Blair Hanley Frank

Author Archives: Blair Hanley Frank

Here’s how Google is preparing Android for the AI-laden future

The future of Android will be a lot smarter, thanks to new programming tools that Google unveiled on Wednesday. The company announced TensorFlow Lite, a version of its machine learning framework that’s designed to run on smartphones and other mobile devices, during the keynote address at its Google I/O developer conference.“TensorFlow Lite will leverage a new neural network API to tap into silicon-specific accelerators, and over time we expect to see [digital signal processing chips] specifically designed for neural network inference and training,” said Dave Burke, Google's vice president of engineering for Android. “We think these new capabilities will help power a next generation of on-device speech processing, visual search, augmented reality, and more.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google adds smart reply to Gmail for iOS, Android

Google is making it easier for people to dash off a quick email reply from Gmail on their smartphones. The Smart Reply feature, which offers a handful of contextually-aware, computer-generated responses, is coming to Google’s flagship email app for iOS and Android, the company announced at its I/O developer conference Wednesday.The feature provides users with three machine-generated responses, based on the content of whatever message the user is replying to. It’s built using machine learning, and is designed for use with smartphones, so that people on the go can dash off a reply to their correspondence partners without much effort.Smart Reply began its life as part of Inbox, Google’s alternate email client for smartphones. Right now, 12 percent of all email replies sent through that app are Smart Replies.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google’s new TPUs are here to accelerate AI training

Google has made another leap forward in the realm of machine learning hardware. The tech giant has begun deploying the second version of its Tensor Processing Unit, a specialized chip meant to accelerate machine learning applications, company CEO Sundar Pichai announced on Wednesday.The new Cloud TPU sports several improvements over its predecessor. Most notably, it supports training machine learning algorithms in addition to processing the results from existing models. Each chip can provide 180 teraflops of processing for those tasks. Google is also able to network the chips together in sets of what are called TPU Pods that allow even greater computational gains.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft, Amazon go after enterprises with new SAP cloud offerings

There are some fresh public cloud offerings on the horizon for SAP database customers, thanks to Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services. Both companies have announced new infrastructure services for the HANA database software aimed at giving customers tons of memory for workloads that need it.Azure customers will get access to M-series virtual machines that offer up to 3.5TB of RAM, designed for use with SAP’s database software. In addition, Microsoft announced Tuesday that it's working on new SAP HANA on Azure Large Instances to offer users between 4TB and 20TB of memory on a single machine specifically for use with software like the SAP Business Suite 4 HANA (S/4HANA).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft’s new tools help devs manage cloud deployments on the go

Microsoft is making it easier for developers to manage their cloud deployments on the go, using a new mobile app and browser-based command line.On Wednesday, the company unveiled Azure Cloud Shell, which lets developers spin up a full-fledged terminal environment inside Microsoft’s cloud and comes with a set of preconfigured tools for managing deployments. Each user will have persistent file storage in their Cloud Shell, hosted in Microsoft Azure.Cloud Shells are accessible through the Microsoft Azure web portal, as well as the Azure mobile app for iOS and Android, which was just released Wednesday. That app also provides users with the ability to monitor the workloads they have running in Microsoft’s public cloud and perform basic management like stopping and restarting virtual machines.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft takes its databases worldwide with Cosmos DB

Developers will have an easier time scaling their applications to meet global needs with a database product Microsoft updated on Wednesday. Called Cosmos DB, the service lets developers store data that can be replicated across any of the company’s 34 Azure public cloud regions.Cosmos is an expansion of DocumentDB, a managed NoSQL database service that Microsoft launched in 2015. Its key innovation is a feature that lets developers pick between five consistency models that range from "strong" to "eventual" consistency.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft brings customization to its pre-built AI services

Microsoft is doubling down on its cloud AI services for business customers with a fleet of new offerings aimed at helping companies deal with video and unique problems not solved by its off-the-shelf cognitive services.New services announced Wednesday include a new Video Indexer service that will provide customers with automated captioning, sentiment analysis, custom face recognition, object detection, optical character recognition and keyword extraction of videos they provide. The tool is built on existing Microsoft services, but gives customers an easier way to process large amounts of video for indexing and analysis rather than require manual work by humans.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Oracle’s next big business is selling your info

There’s a decent chance you're part of Oracle’s next big business. Not selling products to you, but selling you as a product. That's the idea behind the Oracle Data Cloud, a massive pool of information about consumers and companies.The tech titan has put it together by tracking people across the web and buying data from a variety of sources. People who have their data included may not even know that they’ve opted in for that data collection.There’s no big red button that someone has to click in order to be a part of the company's data collection machine. Instead, its base of user data is fed by a network of third parties. The Data Cloud is primarily fed by three types of sources: publishers, like Forbes and Edmunds, retail loyalty programs, and traditional data brokers like Experian and IHS.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Now Slack search can look for knowledgeable users and channels

How do you find someone in an organization who can answer a burning question? That’s what Slack is trying to answer with an update to its search feature that was released for larger teams on Wednesday.Users who search on topics, such as hiring procedures or sales contracts, will see a bubble pop up in the search results that highlights relevant users and channels for that topic. It’s designed to keep employees from wasting time navigating their companies.Improved search is important for Slack, which faces growing competition from rivals like Microsoft and Google. Microsoft Teams already has a bot that’s supposed to make it easier for users to find coworkers to answer questions.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Facebook’s text understanding AI is coming to a phone near you

Developers have a new tool to help mobile apps understand text, thanks to a Facebook open source project update on Tuesday. The social networking company’s AI research group released a new version of FastText, a programming library that’s designed to make it easier for developers to deploy text-focused machine learning systems.Using a technique the researchers are calling FastText.zip, developers can compact a language recognition model so that it takes up two orders of magnitude less memory while maintaining much of the accuracy they would get out of a non-compacted model. It’s a move that allows those models to be deployed on less powerful devices like smartphones and Raspberry Pis, making them more useful for a broader variety of applications.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google Cloud growth is outpacing the company’s ad business

Google is still an advertising company, but the tech titan’s cloud business is growing faster than its advertising revenue. That’s one of the key take-aways from the company’s first quarter earnings report released Thursday.Google Cloud Platform is one of the fastest-growing lines of revenue across Alphabet, the parent company that includes Google and other businesses like self-driving car maker Waymo, company CFO Ruth Porat said on a conference call with analysts. That growth is driven in part by a change in the way companies are working with Google Cloud.“Over the last several months, we have noticed a change in the types of conversations that Diane [Greene] and her team are having with customers,” Google CEO Sundar Pichai said. “Increasingly, we are being asked to partner for mission-critical projects and full migrations, moving data from on-prem data centers to the cloud. We are seeing a meaningful shift, and this momentum is resulting in a fast-growing business.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Box revises platform pricing to ease developer adoption

Box is trying to give developers who want to use its platform more pricing consistency with a new  announced Tuesday.Customers will now pay on the basis of how much active use they're getting out of the Box Platform, which offers cloud storage and content management capabilities for third-party applications. Companies can purchase packages from Box that include a set number of active users, API calls, bandwidth, and storage use.The first package costs US$500 per month and includes 100 monthly active users, 175,000 Box API calls, 125GB of bandwidth, and 125GB of storage in Box's cloud. The more packages companies purchase, the less they have to pay per package. For developers just getting started with the platform, there's a free tier that allows 10 monthly active users, 15,000 API calls, 10GB of bandwidth, and 10GB of storage.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft finds another use for LinkedIn with CRM integration

The moment Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff was dreading has arrived: Microsoft is wielding LinkedIn against Salesforce in the battle for the CRM market. Starting Tuesday, salespeople will get LinkedIn Sales Navigator data alongside other information in the Dynamics 365 Sales dashboard.Users who have both systems will see information from LinkedIn profiles inside the lead, contact, account and opportunity pages of Dynamics 365 Sales. Dynamics and LinkedIn Sales Navigator will sync their information every day so that LinkedIn’s system is up to date on activity from Microsoft’s CRM and vice versa.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft commits to twice yearly updates to Windows 10, Office 365

Microsoft is offering IT pros some new guidance on when they can expect major feature updates for Windows 10, Office 365's client applications, and System Center Configuration Manager.Office and Windows are slated to receive two major patches per year, one in March and the other in September. SCCM will be updated in time with those releases to facilitate deployments. That means the next major update to Windows 10, codenamed Redstone 3, is due out in September.On top of that, Microsoft confirmed that each feature release of Windows 10 will be supported for 18 months after it is first made generally available.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

OK Google, let’s get personal

A hotly anticipated upgrade to Google Home will let users train the company’s virtual assistant to recognize different voices and provide personalized responses to each person.When users set up speaker recognition, their Home devices will ask that they say “OK Google” and “Hey Google” two times each. Whenever someone uses one of those phrases in the future to ask the Google Assistant a question, the Home device being addressed will check to see if that person is one of its recognized conversation partners.That means two different people in the same household can each log into a Google Home device and set it up with their calendars and other preferences.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

SnapLogic’s AI simplifies enterprise software connections

SnapLogic wants to make it easier for users of its enterprise software integration platform to connect components of their business systems. The company has unveiled a new feature that uses machine learning to suggest what users may want to do.The idea behind the new feature, announced this week, is to make it easier to connect and move data between enterprise software systems. SnapLogic's service lets companies take a data source like a Concur instance, and synchronize that with information an ERP system like Microsoft Dynamics. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Docker wants to help put old enterprise apps into containers

Docker is offering enterprises an easier on-ramp to using containers with a new consulting program aimed at taking a legacy application and migrating it to a container in five days.The idea behind the program is to show companies the concrete benefits of moving older applications over to containers, without asking them to undergo a massive transformation effort. Docker is working with Cisco, Avanade, Microsoft, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise on the Modernize Traditional Applications program, which will focus on migrating an application to modern infrastructure and getting it set up inside a containerized environment.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Facebook wants you to hang out with your friends in VR

Facebook is making it possible to hang out with your friends in virtual reality using Spaces, a new app the company launched Tuesday for the Oculus Rift. The app will allow people to join a shared, immersive video call, represented by a personalized avatar.Using Spaces, people can hang out around a virtual reality table, share three-dimensional drawings and use the Rift’s built-in microphone to chat with one another. Users can also surround themselves and their friends with 360-degree photos and videos from Facebook’s library of content.People who don’t have a Rift headset can also be included in a Spaces hangout by using Facebook’s Messenger video calling functionality. Users will be able to view a Space from their smartphone, and have their video call shown inside the virtual reality environment.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Uber offers new dispatch service for businesses

Uber wants businesses to do away with shuttle buses for customers, and has launched a new service aimed at making it easier for companies to hail cars on other people’s behalf. Called Uber Central, the software lets users request cars even for people who don’t have accounts with the ride-hailing company.Here’s how it works: company employees who have access to the Uber Central console input a customer’s name and phone number, along with their pickup and drop-off address. After that, they can request a ride from Uber’s menu of services, or save the data as a draft for easier use later.The Uber Central dashboard, which is available worldwide, also lets employees track the status of rides. It’s built on top of Uber for Business, a version of the ride-hailing platform that has been built for use by companies rather than individuals.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Slack makes it easier to say you’re out to lunch

Slack is making it easier for coworkers to see what other people in their organization are up to, thanks to a new status-message feature unveiled Thursday.The functionality, which is rolling out to the messaging service’s customers over the next few days, lets users set a message in their profile that informs others about their activities.Statuses will show up next to users’ names inside Slack’s chat window, in their profiles, and next to their names in the Quick Switcher, which lets users easily switch between different chat channels and direct messages. Slack An illustration shows how Slack's custom status feature looks inside the service's desktop chat app.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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