The Gilbane Advisor

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

Gilbane Advisor 7-9-25 — Unified Data Architecture KG, modern DBs

July 9, 2025 /

This week we feature articles from Alex Hutter, Alexandre Bertails, Claire Wang, Haoyuan He, Kishore Banala, Peter Royal & Shervin Afshar, and Max Ganz II.

Additional reading comes from José Parra-Moyano, Patrick Reinmoeller & Karl Schmedders, Paolo Perrone, Umesh Bhatt, and Jim Clyde Monge.

News comes from Cloudflare, Grammarly & Superhuman, Syncro Soft, and RWS & Papercut.

Our summer schedule is quickly approaching. There will be one additional newsletter in July, and we’ll resume our regular schedule, such as it is, in September.

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

Opinion / Analysis

Model once, represent everywhere: UDA (Unified Data Architecture) at Netflix

A team from Netflix generously describes how they are tackling their data integration challenges. The case study addresses issues that stymie many modern data management efforts. It is a bit technical, but easily worth the effort.

“This post introduces the foundations of UDA as a knowledge graph, connecting domain models to data containers through mappings, and grounded in an in-house metamodel, or model of models, called Upper. Upper defines the language for domain modeling in UDA and enables projections that automatically generate schemas and pipelines across systems.” (15 min)

https://netflixtechblog.com/uda-unified-data-architecture-6a6aee261d8d

The different flavors modern databases come in

The actual title of the paper is Introduction to the fundamentals of Amazon Redshift, by Max Ganz. I chose the title above because even if you have no interest in Redshift, you’ll likely want to read this piece. As Tim Bray says, it “has one of the best explanations I’ve ever read of the different flavors modern databases come in”. Long but easy read. (44 min)

https://www.redshift-observatory.ch/white_papers/downloads/introduction_to_the_fundamentals_of_amazon_redshift.html

More Reading

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Content technology news

Cloudflare blocks AI crawlers accessing content by default

Websites choose if they want AI crawlers to access their content, and decide how AI companies can use it – AI companies can state their crawlers purpose.
https://www.cloudflare.com/press-releases/2025/cloudflare-just-changed-how-ai-crawlers-scrape-the-internet-at-large/

Syncro Soft releases Oxygen AI Positron Assistant 6.0

The Oxygen AI Positron Service brings model updates, subscription management for teams, allowing centralized purchase or renewal, and requires AI Positron add-ons version 4 or newer.
https://www.oxygenxml.com/ai_positron/whats_new.html

Grammarly to acquire Superhuman

The acquisition accelerates Grammarly’s evolution into an AI productivity platform for apps and agents, positioning email as a critical communication surface.
https://www.grammarly.com/blog/company/grammarly-to-acquire-superhuman/ ■ https://superhuman.com

RWS acquires Papercup’s IP

Papercup’s technology combines voice synthesis, unique AI voices and editorial tools for human language specialists to fine-tune the output.
https://www.rws.com/about/news/2025/rws-acquires-papercups-ip/ ■ https://www.papercup.com

All content technology news

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

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Syncro Soft releases Oxygen AI Positron Assistant 6.0

July 3, 2025 /

All Oxygen AI Positron Assistant 6.0 distributions now feature the advanced GPT-4.1 OpenAI model as default. All AI action prompts have improved quality, consistency, and reuse. The users of the Enterprise distribution get new connectors for Google Gemini and Vertex AI, as well as enhanced Microsoft Azure OpenAI integration and simplified configuration.

Oxygen AI Positron Assistant brings automatic validation and correction of AI-generated content, and smarter document context expansion for the AI Positron Fix action. User preferences and rules can be saved as persistent memories. AI context can be supplemented with additional files automatically, or by manually attaching files to conversations, and prompts can be entered using voice input. AI actions can be invoked directly from chat, the Improve Readability action supports audience level customization, and AI development actions are available for more document types.

Oxygen AI Positron Assistant for Eclipse now works with a broader range of editors (Java, Python, C/C++, Perl, and plain text). It offers a dedicated framework for developing custom AI actions, DITA documentation draft generation from configuration files, and AI-enabled templates for rapid creation of XSLT, XSD, Schematron, JSON Schema, and DTD files. Installation and updates are streamlined with the Eclipse update site support.

https://www.oxygenxml.com/ai_positron/whats_new.html

Cloudflare blocks AI crawlers accessing content by default

July 1, 2025 /

Cloudflare, Inc. a connectivity cloud company, announced it is now the first Internet infrastructure provider to block AI crawlers accessing content without permission or compensation, by default. Starting today, website owners can choose if they want AI crawlers to access their content, and decide how AI companies can use it. AI companies can also now clearly state their purpose – if their crawlers are used for training, inference, or search – to help website owners decide which crawlers to allow. Cloudflare’s new default setting is a step toward a more sustainable future for both content creators and AI innovators.

AI companies will now be required to obtain explicit permission from a website before scraping. Upon sign-up with Cloudflare, every new domain will now be asked if they want to allow AI crawlers, giving customers the choice upfront to explicitly allow or deny AI crawlers access. This significant shift means that every new domain starts with the default of control, and eliminates the need for webpage owners to manually configure their settings to opt out. Customers can easily check their settings and enable crawling at any time if they want their content to be freely accessed.

https://www.cloudflare.com/press-releases/2025/cloudflare-just-changed-how-ai-crawlers-scrape-the-internet-at-large

Grammarly to acquire Superhuman

June 30, 2025 /

Grammarly, an AI assistant for communication and productivity, announced its intent to acquire Superhuman, an AI-native email app that helps users respond faster and save hours every week on their email communications. This acquisition accelerates Grammarly’s evolution into an AI productivity platform for apps and agents, positioning email as a critical communication surface in the company’s vision of an agentic future.

Email is the number-one use case of Grammarly for professionals, with the AI assistant helping to revise over 50 million emails per week across more than 20 email providers, including Gmail, Outlook, Apple Mail, and Superhuman.

Superhuman brings more than productivity gains to the acquisition. Building on its impressive adoption, Superhuman is defining the future of email and evolving into a comprehensive workspace for agents. Now imagine taking that efficiency even further with AI agents that triage your inbox, schedule your meetings, perform deep research over all your content, and write full emails in your own voice and tone. Imagine those agents reasoning, problem-solving, incorporating detailed context about your work, and interacting with other systems and agents. This future platform will enable scenarios where users can work with multiple agents simultaneously.

https://www.grammarly.com/blog/company/grammarly-to-acquire-superhuman ■ https://superhuman.com

RWS acquires Papercup’s IP

June 26, 2025 /

RWS, a content solutions company powered by technology and human expertise, has acquired the intellectual property behind Papercup’s AI dubbing technology – known for its unique ability to reproduce a speaker’s tone, pace and emotion faithfully.

The acquisition is a strategic step in RWS’s wider plan to embed advanced AI across its technology stack, accelerating its ability to support enterprise clients with multilingual video, voice and content localization across multiple formats and channels.

Papercup’s technology combines voice synthesis, thousands of unique AI voices and editorial tools for human language specialists to fine-tune the output – offering control and quality output comparable to human dubbing by actors and artists, at a fraction of the cost and turnaround time.

While AI-only dubbing tools often fall short on critical elements like timing, voice consistency and speaker identification, RWS’s hybrid approach puts humans in the loop to optimize tone, pacing and accuracy – enabling video dubbing that’s both scalable and brand-consistent.

Enterprise clients can expect to unlock value from video content that was once too expensive or complex to localize. Papercup’s technology will now sit alongside RWS’s existing suite of language technologies – including Language Weaver for neural machine translation and the Trados platform.

https://www.rws.com/about/news/2025/rws-acquires-papercups-ip ■ https://www.papercup.com

Gilbane Advisor 6-25-25 — Designer CMSs, C2PA progress

June 25, 2025 /

This week we feature articles from Kate Holterhoff, and Tim Bray.

Additional reading comes from Andrej Karpathy, Ethan Mollick, and Arun Arora, Ido Segev, & Sub Datta.

News comes from CLX Europe & ALLSIDES Media, Algolia, Adobe, and Deepgram.

Our next issue arrives July 9.

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

Opinion / Analysis

Introducing the designer-first CMS

Kate Holterhoff explains the emergence of designer-first CMSs, discusses how other categories of CMSs have evolved, and provides a very useful description of today’s landscape. An excellent read for anyone in the market for a CMS. (11 min)

https://redmonk.com/kholterhoff/2025/06/03/introducing-the-designer-first-cms/

June 2025 C2PA news

Tim Bray has a positive update on the progress of the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA)…

“Things are happening in the C2PA world; here are a couple of useful steps forward, plus cheers and boos for Adobe. Plus a live working C2PA demo you can try out.” (6 min)

https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2025/06/17/More-C2PA

More Reading

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Content technology news

CLX Europe launches creative content studio in Paris focused on 3D scanning technology

Generative AI, high-resolution 3D scanning, and creative expertise to create digital content production for luxury fashion brands and eCommerce players.
https://www.clxeurope.com ■ https://www.allsides.tech

Algolia introduces context-aware retrieval for agents

Algolia introduces context-aware retrieval for agents — The MCP server enables LLMs and autonomous agents to retrieve, reason with, and act on real-time business context from Algolia.
https://www.algolia.com/about/news/algolia-introduces-context-aware-retrieval-for-the-agentic-era 

Adobe announces LLM Optimizer

LLM Optimizer enables businesses to monitor AI-driven traffic and benchmark brand visibility, with recommendations that can be quickly deployed across digital properties.
https://news.adobe.com/news/2025/06/adobe-llm-optimizer-empowers-businesses-drive-brand-visibility

Deepgram launches Voice Agent API

The Voice Agent API provides a single, unified API that integrates speech-to-text, LLM reasoning, and text-to-speech with built-in support for real-time conversational dynamics.
https://deepgram.com/learn/voice-agent-api-generally-available

All content technology news

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

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

CLX Europe launches creative content studio in Paris focused on 3D scanning technology

June 18, 2025 /

CLX Europe, an eClerx company, introduced its new content creation studio in Paris, France today, during its participation in Viva Technology 2025, Europe’s premier technology event.

Through CLX Europe’s partnership with ALLSIDES Media (previously Covision Media), this cutting-edge studio leverages generative AI, high-resolution 3D scanning, and creative expertise to seamlessly create digital content production for luxury fashion brands and eCommerce players.

Operational since February 2025, the studio deploys ALLSIDES technology to create immersive, photorealistic content that enhances digital storytelling and engagement. With this digital-first approach to creative content production, the Paris studio will be able to offer:

  • Automated 3D asset production: Re-lightable, reality-grade models with minimal manual intervention
  • Scalability and speed: High-volume, customized content creation for fast-paced digital demands
  • Omnichannel integration: Assets optimized for eCommerce, social media, AR/VR, and virtual try-ons

This approach will also further CLX Europe’s mission for more sustainable practices, dramatically reducing waste and greenhouse gas emissions for clients without sacrificing quality.

The addition of the Paris studio will not only allow CLX Europe to offer realistic-grade content production for luxury brands, but also open the door for the creation of groundbreaking 3D assets.

https://www.clxeurope.com ■ https://www.allsides.tech

Algolia introduces context-aware retrieval for agents

June 17, 2025 /

Algolia, an AI-native search and discovery platform, released its MCP Server, the first component in a broader strategy to support AI agents. This new offering enables large language models (LLMs) and autonomous agents to retrieve, reason with, and act on real-time business context from Algolia.

With the Algolia MCP Server, agents can access Algolia’s search, analytics, recommendations, and index configuration APIs through a standards-based, secure runtime. This turns Algolia into a real-time context surface for agents embedded in commerce, service, and productivity experiences. Additionally, Algolia’s explainability framework with its AI is included for enhanced transparency.

Algolia’s MCP Server is purpose-built for enterprise-grade agent orchestration, enforcing policy at the protocol layer to ensure agents operate within role- and context-sensitive boundaries. It provides end-to-end observability, making every agent-triggered decision fully traceable and inspectable. The platform also enables privacy-aware personalization that complies with regional regulations like GDPR and CCPA, without relying on invasive tracking.

Enterprise customers, developers, and partners can start building AI-native applications, copilots, and intelligent agents today. Algolia’s MCP Server supports Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol (MCP) and can be integrated with leading LLM runtimes.

https://www.algolia.com/about/news/algolia-introduces-context-aware-retrieval-for-the-agentic-era

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