Tag Archives: Facebook

AI, Augmented Reality

Platform Independent AI Model for Images: AI Builder, Easily Utilized by 3rd Party Apps

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With all the discourse on OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Natural language processing (NLP), I’d like to steer the conversation toward images/video and object recognition. This is another area in artificial intelligence primed for growth with many use cases. Arguably, it’s not as shocking, bending our society at its core, creating college papers with limited input, but Object Recognition can seem “magical.” AI object recognition may turn art into science, as easy as AI reading your palm to tell your future. AI object recognition will bring consumers more data points from which Augmented Reality (AR) overlays digital images within an analog world of tangible objects.

Microsoft’s AI Builder – Platform Independent

Microsoft’s Power Automate AI [model] Builder has the functionality to get us started on the journey of utilizing images, tagging them with objects we recognize, and then training the AI model to recognize objects in our “production” images. Microsoft provides tools to build AI [image] models (library of images with human, tagged objects) quickly and easily. How you leverage these AI models is the foundation of “future” applications. Some applications are already here, but not mass production. The necessary ingredient: taking away the proprietary building of AI models, such as in social media applications.

In many social media applications, users can tag faces in their images for various reasons, mostly who to share their content/images with. In most cases, images can also be tagged with a specific location. Each AI image/object model is proprietary and not shared between social media applications. If there was a standards body, an AI model could be created/maintained outside of the social media applications. Portable AI object recognition models with a wide array of applications that support it’s use, such as social media applications. Later on, we’ll discuss Microsoft’s AI Model builder, externalized from any one application, and because it’s Microsoft, it’s intuitive. 🙂

An industry standards body could collaborate and define what AI models look like their features, and most importantly, the portability formats. Then the industry, such as social media apps, can elect to adopt features that are and are not supported by their applications.

Use Cases for Detecting Objects in Images

Why doesn’t everyone have an AI model containing tagged objects within images and videos of the user’s design? Why indeed.

1 – Brands / Product Placement from Content Creators

Just about everyone today is a content creator, producing images and videos for their own personal and business social media feeds, Twitter, Instagram, Snap, Meta, YouTube, and TikTok, to name a few. AI models should be portable enough to integrate with social media applications where tags could be used to identify branded apparel, jewelry, appliances, etc. Tags could also contain metadata, allowing content consumers to follow tagged objects to a specified URL. Clicks and the promotion of products and services.

2 – Object Recognition for Face Detection

Has it all been done? Facebook/Meta, OneDrive, iCloud, and other services have already tried or are implementing some form of object detection in the photos you post. Each of these existing services implements object detection at some level:

  • Identify the faces in your photos, but need you to tag those faces and some “metadata” will be associated with these photos
  • Dynamically grouping/tagging all “Portrait” pictures of a specific individual or events from a specific day and location, like a family vacation.
  • Some image types, JPEGs, PNG, GIF, etc., allow you to add metadata to the files on your own, e.g. so you can search for pictures on the OS level of implementation.
3 – Operational Assistance through object recognition using AR
  • Constructing “complex” components in an assembly line where Augmented Reality (AR) can overlay the next step in assembly with the existing object to help transition the object to the next step in assembly.
  • Assistance putting together IKEA furniture, like the assembly line use case, but for home use.
  • Gaming, everything from Mario Kart Live to Light Saber duels against the infamous Darth Vader.
4 – Palm Reading and other Visual Analytics
  • Predictive weather patterns
5 – Visual Search through Search Engines and Proprietary Applications with Specific Knowledge Base Alignment
  • CoinSnap iPhone App scans both sides of the coin and then goes on to identify the coin, building a user’s collection.
  • Microsoft Bing’s Visual Search and Integration with MSFT Edge
  • Medical Applications, Leveraging AI, e.g., Image Models – Radiology
Radiology – Reading the Tea Leaves

Radiology builds a model of possible issues throughout the body. Creating images with specific types of fractures can empower the autodetection of any issues with the use of AI. If it was a non-proprietary model, radiologists worldwide could contribute to that AI model. The displacement of radiology jobs may inhibit the open non-proprietary nature of the use case, and the AI model may need to be built independently of open input from all radiologists.

Microsoft’s AI Builder – Detect Objects in Images

Microsoft’s AI model builder can help the user build models in minutes. Object Detection, Custom Model, Detect custom objects in images is the “template” you want to use to build a model to detect objects, e.g. people, cars, anything, rather quickly, and can enable users to add images (i.e. train model) to become a better model over time.

Many other AI Model types exist, such as Text Recognition within images. I suggest exploring the Azure AI Models list to fit your needs.

Current, Available Data Sources for Image Input

  • Current Device
  • SharePoint
  • Azure BLOB

Wish List for Data Sources w/Trigger Notifications

When a new image is uploaded into one of these data sources, a “trigger” can be activated to process the image with the AI Model and apply tags to the images.

  • ADT – video cam
  • DropBox
  • Google Drive
  • Instagram
  • Kodak (yeah, still around)
  • Meta/Facebook
  • OneDrive
  • Ring -video cam
  • Shutterfly
  • Twitter

Get Started: Power Automate, Premium Account

Login to Power Automate with your premium account, and select “AI Builder” menu, then the “Models” menu item. The top left part of the screen, select “New AI Model,” From the list of model types, select “Custom Model, Object Detection”Detect Custom Objects in Images.”

AI Builder - Custom Model
AI Builder – Custom Model

It’s a “Premium” feature of Power Automate, so you must have the Premium license. Select “Get Started”,. The first step is to “Select your model’s domain”, there are three choices, so I selected “Common Objects” to give me the broadest opportunity. Then select “Next”.

AI Builder - Custom Model - Domain
AI Builder – Custom Model – Domain

Next, you need to select all of the objects you want to identify in your images. For demonstration purposes, I added my family’s first names as my objects to train my model to identify in images.

AI Builder - Custom Model - Objects for Model
AI Builder – Custom Model – Objects for Model

Next, you need to “Add example images for your objects.” Microsoft’s guidance is “You need to add at least 15 images for each object you want to detect.” Current data sources include:

Add Images
AI Model – Add Images

I added the minimum recommended images, 15 per object, two objects, 30 images of my family, and random pics over the last year.

Once uploaded, you need to go through each image, draw a box around the image’s objects you want to tag, and then select the object tag.

Part 2 – Completing the Model and its App usage.

AI, Augmented Reality, Business, Information Architecture (IA), Virtual Reality

Microsoft’s Plethora of Portals

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As I was looking through Microsoft’s catalog of applications, it occurred to me just how many of their platforms are information-centric and seemed to overlap in functionality. Where should I go when I want to get stuff done, find information or produce it? Since the early days of AOL and AltaVista, we’ve seen the awesome power of a “Jump Page” as the starting point for our information journey.

Microsoft, which one do I choose?

From one software vendor’s perspective, we’ve got many options. What’s the best option for me? Seems like there should be opportunities to gain synergies between available Microsoft platforms.

Bing.com

Searching for information on the internet? News, images, encyclopedias, Wikipedia, whatever you need, and more is on the web. Microsoft Bing helps you find what you need regardless if you’re using text or an image to search for like for like information. It also serves up “relevant” information on the jump page, news mixed with advertisements. There is also a feature enabling you to add carousel “boxes”. for example, containing latest MS Word files used, synergy from Office.com

Office.com

Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Visio, Power BI… If you’ve created content or want to create content using Microsoft applications, Office.com is the one-stop-shop for all your Office apps and the content created using these applications.

SharePoint

Another portal to a universe of information around a centric theme, such as collaboration/interaction with product/project team members, an Intranet, SharePoint site with one or multiple teams. At the most fundamental level is the capability to collaborate/interact with teams, potentially leveraging Microsoft collaboration tools. Just one of many of its capabilities “out of the box” is a document management solution and the use of version control.

SharePoint can also be used for any type of Internet/web platform, i.e., a public-facing portal platform. However, SharePoint, in fact, is a sharing tool in which the authors of the website can share video presentations, shared calendars of public events, and a plethora of customized lists.

Yammer

Engaging your people is more critical than ever. Yammer connects leaders, communicators, and employees to build communities, share knowledge, and engage everyone. I’m thinking synonymous with a bulletin board. The implementation of Yammer looks like Facebook for the Enterprise.

  • Use the Home feed to stay on top of what matters, tap into the knowledge of others, and build on existing work.
  • Search for experts, conversations, and files.
  • Join communities to stay informed, connect with your coworkers, and gather ideas.
  • Join in the conversation, react, reply to, and share posts.
  • @ mention someone to loop them in.
  • Attach a file, gif, photo, or video to enhance your post.
  • Praise someone in your network to celebrate a success, or just to say thanks.
  • Create a virtual event that your community can ask a question and participate live or watch the recording afterwards.
  • Use polls to crowd source feedback and get answers fast.
  • Stay connected outside the office with the Yammer mobile app.
  • Use Yammer in Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, or Outlook.

“Yammer helps you connect and engage across your organization so that you can discuss ideas, share updates, and network with others.”

Microsoft Teams

For any team, there is a wealth of information varying from the group or single Chats, Teams, Calls, Files, and practically integration for almost all Microsoft applications and beyond. The extensibility of MS Teams seems relatively boundless, such as integrations with Wikis, SharePoint document folders, etc. From what I can tell, many organizations just use Teams for the group, or individual Chat channels are barely grazing the surface of MS Teams’ capabilities.

Setup of MS Teams, Teams “landing” page is a great place to start constructing your “living space” within MS Teams. From there, you can carve out space for all things related to the team. For example, in the “Team ABC” Team channel, you can add N number of “tabs” relating to everything from an embedded Wiki to specific SharePoint folders for the team’s product specifications. A team could even create an embedded Azure DevOps [Kanban] Board to show progress and essentially “live in” your MS Team, team channel.

Another porta;l overlap, Microsoft Teams Communities, seems to equate to Yammer.

Delve

What is Delve – Microsoft 365?

Use Delve to manage your Microsoft 365 profile and to discover and organize the information that’s likely to be most interesting to you right now – across Microsoft 365.

Delve never changes any permissions, so you’ll only see documents that you already have access to. Other people will not see your private documents. Learn more about privacy.

Delve is a content curation platform for the person it’s most relevant to…you. It gives the appearance of a user experience similar to carousels of video streaming apps. There are “Popular Documents” carousels and other carousels that are based on the most recent access. Based on how files are saved based on who can access content is how the platform gives you a treasure trove of documents you never knew you had access to or existed. It actually paints a potential compliance nightmare if people select the default document access as “…anyone within my organization…”.

Outlook.com / Best of MSN

Another portal of information focused around you: your email, your calendar, your To-Dos, and your contacts/people. It’s not just your communication with anyone, e.g., your project team members; it’s organizing your life on a smaller scale, e.g., To-Dos. You can also access other shared calendars, such as a team release schedule or a PTO schedule.

The Best of MSN is information, i.e., news around your interests, a digest of information relevant to you, delivered in an email format. Other digests of information from other sources may be curated and sent if subscribed.

Mediums to Traverse Information: AR, VR…

The visual paradigms used to query and access information may drastically influence the user’s capacity to digest the relevant information. For example, in an Augmented Reality (AR) experience, querying, identifying information, and then applying it, serving up the content in a way most conducive to a user’s experience is vital.

Users can’t just “Google It” and serve up the results like magic. The next evolution of querying information and serving up content in a medium to maximize its usability is key and is most evident when using Augmented Reality (AR). If you’re building something, instructions may be overlayed by the physical elements/parts in front of the user. Even the context of the step number would allow the virtual images to overlay the parts.

Automated and Manual Content Curation is a MUST for all Portals

Categories, Tags, Images, and all other associations from object A to everything else, the Meta of Existence, are essential for proper information dissemination and digestion. If you can tag any object with metadata, you can teach an AI/search engine to identify it in a relevant query. Implementing an Induction Engine, a type of Artificial Intelligence that proposes rules based on historic patterns is a must to improve query accuracy over time.

Next level, “Information applications” – Improved Living with Alzheimer’s

Next Ecosystem: Google..?

AI, Business, Entertainment, Games, Information Architecture (IA), Technology, Virtual Reality

Meta, Metadata, and Information Architecture

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Facebook’s Initial “Beyond” Concept is Virtual Reality and Other Beyond Stuff

Facebook sees the future, the beyond, as Virtual Reality (VR), where people communicate in virtual worlds for personal and business use. To that end, they are working on products outside the Facebook social apps, such as the rebranded Meta Quest, a VR immersive set of hardware and software to realize the experience. In this case, the technology is in line with the overall goal, and ties into the existing Facebook, social media platform. The new company Meta will allow for concentrated development outside social media, which is a smart move to allow for this concentration just like Alphabet/Google did. I’d imagine many of the technologies will have some tangibility to their social platform, but not necessarily so.

Meta Co., VR, and Metadata

Facebook changed its name to Meta as they build out its vision of a whole new world or multiple worlds. Within a constructed virtual world there will be “objects”, and those objects need descriptions and those descriptions should be portable beyond Meta’s Metaverse. Therefore it is essential to enhance data objects with more data, metadata. If you have a tree in the forest, what kind of a tree is it, what are all the “properties” of that tree? This exercise makes Meta worlds, our virtual world a bit more descriptive, in an organized, and portable fashion.

Portability In and Out of the Meta-verse

It’s important to be consistent in and outside [Facebook’s] Metaverse. As we define objects in the metaverse, e.g. people, trees, swords, etc. they must have consistent properties, and that’s where we apply taxonomies, The more comprehensive the metadata set, the whole universe expands. and we can also see gaps in the data as we virtually encounter them. We are experiencing Meta’s conception of a Metaverse, and if we’re not careful, it’s possible new social media platforms could be monopolized by [Facebook] Meta.

Minecraft Axe
Minecraft Axe

NFT Portability, and their Utility in the Metaverse

Gamers should be able to use their NFTs in virtual worlds throughout the internet. NFTs designed for online gaming use range from battle armor which integrates with the massively multiplayer online games (MMOG, or more commonly, MMO) and has utility to protect the character, for example. This type of utility NFT would require a high degree of integration, and comply with the standards of the MMO. Other NFT MMO game “objects” require less integration such as a tee-shirt, jewelry, a mug, and other non-utility items/objects.

NFT Standards Group for Gaming Consortium

Open standards are key, and industry standards committees should be formed for things like NFT properties, and other Metaverse interoperability. Meta objects from one “universe”, .e.g “Meta” should follow a convention to be passed around the “multiverse”, so to speak.

NFTs could be the transferrable objects from Avatars to Swords, what are the required NFT properties for each object type, and object type refers to any object real or factious. Information architecture (IA) focuses on organizing, structuring, and labeling content in an effective and sustainable way

Map of Toon Town Estate
Map of Toon Town Estate

Follow the Yellow Brick Road

So, a few years back, there was a really cool game called ToonTown (Disney), an MMO, massively multiplayer online game, and beyond interacting with other players, and taking on challenges, each player received their own house to decorate. Ergo, in our virtual worlds, I would like the opportunity to decorate my home with the NFT art I acquired in NFT marketplaces. Maybe even an art gallery in the city.

Advertising, Augmented Reality, Business, Economy, Games, Technology

Facebook name change: what is Meta, the meaning of new name and Metaverse – Mark Zuckerberg

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Mark Zuckerberg surprised the world in October when he announced his company had changed its name to Meta.

The announcement came as the Facebook founder and CEO delivered a presentation showcasing Facebook’s work on virtual reality technologies and the Metaverse – a concept which some believe could become the next version of the internet.

It’s a move that echoes what Google did when it changed the name of its parent company to Alphabet in 2015 – an alteration that represented its shift beyond simply being a search engine.

Mark Zuckerberg said he had chosen it as in Greek it means ‘beyond’.

“For me, it symbolises that there’s always more to build; there’s always a next chapter to the story,” he explained.

“Beyond the constraints of screens, beyond the limits of distance and physics and towards a future where everyone can be present with each other, create new opportunities and experience new things.”

A metaverse is an online world where people can game, work and communicate in a virtual environment.

This world already exists today through Meta-owned brand Oculus, which will itself be re-branded to Meta Quest in 2022, as well as Meta’s collaboration with glasses manufacturer Ray-Ban that allows users to see social media notifications via their glasses or sunglasses.

In his presentation, Mark Zuckerberg showed how his new metaverse concept ‘Horizon’ could apply to our future lives.

For example, he demonstrated how it could be used to hold realistic work meetings and help with education.

Source: Facebook name change: what is Meta, meaning of new name and Metaverse concept – and what Mark Zuckerberg said | NationalWorld

Business, Economy, Entertainment, Finance, Media, Technology

Social Media: News Feed verse App InMail

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Better Demographic Penetration and Transparency to More Accurately Determine Creative Media Asset Worth

News Media Assets

News Media Assets are created by writers of non-fictional work, coverage of various topics targeted towards the periodical demographic.

Selling Advertising Space

Layered within the news media product, consists of News Media Assets and sold advertisement space. Ad positioning throughout the news media product may have commonality between the product or service being advertised and the news media asset. A goal is the smooth transition between reader of asset and advertisement.

Revenue Models For News Media Assets

  • Deriving revenue from sponsors of news Media Assets
  • Subscription Base of News Media Assets, regular frequency of news media product to subscriber base.

Social Media – News Feeds

The news agencies post to public news feeds a “teaser” headline, a sentence or two describing the news media asset, and a teaser image all to lure prospective readers to clink a link to the news media publisher’s platform. At that point, the publisher sets the “ground rules” for the potential subscriber, e.g. 10 free articles a month, then their digital subscription price of NN goes into effect.

Social Media – InMail (I.e. eMail within the platform)

InMail through the social media platform can come from a variety of sources, for example:

  • Former colleague looking to reconnect
  • Recruiter looking to pitch a potential role
  • Sales / Marketing InMail targeting you as a potential customer of their product or service
The Tools to get the Job Done

As a prior client of LinkedIn Advertising for both ad placement and Sponsored InMail, I found the tools provided and the granularity upon which to refine the demographics impressive, and not lacking in any way.

Personable, Targeted Marketing of News Media Assets, sponsored by 3rd party promoting their product or service.

Delivering News Media Assets to your digital door step, with advertising partners speckled into the asset. Because of the granularity of the InMail advertising controls demographics are at a level of precision. Beyond what a magazine or newspaper, digital or print, can offer.

it’s all about the targeted audience and the granularity of the data collected and then leveraged to meet the desired audience. Much more personal than a link back to the publisher’s platform.

Just like there are expenses to do business in print or traditional digital, the price of doing business with a platform like LinkedIn Sponsored InMail, would be absorbed by the news media agency, net advertisement placement for advertisements.

Although the LinkedIN Social platform was used for reference, other platforms may be leveraged, depending upon the product or services being marketed, such as a Facebook People Magazine article relevant to their demographic, partnership / sponsorship.

Fake News – Not a Problem

Since News Media Agencies will now pair with “sponsors” or commonly know as advertisers, both parties, the news agency and the sponsor have “skin in the game”, it is less likely to be a factitious article.

Business, Economy, Education, Entertainment, Finance, Help, Media, Mobility, Music, Reviews, Technology

Hey Siri, Ready for an Antitrust Lawsuit Against Apple? Guess Who’s Suing.

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The AI personal assistant with the “most usage” spanning  connectivity across all smart devices, will be the anchor upon which users will gravitate to control their ‘automated’ lives.  An Amazon commercial just aired which depicted  a dad with his daughter, and the daughter was crying about her boyfriend who happened to be in the front yard yelling for her.  The dad says to Amazon’s Alexa, sprinklers on, and yes, the boyfriend got soaked.

What is so special about top spot for the AI Personal Assistant? Controlling the ‘funnel’ upon which all information is accessed, and actions are taken means the intelligent ability to:

  • Serve up content / information, which could then be mixed in with advertisements, or ‘intelligent suggestions’ based on historical data, i.e. machine learning.
  • Proactive, suggestive actions  may lead to sales of goods and services. e.g. AI Personal Assistant flags potential ‘buys’ from eBay based on user profiles.

Three main sources of AI Personal Assistant value add:

  • A portal to the “outside” world; E.g. If I need information, I wouldn’t “surf the web” I would ask Cortana to go “Research” XYZ;   in the Business Intelligence / data warehousing space, a business analyst may need to run a few queries in order to get the information they wanted.  In the same token, Microsoft Cortana may come back to you several times to ask “for your guidance”
  • An abstraction layer between the user and their apps;  The user need not ‘lift a finger’ to any app outside the Personal Assistant with noted exceptions like playing a game for you.
  • User Profiles derived from the first two points; I.e. data collection on everything from spending habits, or other day to day  rituals.

Proactive and chatty assistants may win the “Assistant of Choice” on all platforms.  Being proactive means collecting data more often then when it’s just you asking questions ADHOC.  Proactive AI Personal Assistants that are Geo Aware may may make “timely appropriate interruptions”(notifications) that may be based on time and location.  E.g. “Don’t forget milk” says Siri,  as your passing the grocery store.  Around the time I leave work Google maps tells me if I have traffic and my ETA.

It’s possible for the [non-native] AI Personal Assistant to become the ‘abstract’ layer on top of ANY mobile OS (iOS, Android), and is the funnel by which all actions / requests are triggered.

Microsoft Corona has an iOS app and widget, which is wrapped around the OS.  Tighter integration may be possible but not allowed by the iOS, the iPhone, and the Apple Co. Note: Google’s Allo does not provide an iOS widget at the time of this writing.

Antitrust violation by mobile smartphone maker Apple:  iOS must allow for the ‘substitution’ of a competitive AI Personal Assistant to be triggered in the same manner as the native Siri,  “press and hold home button” capability that launches the default packaged iOS assistant Siri.
Reminiscent of the Microsoft IE Browser / OS antitrust violations in the past.

Holding the iPhone Home button brings up Siri. There should be an OS setting to swap out which Assistant is to be used with the mobile OS as the default.  Today, the iPhone / iPad iOS only supports “Siri” under the Settings menu.

ANY AI Personal assistant should be allowed to replace the default OS Personal assistant from Amazon’s Alexa, Microsoft’s Cortana to any startup company with expertise and resources needed to build, and deploy a Personal Assistant solution.  Has Apple has taken steps to tightly couple Siri with it’s iOS?

AI Personal Assistant ‘Wish” list:

  • Interactive, Voice Menu Driven Dialog; The AI Personal Assistant should know what installed [mobile] apps exist, as well as their actionable, hierarchical taxonomy of feature / functions.   The Assistant should, for example, ask which application the user wants to use, and if not known by the user, the assistant should verbally / visually list the apps.  After the user selects the app, the Assistant should then provide a list of function choices for that application; e.g. “Press 1 for “Play Song”
    • The interactive voice menu should also provide a level of abstraction when available, e.g. User need not select the app, and just say “Create Reminder”.  There may be several applications on the Smartphone that do the same thing, such as Note Taking and Reminders.  In the OS Settings, under the soon to be NEW menu ‘ AI Personal Assistant’, a list of installed system applications compatible with this “AI Personal Assistant” service layer should be listed, and should be grouped by sets of categories defined by the Mobile OS.
  • Capability to interact with IoT using user defined workflows.  Hardware and software may exist in the Cloud.
  • Ever tighter integration with native as well as 3rd party apps, e.g. Google Allo and Google Keep.

Apple could already be making the changes as a natural course of their product evolution.  Even if the ‘big boys’ don’t want to stir up a hornet’s nest, all you need is VC and a few good programmers to pick a fight with Apple.

Business, Economy, Entertainment, Finance, Legal, Media, Mobility, Music, Technology, Work

Microsoft Flow – Platform Review

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It looks like Microsoft created a generic workflow platform, product independent.

Microsoft has software solutions, like MS Outlook with an [email] rules engine built into Outlook.  SharePoint has a workflow solution within the Sharepoint Platform, typically governing the content flowing through it’s system.

Microsoft Flow is a different animal.  It seems like Microsoft has built a ‘generic’ rules engine for processing almost any event.  The Flow product:

  1. Start using the product from one of two areas:  a) “My Flows” where I may view existing and create new [work]flows. b) “Activity”, that shows “Notifications” and “Failures”
  2. Select “My Flows”, and the user may “Create [a workflow] from Blank”,  or “Browse Templates”.  MSFT existing set of templates were created by Microsoft, and also by a 3rd party implying a marketplace.
  3. Select “Create from Blank” and the user has a single drop down list of events, a culmination events across Internet products. There is an implication there could be any product, and event “made compatible” with MSFT Flows.
    1. The drop down list of events has a format of “Product – Event”.  As the list of products and events grow, we should see at least two separate drop down lists, one for products, and a sub list for the product specific events.
    2. Several Example Events Include:
      1. “Dropbox – When a file is created”
      2. “Facebook – When there is a new post to my timeline”
      3. “Project Online – When a new task is created”
      4. “RSS – When a feed item is published”
      5. “Salesforce – When an object is created”
    3. The list of products as well as there events may need a business analyst to rationalize the use cases.
  4. Once an Event is selected, event specific details may be required, e.g. Twitter account details, or OneDrive “watch” folder
  5. Next, a Condition may be added to this [work]flow,  and may be specific to the Event type, e.g. OneDrive File Type properties [contains] XYZ value.  There is also an “advanced mode” using a conditional scripting language.
  6. There is “IF YES” and “IF NO” logic, which then allows the user to select one [or more] actions to perform
    1. Several Action Examples Include:
      1. “Excel – Insert Rows”
      2. “FTP – Create File”
      3. “Google Drive – List files in folder”
      4. “Mail – Send email”
      5. “Push Notification – Send a push notification”
    2. Again, it seems like an eclectic bunch of Products, Actions, and Events strung together to have a system to POC.
  7. The Templates list, predefined set of workflows that may be of interest to anyone who does not want to start from scratch.   The UI provides several ways to filter, list, and search through templates.

Applicable to everyday life, from an individual home user, small business, to the enterprise.  At this stage the product seems in Beta at best, or more accurately, just after clickable prototype.  I ran into several errors trying to go through basic use cases, i.e. adding rules.

Despite the “Preview” launch, Microsoft has showed us the power in [work]flow processing regardless of the service platform provider, e.g.  Box, DropBox, Facebook, GitHub, Instagram, Salesforce, Twitter, Google, MailChimp, …

Microsoft may be the glue to combine service providers who may / expose their services to MSFT Flow functionality.

Create from Blank - Select Condition
Create from Blank – Select Condition

 

Create Rule from Template
Create Rule from Template

Create from Blank Rule Building UI
Create from Blank Rule Building UI

 

Update June 28th, 2016:

Opportunities for Event, Condition, Action Rules

  • Transcoding [cloud] Services
  • [IBM Watson] Cognitive APIs
    • e.g. Language:Translation; E.g.2. Visual Recognition;
  • WordPress – Create a Post
    • New text file dropped in specific folder on Box, DropBox, etc. being ‘monitored’ by MSFT flow [?] Additional code required by user for ‘polling’ capabilities
    • OR new text file attached, and emailed to specific email account folder ‘watched’ by MSFT Flow.
    • Event triggers – Automatic read of new text file
      • stylizing may occur if HTML coding used
    • Action – Post to a Blog
  • ‘ANY’ Event occurs, a custom message is sent using Skype for a single or group of Skype accounts;
    • On several ‘eligible’ events, such as “File Creation” into Box,  the file (or file shared URL) may be sent to the Skype account.
  • ‘ANY’ Event occurs, a custom mobile text message is sent to a single or group of phone numbers.
  • Event occurs for “File Creation” e.g. into Box; after passing a “Condition”, actions occur:
    • IBM Watson Cognitive API, Text to Speech, occurs, and the product of the action is placed in the same Box folder.
  • Action: Using Microsoft Edge (powered by MSN), in the “My news feed” tab, enable action to publish “Cards”, such as app notifications

Challenges \ Opportunities \ Unknowns

  • 3rd party companies existing, published [cloud; web service] APIs may not even need any modification to integrate with Microsoft Flow; however, business approval may be required to use the API in this manner,
  • It is unclear re: Flow Templates need to be created by the product owner, e.g. Telestream, or knowledgeable third party, following the Android, iOS, and/or MSFT Mobile Apps model.
  • It is unclear if the MSFT Flow app may be licensed individually in the cloud, within the 365 cloud suite, or offered for Home and\or Business?
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Building AI Is Hard—So Facebook Is Building AI That Builds AI

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“…companies like Google and Facebook pay top dollar for some really smart people. Only a few hundred souls on Earth have the talent and the training needed to really push the state-of-the-art [AI] forward, and paying for these top minds is a lot like paying for an NFL quarterback. That’s a bottleneck in the continued progress of artificial intelligence. And it’s not the only one. Even the top researchers can’t build these services without trial and error on an enormous scale. To build a deep neural network that cracks the next big AI problem, researchers must first try countless options that don’t work, running each one across dozens and potentially hundreds of machines.”

This article represents a true picture of where we are today for the average consumer and producer of information, and the companies that repurpose information, e.g. in the form of advertisements.  
The advancement and current progress of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, analogously paints a picture akin to the 1970s with computers that fill rooms, and accept punch cards as input.
Today’s consumers have mobile computing power that is on par to the whole rooms of the 1970s; however, “more compute power” in a tinier package may not be the path to AI sentience.  How AI algorithm models are computed might need to take an alternate approach.  
In a classical computation system, a bit would have to be in one state or the other. However quantum mechanics allows the qubit to be in a superposition of both states at the same time, a property which is fundamental to quantum computing.
The construction, and validation of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, algorithm models should be engineered on a Quantum Computing framework.