum natural language processing

Cambridge Quantum Computing (CQC) announced that it has built on earlier advances in “meaning- aware” Quantum Natural Language Processing (QNLP), establishing that QNLP is quantum-native with expected near-term advantages over classical computers. Natural language processing (NLP) is at the forefront of advances in contemporary artificial intelligence, and it is arguably one of the most challenging areas of the field. “Meaning-aware” NLP remains a distant aspiration using classical computers. The steady growth of quantum hardware and notable improvements in the implementation of quantum algorithms mean that we are approaching an era when quantum computers might perform tasks that cannot be done on classical computers with a reasonable amount of resources in a repeatable manner, and which are important and suitable for everyday use. In papers posted on arXiv – the scientific e-print repository, CQC’s scientists provide conceptual and mathematical foundations for near-term QNLP in quantum computer scientist-friendly terms. The paper is written in an expository style with tools that provide mathematical generality.

Aiming to canonically combine linguistic meanings with rich linguistic structure, most notably grammar, Professor Bob Coecke (Oxford University) and his team have proven that a quantum computer can achieve “meaning aware” NLP, thus establishing QNLP as quantum-native, on par with the simulation of quantum systems. Moreover, the leading Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) paradigm for encoding classical data on quantum hardware – variational quantum circuits – makes NISQ exceptionally QNLP-friendly.

https://cambridgequantum.com, https://arxiv.org/pdf/2012.03755.pdf

DataStax delivers new API stack

DataStax announced a new API stack for modern data apps. Stargate, an open-source API framework for data first unveiled this summer, is now generally available in DataStax’s Astra cloud database and for free download on GitHub. The integration of Stargate into Astra enables developers to use any data store for modern data apps by adding support for new APIs, data types, and access methods. Developers no longer need to work with different databases and different APIs to power modern data apps. Developers can build data apps with:

  • Apache Cassandra: the open-source NoSQL database to manage data at global-scale.
  • K8ssandra: an open-source distribution that enables elastic scale for data on Kubernetes.
  • Stargate: an open-source API framework that enables developers to use their choice of schemaless JSON, GraphQL, and REST APIs.

And benefit from:

  • Choice of APIs — Developers can use their choice of the REST API, GraphQL API or schemaless Document API to access data.
  • No modeling — By using the Document API, developers can store JSON objects in Astra, without doing up front modeling. Developers can easily prototype without having to pre-define schema and queries.

https://www.datastax.com/blog/2020/12/announcing-stargate-10-astra-rest-graphql-schemaless-json-your-cassandra-development

Ontotext releases GraphDB 9.5

Ontotext released GraphDB 9.5, which includes data virtualization from tables to graphs and back. GraphDB makes it easy to turn any structured data into an uniform graph – one can access data in relational databases as a virtual graph as well as transform and reconcile tabular data into graphs with unambiguous semantics. GraphDB also makes it easy to consume data – along with the SPARQL protocol and the GraphQL interfaces, data can be accessed via JDBC to suit BI tools and a wide range of legacy systems.

The new release extends the JDBC driver for GraphDB functionality with a user-friendly interface to manage the SQL views. Part of GraphDB’s Workbench, the interface eliminates the need to access the database file system and performs validations of the input SPARQL query and its binding to SQL value types. All users with read access privileges can list the currently active SQL views, and those with write can create or modify them. The release brings also includes improved security and single sign-on support, performance optimizations, and bug fixes to SHACL validation and cluster support, upgrade to the latest version of RDF4J and upgraded connectors to Lucene, SOLR, and ElasticSearch.

https://www.ontotext.com/products/graphdb/

Arc Publishing integrates Sophi.io

Arc Publishing and Sophi.io announced the integration of Sophi, The Globe and Mail’s suite of automation and predictive analytics solutions. These native integrations will be available to the more than 1,400 websites using the Arc Publishing platform and build on Arc’s current integrations and capabilities. The Sophi Analytics native Arc integration is built into Arc Themes by default, eliminating the need for custom tagging. This builds on Sophi’s Arc Home integration, bringing web analytics data into the Arc workflow and helping publishers understand the value of their content as they work. In addition to analytics, the partnership brings a native integration between Arc’s low-code/no-code site editor, PageBuilder, and Sophi Automation. This automated content curation solution uses predictive capabilities, natural language processing (NLP) and optimization routines to help publishers automatically identify, and promote, their content across their Arc-powered properties.

https://www.arcpublishing.com/, https://www.sophi.io

Cisco announces new Webex App Hub

Cisco announced a new Webex App Hub at WebexOne. The new Webex App Hub is a collaboration app ecosystem that includes prebuilt integrations. These integrations make it easy for users to move seamlessly between their favorite apps and for IT to simplify workloads by adding Webex into existing applications. Our platform starts with a programmability and extensibility layer via our open APIs and SDKs. This lets anyone get the capabilities they need with Webex, across calling, messaging, meetings, devices, intelligence and analytics. Integrations in the announcement include: Box, Dropbox, Miro, MURAL, Salesforce, ServiceNow and Workplace from Facebook, with more coming soon.

The App Hub is where we make it easy for users to find and use integrations within a Webex messaging space, and soon you’ll be able to experience the same thing in a Webex meeting. Users will be able to add and collaborate with third-party applications while in a Webex meeting, then save the work to follow up afterwards. The App Hub is also for IT managers who are looking to make native integrations company-wide.

https://www.cisco.com

Glue updates collaboration platform

Glue Collaboration, provider of collaborative, real-time VR software services, announced a new release of Glue that enables greater immersion and frictionless interaction for remote teams as they co-create, learn, plan and share. Glue provides shared virtual environments where dispersed participants can come together as if they were face to face in a real physical space. Appealing to people’s visual, haptic and auditory senses, Glue provides a level of immersion in remote meetings simply not possible with conventional video conferencing software.

Glue introduced new expressive avatars that use artificial intelligence and advanced graphics to more closely mimic people’s behavior and features to make communication feel as natural as it does in the real world. Using the new built-in avatar configurator, users can also create their own avatar, adjusting face shape and features, hair and clothing as well as customizing colors. Millions of permutations are possible. The new operating system comes with speech-to-text technology, a new whiteboard for ideation, now also accessible to non-VR Glue users, as well as a camera that zooms and shoots in the resolution users choose. Glue has also made improvements to the way users manage their teams, files and spaces.

https://www.glue.work

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