When I first started programming I learned the basic set of logic controls and began doing what came naturally. As you can expect, inexperience can often lead to poor practices. Over time I began to realize that programming was much less about writing code and much more about composing legible, comprehensible webs of tasks. Most often experience and training will seem intuitive in retrospect but occasionally the best solution to a problem is the opposite of what you expect to do. In this case what I learned was that much of what I was taught about methods, loops and logic were backwards. In fact the best way to work was inverted.
Thanks to a friend I also was recently informed that these are called 'Guard Statements'.
I'd recently had to install and configure Sitecore's Azure Blob Storage module for a client and it didn't work out of the box for us but it wasn't obvious why. It turns out that for larger databases the SQL Commands may timeout without telling you.
Go to <Webroot>\App_Config\Include\zzz\Sitecore.Cloud.Integration.Bootload.PostStepsRunner.config and disable the file
Blog Cast is a feature I've built on Sitecore Cognitive Services that allows you to convert text to audio using Microsoft's Speech API. This can basically turns your blog into a podcast. Obviously it's not the author reading the article. A machine voice is reading the text but the voice is pretty advanced. It's also a nearly effortless way to expand the surface of consumable content for your audience allowing them to continue to consume your content 'on the go'. To get started there's a few videos to get you started:
For those of you who don't know what Ole [oh-la] is, it is a chat bot for use within the backend of Sitecore. Some of the key features:
If that's not enough of a reason for you to try it, then just consider it's using cutting edge Microsoft machine learning technology!
For a few years now I've been pushing the idea of using machine learning to rethink how we build websites. Today I've got more good news. In yet another example, we can now get a lot closer to building a google like search experience for all the Sitecore sites we build. The sample project I've put together to demonstrate this is called "Intelligent Search" and is built on top of the Sitecore Cognitive Services "Core" and uses Microsoft's LUIS to parse input questions for a search form to answer common domain specific questions as well as engage in conversations with the user.
I want to give you something new to think about. A whole new way to communicate with your audience. And I mean that literally. I'm going to show you how to use language parsing can be used to shape the next generation of experiences. Not just how but why.
Are you ready to add cloud based machine learning APIs to your Sitecore solution? Then save yourself some time and use Sitecore Cognitive Services.
What is it, you ask? It's a series of .NET API connectors (the core) and new features built on that core. It's open source and available on GitHub or Nuget. You can use what's there, improve on them or even build your own using the existing ones a model.
At a high level machine learning is really defined as an algorithms that allows a machine to learn (or continually learn) from a set of information and use that 'knowledge' to provide a relatively accurate answer about similar data. The more data you provide the more accurate it will become. The real power is that it won't need an infinitely large set of information to begin to be useful. Some is good. More is better. Eventually it’s good enough.
I'm excited to announce the release of the cognitive services I've been working on for the last year as marketplace modules. I present to you the Cognitive Core, the Image Search and Ole Chat. Of all the ideas it generated, being able to polish up two into pretty practical modules was really satisftying.