This week we feature articles by Scott Lamb, and Matt Bornstein, Guido Appenzeller, & Martin Casado.

Additional reading from Mia Sato & Emma Roth, John Timmer, Steve Jones, and Allen Helton.

News comes from Digital Science & metaphacts, Zeta Alpha, WordSphere & DrupalWare, and Section.

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

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Opinion / Analysis

How we’re approaching AI-generated writing on Medium

This is a tricky issue for publishers, platforms, and writers, and given the infinite use cases and risk scenarios a general solution is not in the cards. Detection and enforcement efforts may provide some situational utility, but will be a whack-a-mole-like. Readers will, (or should), be concerned as provenance, source quality, and trust become more difficult to establish. Scott Lamb describes Medium’s first steps to address the issue. It’s a thoughtful and reasonable start. (4 min, not including comments).

https://blog.medium.com/how-were-approaching-ai-generated-writing-on-medium-16ee8cb3bc89

Who owns the generative AI platform?

Or rather, how is the tech stack and market for generative AI evolving? Who will be able to build sustainable businesses in this market, and why? Matt Bornstein, Guido Appenzeller, & Martin Casado have a good overview for investors, analysts, enterprise organizations, startups, and computing infrastructure businesses (12 min).

https://a16z.com/2023/01/19/who-owns-the-generative-ai-platform/

More Reading

• What were they thinking? CNET found errors in ore than half of its AI-written stories. via The Verge
• What are companies doing with D-Wave’s quantum hardware? Not nothing. via Ars Technica
• Reporting is the albatross around data’s neck via Steve Jones
• How I built an open source serverless newsletter platform via  Ready, Set, Cloud!

All Gilbane Advisor issues

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Content technology news

Digital Science acquires metaphacts

metaphacts is a knowledge graph and decision intelligence software company. Its metaphactory platform helps accelerate knowledge graph adoption.
https://gilbane.com/2023/01/digital-science-acquires-metaphacts/

Zeta Alpha integrates GPT with its semantic neural engine

To provide reliable and explainable AI generated answers to enterprise search queries and improve productivity in search and knowledge management.
https://gilbane.com/2023/01/zeta-alpha-integrates-gpt-with-its-semantic-neural-engine/

WordSphere acquires DrupalWares

The WordPress website development company is also offering front-end and back-end development services for Drupal, BigCommerce, and Shopify.
https://gilbane.com/2023/01/wordsphere-acquires-drupalware/

Section enhancements to help setup and scale Mastodon servers

The platform automates the management of workloads with rules-based parameters to easily distribute and scale Mastodon instances globally.
https://gilbane.com/2023/01/section-enhancements-to-help-setup-and-scale-mastodon-servers/

All content technology news

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

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

This week we feature articles by Brian Eastwood and Amber Case.

Additional reading from Alan Morrison, Daniel Tunkelang, and Robbie Elmers.

News comes from One AI, Lexalytics, Algolia & Uniform, and Snowflake & Mobilize[.]Net.

You can view all previous issues on our site here.

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Opinion / Analysis

What is synthetic data — and how can it help you competitively?

You, or perhaps your boss, may be skeptical of using synthetic data — the unfortunate term does suggest sketchiness. If so, Brian Eastwood’s easy read might convince you to learn more. (7 min).

https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/what-synthetic-data-and-how-can-it-help-you-competitively

Why we need to know cybernetics

Amber Case argues that this 40s era approach to designing complex  systems is as relevant to product design as ever, or more so, given the complexity underlying not just mission-critical, but most enterprise and consumer applications. (8 min).

“There are so many complex systems in our lives that we’ve taken for granted for so long, that when we build new processes, we forget to consider how they integrate — or don’t, even to the point of grating on each other. When we forget to design and build from first principles, we risk making non-maintainable processes that can easily break.”

https://caseorganic.medium.com/why-we-need-to-know-cybernetics-f1dbbc4b5d8d

More Reading

• Throwing needles into haystacks. Don’t do it! via Daniel Tunkelang
• Preconditions for decoupled and decentralized data-centric systems. via Data Science Central
• No ending in sight… Google’s plan to replace cookies with its own Topics API protocol rejected by W3C via Tech News Space

All Gilbane Advisor issues

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Content technology news

Uniform and Algolia partner

The Uniform + Algolia integration uses Algolia search to automate the creation of digital experiences for marketing and commerce sites.
https://gilbane.com/2023/01/uniform-and-algolia-partner/

Snowflake to acquire Mobilize[.]net’s SnowConvert

The SnowConvert toolkit has long been a preferred solution for migrating customer workloads to Snowflake, reducing the need for manual coding.
https://gilbane.com/2023/01/snowflake-to-acquire-mobilize-nets-snowconvert/

Lexalytics expands NLP capabilities across foreign languages

Lexalytics expands NLP capabilities across foreign languages – The natural language processing (NLP) technology improved accuracy and expanded NLP capabilities for 11 non-English languages.
https://gilbane.com/2023/01/lexalytics-expands-nlp-capabilities-across-foreign-languages/

One AI Language solution for developers now in AWS Marketplace

The natural language processing (NLP) platform allows developers to analyze and process large amounts of text, audio and video data through an API.
https://gilbane.com/2023/01/one-ai-language-solution-for-developers-now-in-aws-marketplace/

All content technology news

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

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

This week we feature articles by Bojan Ciric, and Jad Esber & Scott Duke Kominers.

Additional reading from Shenyang Huang, Emanuele Rossi, Michael Galkin & Kellin Pelrine, Tanya O’Carroll & Julia Angwin, and Tony Stubblebine.

News comes from Vercel and Sitecore, Bloomreach, Solodev, and NewSpark[.]io.

You can view all previous issues on our site here.

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Opinion / Analysis

Knowledge graph adoption — sales pitch for getting executive support

Bojan Ciric has some good advice on getting buy-in.

This article is my take to resolve the communication gap where the knowledge graph concept and its potential to generate business outcomes is not properly communicated to the executives who have the decision capacity to give the “go” for knowledge graph enablement. (6 min).

https://medium.com/the-future-of-data/knowledge-graph-adoption-sales-pitch-for-executive-support-ebb1a662a096

Progressive decentralization: a high-level framework

Decentralization may be a core requirement of web3, but its utility is not limited to web3 or crypto. Nor is decentralization the answer to every business objective. It is also not easy. Jad Esber and Scott Duke Kominers (and of course a16z Crypto) are clearly believers in decentralization, but argue for a balanced and flexible approach on how, where, and when to adopt it. Their high-level framework is useful for broad senior management planning discussions. (9 min).

https://a16zcrypto.com/progressive-decentralization-a-high-level-framework/

More Reading

• For graph geeks. Temporal Graph Learning in 2023. via Towards Data Science 
• Will Europe’s privacy bill of rights ever truly be enforced? Good question. via The Markup
  
• Interesting… Medium embraces Mastodon via 3 Min Read

All Gilbane Advisor issues

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Content technology news

Bloomreach adds catalog management feature

The new feature means business users can view, debug, and test new API call types against all of their product catalogs in one place.
https://gilbane.com/2023/01/bloomreach-adds-catalog-management-feature/

Vercel and Sitecore partner

Vercel’s platform for front-end developers and Sitecore’s content management and other products, will help clients build composable digital experiences.
https://gilbane.com/2023/01/vercel-and-sitecore-partner/

Solodev launches serverless CMS

The Serverless CMS provides composable services for traditional and headless websites and apps, including Jamstack frameworks like React.
https://gilbane.com/2023/01/solodev-launches-serverless-cms/

NewSpark[.]io updates digital asset management platform

The Media Manager uses NewSpark’s AI tagging tool uses computer vision to analyze and automatically tag assets with relevant keywords and phrases.
https://gilbane.com/2023/01/newspark-io-updates-digital-asset-management-platform/

All content technology news

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

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

This week we feature articles by Raluca Budiu and Tony Seale.

Additional reading from Heather Hedden, Michael Lodato, and Raymond Camden.

News comes from Progress Software & Marklogic, Confluent & Immerok, and Crownpeak & CI&T.

You can view all previous issues on our site here.

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Opinion / Analysis

The state of mobile user experience

Raluca Budiu haș a useful update on mobile UX. It has improved overall – so much so that you may have missed some of the details (as I did!). Badiu’s report is helpful for designers and developers, but also for users who can improve their own experience by learning what has changed. (8 min).

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/state-mobile-ux/

Building your connected data catalog

In November we recommended an article by Tony Seale on how you can more effectively manage data by inverting the data growth and integration problems within your organization based on a model inspired by schema.org. This post follows-up with a look at how using a shared definition of a data catalog contributes to the same goal. While this is technically doable, as Seale points out it can be difficult organizationally. But it is still important to understand and consider the possibilities for strategic planning. (11 min).

https://medium.com/@Tonyseale/building-your-connected-data-catalog-634674b41770

More Reading

• A Taxonomy definition is a tricky thing. via The Accidental Taxonomist
• Sound familiar?… I am a Silicon Valley CEO and I need a solution to the Trolley Problem by EOD via Slackjaw
  
• Useful for developers… Multiple performant operations with the new Adobe Document Services REST APIs via Adobe Tech Blog

All Gilbane Advisor issues

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Content technology news

Progress to acquire MarkLogic

Adds multi-model NoSQL database, semantic metadata management, and AI capabilities to its portfolio of products.
https://gilbane.com/2023/01/progress-to-acquire-marklogic/

Confluent to acquire Immerok

Confluent plans to accelerate the launch of a Flink offering that is compatible with its managed Kafka service, Confluent Cloud.
https://gilbane.com/2023/01/confluent-to-acquire-immerok/

CI&T and Crownpeak partner

The retail digital experience platform uses a composable commerce architecture with reusable components to support specialty retail.
https://gilbane.com/2023/01/cit-and-crownpeak-partner/

All content technology news

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

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

Wishing you all the best in the new year!

This week we feature articles by Kurt Cagle and Jacob Andreas.

Additional reading from Rand Fishkin, Vitalik Buterin, and Dan McCreary.

News comes from Acquia, Sinequa, Xpublisher, Drupal, and the European Broadcasting Union.

If you’ve missed any issues you can see them here.

👉 👉👉 You may have heard that Twitter is shutting down Revue, the product we have been using to send you this newsletter directly via email, on January 18. We have a new service ready to go, and you don’t need to do anything to keep receiving the Gilbane Advisor. Since we always publish our newsletter on https://gilbane.com you still have access to all previous and future issues there.

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Opinion / Analysis

What is a Semantic File System?

The Semantic File System, or SFS, is a powerful potential application for knowledge graphs that moves beyond the base triple store space and instead points to what could be a truly distributed file system across any number of different kinds of servers.

Kurt Cagle makes an excellent case for transitioning to a semantic file system, eventually. He points to Inrupt’s Solid Project as an experimental implementation. Solid was announced two years ago with little news since (see recent activity at https://forum.solidproject.org). But read Cagle’s article first to stay ahead of your peers on this topic. (6 min).

https://thecaglereport.com/2022/11/28/what-is-a-semantic-file-system/

Language models as agent models

It is not easy to reconcile the actual limitations of machine learning with some of the impressive results of applications based on large language models, resulting in much debate about their ultimate utility.

Jacob Andreas argues that big language models can, at least in some very narrow situations, “model agency and communicative intent”, without being “in any general sense human-like”. His research and explanation make for a good case. The paper is clear, accessible, and an important read for anyone following language model debates. (28 min).

https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.01681

More Reading

• A must read if you’re keeping up with blockchain applications… What in the Ethereum application ecosystem excites me via Vitalik Buterin
• Integrating siloed personal knowledge graphs to improve organizational knowledge. via Dan McCreary
• Why marketers, creators, and brands should start using Mastodon ASAP, if nothing else it is a free new channel. via SparkToro

All Gilbane Advisor issues

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Content technology news

Acquia enhances customer data platform

Acquia CDP includes a unified data layer using Snowflake, direct SQL access, and integration with Acquia’s digital asset management system.
https://gilbane.com/2022/12/acquia-enhances-customer-data-platform/

Sinequa updates search cloud platform

Sinequa’s Neural Search benefits from four trained deep neural networks for improved relevance, ease of deployment, and tuning capabilities.
https://gilbane.com/2022/12/sinequa-updates-search-cloud-platform/

Drupal launches Drupal 10

Drupal 10 includes features for developers and content creators. A stronger developer and site builder and easier content authoring and editing.
https://gilbane.com/2022/12/drupal-launches-drupal-10-open-source-cms/

Xpublisher announces SaaS architecture

Beginning January 1, 2023, Xpublisher will be available in a high-security cloud environment and feature a new design, enhanced functionality.
https://gilbane.com/2022/12/xpublisher-announces-saas-architecture/

European Broadcasting Union announces EBUCorePlus

EBUCorePlus is specified using the ontology web language is strictly semantic. A free CorePlus Demonstrator Kit (CDK) helps with development skills.
https://gilbane.com/2022/12/european-broadcasting-union-announces-ebucoreplus/

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 | View online | Editorial policy | Privacy policy | Contact

This week we feature articles by Tony Seale, Dan McCreary, and Jon Udell.

Additional reading from Sayash Kapoor & Arvind Narayanan, Tim Bray, Steven Levy, and Anastasia Prokhorova.

News comes from Squirro & Semantic Web Company, Datadobi, Acquia, and Drupal.

If you’ve missed any of the past 65 issues you can see them here; those, as well as all earlier issues can be found here.

👉 We don’t usually publish in December. Though for some reason we made an exception last year and published three issues, so who knows?

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Opinion / Analysis

Building your own schema.org

Data integration is rarely easy for any organization, but is a functional requirement that grows in complexity and cost as data and data applications ineluctably increase. Tony Seale explains how you can manage both these problems by inverting the data integration problem within your organization with a model inspired by schema.org. Seale, who has been building decentralized knowledge graphs for years and is currently doing so at UBS, packs a lot into this post at (8 min).

https://medium.com/@Tonyseale/building-your-own-schema-org-7600a90e690a

Systems thinking for knowledge management

We have recommended a number of articles by Dan McCreary on enterprise knowledge graphs. In this post McCreary looks at

… how we can use Systems Thinking to understand the dynamics of building your organization’s collective intelligence. We will review the key Causal Loop Diagrams (CLDs) as models we use to understand organizational knowledge capture and retention. Then we describe how we can use these models… (12 min).

https://towardsdatascience.com/systems-thinking-for-knowledge-management-dff03829cf5c

Autonomy, packet size, friction, fanout, and velocity

Interesting framing on the fediverse from Jon Udell (<2 min).

Nostalgia is a dangerous drug and it’s always risky to wallow in it. So those of us who fondly remember the early blogosphere, and now want to draw parallels to the fediverse, should do so carefully. But we do want to learn from history. Here’s one way to compare five generations of social software along the five dimensions named in the title of this post. 

https://blog.jonudell.net/2022/11/28/autonomy-packet-size-friction-fanout-and-velocity/

More Reading

• Telling examples… The bait and switch behind AI risk prediction tools via AI Snake Oil
• Fascinating background… AWS and Blockchain via ongoing
• Inside Meta’s Oversight Board: 2 years of pushing limits via Wired Backchannel
• 8 best practices for UI card design via UX Collective

All Gilbane Advisor issues

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Content technology news

Squirro partners with the Semantic Web Company

Joint proposition combines NLP and ML with knowledge graphs to intelligently augment enterprise decision-making.
https://gilbane.com/2022/11/squirro-partners-with-the-semantic-web-company/

Acquia readies support for Drupal 10

Acquia has contributed all updates required to make Acquia CMS compatible with Drupal 10 back to the Drupal community.
https://gilbane.com/2022/11/acquia-readies-support-for-drupal-10/

Datadobi introduces StorageMAP 6.3

Enables companies to archive, pipeline, and replicate unstructured data to object storage on-premises or in the cloud without lock-in.
https://gilbane.com/2022/11/datadobi-introduces-storagemap-6-3/

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 feature articles by Amber Case, and Jeff Jarvis.

Additional reading from Vera Smirnoff, Ellane W, and Jeremie Pineau.

News comes from Expert.ai, Bloomreach, Optimizely, and Neo4j.

If you’ve missed any of the past 64 issues you can see them here; those, as well as all earlier issues can be found here.

Note: We will most likely not publish next week.

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Opinion / Analysis

Browsers reimagined

Browsers are the lens through which we see the web. And considering how much the content of the web has changed over the past few decades … it sometimes feels a little strange that the browser experience has remained more or less the same.

Amber Case has some suggestions for future browsers / versions. (13 min).

https://caseorganic.medium.com/browsers-reimagined-2b53caca1114

Hope for a Post-Musk Net. A federated future and suggestions for citizens and institutions

Jeff Jarvis is not leaving Twitter. But he is also now happily on Mastodon, rooting for Bluesky, a fan of protocols over platforms, and owning your own presence and content. Having your own website and using platforms for additional distribution, as I do, is the way to go if you can, but protocols can help everyone get back some control. (8 min).

https://medium.com/whither-news/hope-for-a-post-musk-net-f156d0cdf431

More Reading

• How to create B2B content that doesn’t suck. For one thing, stop explaining the basics to pros. Yes please. via Vera Smirnoff
• Looks interesting… Meet the Mac app that’s connecting knowledge like no other. via Geek Culture
• Building sustainable dbt project documentation via ${around_the_block}

All Gilbane Advisor issues

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Content technology news

Bloomreach joins the MACH Alliance

The MACH Alliance certifies that Bloomreach meets the MACH standard of being Microservices based, API-first, Cloud-native SaaS, and Headless.
https://gilbane.com/2022/11/bloomreach-joins-the-mach-alliance/

Optimizely launches digital experience platform on Azure

Their content management system (CMS), and commerce, and personalization solutions are now available on the Microsoft Azure Marketplace.
https://gilbane.com/2022/11/optimizely-launches-digital-experience-platform-on-azure/

Expert.ai enhances hybrid AI platform

New capabilities fortify knowledge models, deliver new solutions for Life Science, harness language understanding for intelligent automation.
https://gilbane.com/2022/11/expert-ai-enhances-hybrid-ai-platform/

Neo4j releases Neoj4 5 graph database

Neo4j 5 improves query performance, and eases Fabric database creation, autonomous clustering, and operations and administration.
https://gilbane.com/2022/11/neo4j-releases-neoj4-5-graph-database/

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 feature articles by David Heinemeier Hansson, and Benedict Evans.

Additional reading from Karl Bode, Tushar Mehta, Patrick McFadin, and Gibbs Cullen.

News comes from Pinecone, Smartling, Access Innovations & Aptara, and Sonic Foundry.

If you’ve missed any of the past 63 issues you can see them here; those, as well as all earlier issues can be found here.

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Opinion / Analysis

Why we’re leaving the cloud

The cloud has never been the solution for everyone, but after years of marketing by cloud platforms, VCs, analysts, and the media, that may come as a surprise to some. We have covered some of the cost and control challenges before (here, here, here, and here). David Heinemeier Hansson explains why the cloud is not the right fit for his company and other “medium-sized” organizations. (4 min).

https://world.hey.com/dhh/why-we-re-leaving-the-cloud-654b47e0

Ways to think about a metaverse

I hesitate to include anything about “metaverse” these days as there is little to recommend besides this, this, and this post where Benedict Evans provides his useful elevated analysis. (10 min).

https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2022/10/31/ways-to-think-about-a-metaverse

More Reading

• Ready or not, here comes net neutrality war 2.0, from the trolls-under-the-bridge dept. via techdirt
• Handy… How to send a PDF or any EPUB ebook to your Kindle via SlashGear
• An Apache Cassandra breakthrough: ACID transactions via The New Stack
• More details on the hybrid search news item below… Introducing the hybrid index to enable keyword-aware semantic search via Pinecone

All Gilbane Advisor issues

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Content technology news

Pinecone launches hybrid search functionality

Keyword-aware semantic search solution enables advanced combination of semantic and keyword search results to businesses of all sizes.
https://gilbane.com/2022/10/pinecone-launches-hybrid-search-functionality/

Access Innovations and Aptara partner to provide digital publishing solutions

Both Aptara and Access Innovations have extensive content experience, from structuring to conversion and metadata enrichment.
https://gilbane.com/2022/11/access-innovations-and-aptara-partner-to-provide-digital-publishing-solutions/

Contentful announces new capabilities to content platform

Includes their vision and the new Contentful Studio product, platform orchestration capabilities, and App Framework.
https://gilbane.com/2022/10/contentful-announces-new-capabilities-to-content-platform/

Smartling expands Neural Machine Translation Hub

The NMT Hub is built to solve language translation issues difficult for single-engine approaches, to help web developers and content managers.
https://gilbane.com/2022/11/smartling-expands-neural-machine-translation-hub/

Sonic Foundry launches Video Solutions

Incorporates many services offered under Sonic Foundry’s Mediasite Events brand with a variety of additional enterprise-facing services.
https://gilbane.com/2022/11/sonic-foundry-launches-video-solutions/

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