We’re publishing a day early this week due to the Thanksgiving holiday here in the U.S. While the holiday is on Thursday, a large part of the population checks out tomorrow.

This week we have articles from Siobhan Roberts and James Governor. News comes from Netlify and OneGraph, Snowflake, Datadobi, and Databricks.

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Opinion / Analysis

An E. coli biocomputer solves a maze by sharing the work

E. coli thrives in our guts, sometimes to unfortunate effect, and it facilitates scientific advances—in DNA, biofuels, and Pfizer’s covid vaccine, to name but a few. Now this multitalented bacterium has a new trick: it can solve a classic computational maze problem using distributed computing—dividing up the necessary calculations among different types of genetically engineered cells.

Siobhan Roberts reports on how this promising and fascinating feat of synthetic biology was accomplished.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/11/09/1039107/e-coli-maze-solving-biocomputer/

The great smooshing: fragmentation and not fragmentation in technology infrastructure

Of course there is bundling and unbundling, but that is just one piece of the larger, more complex, and eternal software opera. James Governor explains and demonstrates the smooshing etc., and describes the current state of the cycle.

https://redmonk.com/jgovernor/2021/11/15/the-great-smooshing-fragmentation-and-not-fragmentation-in-technology-infrastructure/

More reading…

• Great way to think about it… Digital privacy is now an unstoppable “Three Body Problem” via Mobile Dev Memo
• Excellent case study. (yes, it’s Zillow)… A $9B AI fail via Gianluca Mauro
• Learning how AlphaZero learned?… ♟♟ Chess learning explainability via TheSequence

All Gilbane Advisor issues

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Content technology news

Netlify acquires OneGraph GraphQL platform

OneGraph will drive innovation in the Netlify platform to make it easier to build and manage integrations across third-party services and access internal services and data.
https://gilbane.com/2021/11/netlify-acquires-onegraph-graphql-platform/

Snowflake announces Python support and more

To help organizations operate across clouds and regions & data engineering and data science teams build pipelines, ML workflows, and applications faster.
https://gilbane.com/2021/11/snowflake-announces-python-support-and-more/

Datadobi introduces DobiMigrate API

DobiMigrate Version 5.13’s new API will allow organizations to programmatically configure unstructured data migrations using the API.
https://gilbane.com/2021/11/datadobi-introduces-dobimigrate-api/

Databricks launches Partner Connect

To make it easier for customers to discover and connect popular data, analytics, and AI tools to their lakehouse, and deliver native product integrations.
https://gilbane.com/2021/11/databricks-launches-partner-connect/

All content technology news

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The Gilbane Advisor is curated by Frank Gilbane for content technology, computing, and digital experience professionals. The focus is on strategic technologies. We publish recommended articles and content technology news weekly. We do not sell or share personal data.

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This week we have articles from Christine Vallaure and Simon Yuen. News comes from The Enterprise Knowledge Graph Foundation (EKGF), BA Insight, MediaValet and FFW, Kyndryl and Microsoft, and Lucid.

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Opinion / Analysis

An era of digital humans

The process to create a digital human is extremely labor-intensive and manual. NVIDIA is researching tools and developing ways to accelerate and simplify digital human creation — and we believe AI and simulation is the key to doing this.

Simon Yuen leads NVIDIA’s Digital Human efforts and explains what they are doing to make digital humans more realistic and useful for a wide range of applications. There are also a couple of fascinating short videos.

https://medium.com/@nvidiaomniverse/an-era-of-digital-humans-bfa10d41e289

Why designers should move from px to rem — and how to do that in Figma

If you are anything like me, you happily used Pixel (px) in Sketch and Figma during the past years without thinking much about it. It is the unit they gave me. Surely it is correct, and if not, the development team can fix that, no? Plus, there are a lot of people saying my design should be pixel perfect, right?

Christine Vallaure points out that designing only with pixels conflicts with accessibility requirements, and then provides a deep dive on why, and what can be done about it. She is writing for other designers, and developers, but the article will be illuminating for anyone interested in web design and/or accessibility.

https://uxdesign.cc/why-designers-should-move-from-px-to-rem-and-how-to-do-that-in-figma-c0ea23e07a15

More reading…

• So simple it doesn’t even look like AR at first, but effective… Walmart’s augmented reality app is perfectly low-key via Debugger
• Not at all simple. Impressive… Light Field Lab’s new naked-eye holograms via Charlie Fink. Demos at https://www.lightfieldlab.com
• Mining all those PDFs, including for entities… Natural language processing, Adobe PDF Extract, and deep PDF intelligence, via Adobe Tech Blog
• Great idea. Normalizing datasets and UI… Hugging Face Introduces ‘Datasets’: A Lightweight Community Library For Natural Language Processing (NLP) via Martech Post

All Gilbane Advisor issues

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Content technology news

Enterprise Knowledge Graph Foundation (EKGF) releases draft maturity model

The open source EKG/MM is a collaboration of experts and practitioners designed to promote best practices across the knowledge graph community.
https://gilbane.com/2021/11/enterprise-knowledge-graph-foundation-ekgf-releases-draft-maturity-model/

BA Insight for Amazon OpenSearch Service and BA Insight for Amazon Kendra now in AWS Marketplace

Offerings provide customers the ability to easily subscribe to the BA Insight technology stack directly through their existing AWS accounts.
https://gilbane.com/2021/11/ba-insight-for-amazon-opensearch-service-and-ba-insight-for-amazon-kendra-now-in-aws-marketplace/

MediaValet partners with FFW

FFW customers will be able to aggregate, secure, organize and access their digital assets as their organizations grow.
https://gilbane.com/2021/11/mediavalet-partners-with-ffw/

Kyndryl and Microsoft establish global strategic partnership

To accelerate digital transformation across industries built on the Microsoft Cloud to accelerate hybrid cloud adoption, modernize applications and processes.
https://gilbane.com/2021/11/kyndryl-and-microsoft-establish-global-strategic-partnership/

Lucid updates Lucidspark integration with Teams

The new integration feature allows users to collaborate and interact with a Lucidspark board directly within a Teams meeting, sharing it to the meeting stage.
https://gilbane.com/2021/11/lucid-updates-lucidspark-integration-with-teams/

All content technology news

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The Gilbane Advisor is curated by Frank Gilbane for content technology, computing, and digital experience professionals. The focus is on strategic technologies. We publish recommended articles and content technology news weekly. We do not sell or share personal data.

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

This week we have articles from Scott Brinker, and Benedict Evans. News comes from Contentful and Vaimo, Liferay, Bridgeline and Luminos, and Microsoft.

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Opinion / Analysis

Commerce is the latest (renewed) frontier in martech

Scott Brinker has a short post about how important digital commerce has become in martech stack near-term budget planning. As the chart above shows, digital commerce tools are at the top of the list at 43%. “The second most anticipated addition by 34% of respondents? Digital experience platforms (DXP), which, frankly, are often the engines through which commerce-related content and experiences are deployed.”. Note the chart also shows content management systems (CMS), largely the same vendors as DXPs, as the fourth choice at 25%. Content and digital commerce have a long history predating the dot-com crash, but the difficulty of integrating the necessary systems and organizations has held back progress. Scott also shares a Gartner chart showing a big jump coming in B2B procurement through websites. Looks like content and commerce have a big future in martech land.

https://chiefmartec.com/2021/10/commerce-is-the-latest-renewed-frontier-in-martech/

Metabrand

The most popular link from last week’s issue was Ethan Zuckerman’s article on Facebook’s metamove, largely about the technical challenges of metaverses. Benedict Evans is no less skeptical, but because of the history of such large company reinventions.

… it seems to me that the real rebrand this week wasn’t Facebook to Meta but VR to Metaverse. VR is an old and pretty stale term – a dad brand – and Facebook wants to make VR into much more than just a headset and some games. It’s trying to make that happen through sheer weight of investment, effort and organisational mass – Moore’s law plus money and momentum will pull this into existence out of thin air (it hopes). Rebranding, reconceptualising, and relaunching might be part of that. The trouble is…

https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2021/11/7/metabrand

More reading…

• The initiative is not new but the tool is… Adobe and news orgs are working on a new tool that could identify a photo’s origin — and combat misinformation via NiemanLab
• Caught… Clearview finally submits AI for independent testing; only tests feature it isn’t actually selling via Techdirt
• Ouch… AMP has irreparably damaged publishers’ trust in Google-led initiatives via WP Tavern
• Toward speech recognition for uncommon spoken languages via MIT

All Gilbane Advisor issues

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Content technology news

Vaimo partners with Contentful

B2B and B2C merchants need flexibility from their digital technology stack. With Contentful’s platform Vaimo can provide a headless or suite approach to digital solutions.
https://gilbane.com/2021/11/vaimo-partners-with-contentful/

Liferay unveils DXP 7.4

Liferay’s digital experience platform DXP 7.4 delivers new capabilities that allow all users to deliver and optimize digital experiences.
https://gilbane.com/2021/11/liferay-unveils-dxp-7-4/

Microsoft introduces Microsoft Loop

A new app that combines a flexible canvas with portable Fluid components that move freely and stay in sync across apps for team collaboration.
https://gilbane.com/2021/11/microsoft-introduces-microsoft-loop/

Bridgeline and Luminos Labs to productize Hawksearch connector for Optimizely

The Optimizely B2C connector is already used by B2C platform customers and adds to integrations with Salesforce B2B Commerce, Big Commerce, Magento.
https://gilbane.com/2021/11/bridgeline-and-luminos-labs-to-productize-hawksearch-connector-for-optimizely/

Microsoft unveils Mesh for Microsoft Teams

Mesh builds on Teams features such as Together mode and Presenter mode that make remote and hybrid meetings more collaborative and immersive.
https://gilbane.com/2021/11/microsoft-unveils-mesh-for-microsoft-teams/

All content technology news

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The Gilbane Advisor is curated by Frank Gilbane for content technology, computing, and digital experience professionals. The focus is on strategic technologies. We publish recommended articles and content technology news weekly. We do not sell or share personal data.

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

This week we have articles from Francois Brill, and Ethan Zuckerman. News comes from Neeva and NewsGuard, Acquia, Adobe, Franz, and Progress.

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Opinion / Analysis

The start of a new era for responsive web design

In today’s terms, when we say Responsive Design, we think of a page that adapts its layout to the overall browser, screen size and the limitations projected onto the entire layout. We use media queries to change the whole page layout as we resize the design from a desktop to a mobile size… Very soon, using this approach to Responsive Design, might be considered as outdated as using tables for page layout — like we did in the ’90s.

Francois Brill explains why it’s time to start planning for the user experience improvements possible with new capabilities coming to CSS, such as user-preference queries, container styles, and container queries. These will take responsive design to a new level. While not ready for prime time, designers can see and experiment with current versions of these.

https://uxdesign.cc/the-start-of-a-new-era-for-responsive-web-design-6658a6bbeb9b

The metaverse was lame even before Facebook

“It was terrible then, and it’s terrible now.” Ethan Zuckerman is far from the only critic of Facebook’s metaverse pivot but his critique may be the most comprehensive and enjoyable read. There is more metaverse history than you think and the technology is still harder and further away than most realize.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2021/10/facebook-metaverse-was-always-terrible/620546/

More reading…

• API indexing explained… IndexNow and the future of web crawling via Kevin Indig
• Cowriting an album with AI… Why a neural net is like ‘a chain of guitar pedals’ via Clive Thompson
• Hmmm… How to manipulate customers… ethically via HBR

All Gilbane Advisor issues

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Content technology news

Neeva and NewsGuard team up for independent assessments of news sources in search

Neeva’s search engine will deliver NewsGuard’s labels – credible and transparent news assessments in search results.
https://gilbane.com/2021/11/neeva-and-newsguard-team-up-for-independent-assessments-of-news-sources-in-search/

Acquia builds out Digital Experience Platform (DXP)

Drupal Cloud and Marketing Cloud updates make it easier to launch new websites, applications and marketing campaigns with modular components.
https://gilbane.com/2021/10/acquia-builds-out-digital-experience-platform-dxp/

Adobe announced the next generation of Creative Cloud

Updates across Creative Cloud apps, addition of Frame.io and advanced 3D and immersive authoring abilities, collaboration capabilities, more.
https://gilbane.com/2021/10/adobe-announced-the-next-generation-of-creative-cloud/

Franz releases AllegroGraph 7.2

Provides Data Fabric tools, including Graph Neural Networks, Graph Virtualization, Apache Spark graph analytics & streaming graph pipelines.
https://gilbane.com/2021/10/franz-releases-allegrograph-7-2/

Progress releases MOVEit 2021.1

With improved levels of, resilience, scalability, usability and support for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) compliance.
https://gilbane.com/2021/10/progress-releases-moveit-2021-1/

All content technology news

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The Gilbane Advisor is curated by Frank Gilbane for content technology, computing, and digital experience professionals. The focus is on strategic technologies. We publish recommended articles and content technology news weekly. We do not sell or share personal data.

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

This week we have articles from Michael Andrews, and Minh Cung and Simon Hammond. News comes from Contentstack, Gatsby, Cloudflare and Microsoft, and Syncro Soft.

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Opinion / Analysis

Taxonomy makes the world go round

Taxonomy, like the money supply or the ozone layer, is a stealthy — yet fundamental — concept in our lives that, unfortunately, only a few people know much about. Taxonomy makes the world go around: all kinds of things would stop moving without it. But only a small number of people — either inside or outside of the world of the web that manages our lives online — can explain what a taxonomy actually does. It’s generally a vague concept to designers and developers. Business people often have little idea what it is or why it matters. Even many information architects, and other people with backgrounds in library science, tend to ignore the social and economic significance of taxonomies.

Michael Andrews’ non-technical article is a worthy read for all those mentioned above. 

https://storyneedle.com/taxonomy-makes-the-world-go-round/

How to design in every language at once

Yes, it sounds unlikely – localization is much harder than simple machine translation. Minh Cung and Simon Hammond and Canva’s engineering team are undaunted, and in this article share their ambitious goal and generously describe how they are implementing it.

https://canvatechblog.com/how-to-design-in-every-language-at-once-f2dd66a2780f

More reading…

• Jaguar target sense verification… Label unstructured data using Enterprise Knowledge Graphs 3 via Artem Revenko
• Not jaguar… A Porsche digital twin: driven by data streaming & NoSQL via Porsche AG
• Advice for users and vendors… DAM scalability challenges part 1 – the digital asset supply chain via Digital Asset Management News

All Gilbane Advisor issues

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Content technology news

Contentstack acquires division of Raw Engineering

The team of 50+ CMS and integration experts will join Contentstack for a new offering of “Enablement Services” to customers and partners.
https://gilbane.com/2021/10/contentstack-acquires-division-of-raw-engineering/

Gatsby 4 Web Framework is released

New features include new page rendering modes, parallel query processing, and improved Gatsby Cloud preview.
https://gilbane.com/2021/10/gatsby-4-web-framework-is-released/

Cloudflare collaborates with Microsoft and search engines to help improve websites’ search results

Cloudflare and Microsoft will allow websites to automatically notify search engines when content is created, updated, deleted as part of the The IndexNow.org initiative.
https://gilbane.com/2021/10/cloudflare-collaborates-with-microsoft-and-search-engines-to-help-improve-websites-search-results/

Syncro Soft announces the release of Version 24 of the Oxygen XML suite of products

Suite includes: Oxygen XML Editor, Author, Developer, Web Author, Publishing Engine, WebHelp, PDF Chemistry, and Oxygen XML Scripting.
https://gilbane.com/2021/10/syncro-soft-announces-the-release-of-version-24-of-the-oxygen-xml-suite-of-products/

All content technology news

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The Gilbane Advisor is curated by Frank Gilbane for content technology, computing, and digital experience professionals. The focus is on strategic technologies. We publish recommended articles and content technology news weekly. We do not sell or share personal data.

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

This week we have articles from John Ball and Stephen O’Grady. News comes from Cloudinary, Coveo and Qubit, Contentful and Conscia, Alation and Lyngo, and DataStax.

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Opinion / Analysis

Solving the NLU crisis: next steps

“Crisis” may seem a dramatic way to describe the current state of natural language understanding given the impressive demonstrations of large language models. But there is an inflection point here, or coming soon, where progress stalls. Last week’s recommended article by Walid Saba argued that current ML approaches are flawed.

This week, John Ball makes the case for combining linguistics, neuroscience, and computer science for an approach to NLU that is closer to how humans learn, without “reading thousands of books and memorising colocation patterns and probabilities”. He provides an example to explain how this works (with a link to a short video that is helpful after reading the article). This is not a silver bullet since there is domain expertise, effort, and their cost in application, but it does promise better NLU results.

Saba and Ball both have companies in stealth mode but regularly publish articles on their approaches with supporting research for further evaluation.

https://medium.com/pat-inc/solving-the-nlu-crisis-next-steps-5ce23ec7eef9

Fragmentation leads to abstractions which lead to what?

Buyers of enterprise software have a wider and richer range of choices than ever, but this comes with increasingly complex decision-making as central versus functional needs diverge, and increasing software fragmentation costs make integrated software services appealing even when not optimal. Will AWS, Google, and Microsoft compete on native integrated services? How will independent software / service suppliers deal with this? How will enterprise customers react? Stephen O’Grady provides some useful thoughts on how this will play out.

https://redmonk.com/sogrady/2021/09/20/fragmentation-abstractions/

More reading…

• Lots of detail… The 2021 Machine learning, AI and Data (MAD) landscape via Matt Turck
• An ongoing project, but also a useful example… A Guide to describe Legislation in schema.org via EUR-Lex
• Network-based platforms must be regulated. But how?, A thoughtful and realistic look via HBR
• Advice on priorities… Balance your search budget! via Daniel Tunkelang

All Gilbane Advisor issues

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Content technology news

Cloudinary updates products

Media Optimizer and DAM enhancements: Media Optimizer self service, Apps for Digital Asset Management, and WordPress Plugin.
https://gilbane.com/2021/10/cloudinary-updates-products/

Coveo acquires Qubit

Their combined ecommerce experience provide solutions for retailers North America and Europe to meet consumer expectations around relevance.
https://gilbane.com/2021/10/coveo-acquires-qubit/

Contentful and Conscia launch Unify

A multi-space, no-code orchestration solution for personalization and headless commerce for all channels.
https://gilbane.com/2021/10/contentful-and-conscia-launch-unify/

Alation acquires Lyngo Analytics

Business data consumers without SQL expertise can ask questions in natural language and find data and insights without data analysts.
https://gilbane.com/2021/10/alation-acquires-lyngo-analytics/

DataStax extends Stargate

The new GraphQL API in Stargate allows developers to create tables and define schemas in Apache Cassandra without the need to work directly with CQL.
https://gilbane.com/2021/10/datastax-extends-stargate/

All content technology news

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The Gilbane Advisor is curated by Frank Gilbane for content technology, computing, and digital experience professionals. The focus is on strategic technologies. We publish recommended articles and content technology news weekly. We do not sell or share personal data.

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