Probstisms

Category: Technology

  • Microsoft 365 Copilot Has Massive Potential for Banking

    Let’s set the stage. You are a risk executive at a large commercial bank, and you receive a news alert that Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank are going into receivership.

    You immediately turn to the device at your desk or in your hand or on your wrist and ask it to create data visualizations in Power BI showing your bank’s commitment and outstanding balance exposure to those two banks in relation to your overall portfolio.

    You then ask it to embed those visualizations in a PowerPoint presentation with your notes from the meeting that just ended with other senior executives at the bank. You also ask it to write an executive summary, attach your presentation, and create and send an email with the two outputs to the executive team.

    Knowing that you and the team will need more details, you then ask Microsoft Excel to create spreadsheets with information like which borrowers are impacted, what are the commitment details for facilities in the top 10 impacted industries, and what are the outstanding loan balances by loan officer and risk rating.

    With the additional details in hand and the executive team on the same page, you ask Microsoft Teams to schedule a high-priority meeting with heads of each business unit that appeared in the Excel output to bring the wider team into the loop.

    Today, this kind of response would take many hours and more likely several days to organize and complete, but if the promise of Microsoft 365 Copilot holds true, all of this could be done in minutes. Talk about a game-changer!

    Of course, for all of this to work, the information you use to train the AI models must be well-defined in the context of your business. Each data point must have a business definition that is specific and unique, and these definitions need to be accessible to the models.

    This is where I see one of the biggest challenges for making data from online transaction processing systems available to AI modeling tools. In my experience, very few systems have consistent naming conventions and certainly do not include detailed business definitions within the product’s metadata. Without those business definitions, it is difficult enough for a human to understand the data they query from a system. How can we expect anything more from a AI model? This change in system design should begin immediately to take advantage of what looks to be an incredible shift in the way we are able to work.

    This former Microsoft Office programmer could not be more excited about what we are going to be able to do with Copilot. Let’s go!

  • I’ve always been fascinated by Jony Ive. No matter what you create, there is a lesson to be learned from his approach to design.

    There is a great article in the latest issue of WSJ. Magazine about Mr. Ive that is absolutely worth the read or 18 minute listen.

  • Want to know why Musk’s Twitter is likely to be an unwelcoming place for most long-time Twitter users? Just look at the people that are most excited about the takeover. They are some of the most hateful and hurtful people in public-facing positions. Until there is something better, I’m sticking with my own blog.

  • Bluesky’s AT Protocol looks like an interesting concept and potentially a social media protocol that can be used across platforms. Imagine if Meta applications, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. all used the same foundation. Wouldn’t it be great to be able to move data and migrate from one platform to another?

  • Pandora’s True Value

    Pandora’s stock has been getting rocked lately with Apple Music and Spotify making it awfully hard to compete. When you can play practically any song on demand, “radio” seems too slow and out of touch. The idea of Internet radio is likely over at this point, but that does not mean Pandora has no value. In fact, the opposite is true. Pandora’s value is not in its ability to play music. The value is in its predictive engine. That is what it needs to license to others. No one can come close to its accuracy. Imagine Apple Music’s For You section with predictions from Pandora’s engine. People would play more new music bringing in revenue for Apple Music and lesser known artists. It is a win-win situation.

  • Fever and Radio3: Working Together to Share News

    As part of my current Facebook hiatus, I have gone back to something I really enjoyed before I started spending far too much time on the social media site: reading blogs via an RSS reader and sharing my favorite stories with others.

    My current RSS reader of choice is Fever, a self-hosted feed reader with a nice web and mobile web experience. Reeder 2 on iOS also supports Fever for those that like using an app instead of the mobile web interface. For me, using a reader makes it a lot easier to keep up with important sites and news outlets without having to filter through the noise of Twitter or Facebook. I also like that I have access to Fever’s database because I host it.

    Fever includes sharing options within the web interface for Email, Delicious, Instapaper, and Twitter, but that still does not provide the ability for me to keep track of every link I have shared like Google Reader used to do. That is where a new web application created by Dave Winer comes in to play. Radio3 is a linkblogging tool that maintains an RSS feed of all shared links while providing the ability to automatically post to Twitter, Facebook, and WordPress. The RSS feed makes it possible to keep track of my shared links in a standard format that I will be able to read well into the future.

    Radio3 includes a handy bookmarklet that makes it easy to share the current browser window, but what if Fever and Radio3 could work together so I did not have to leave my feed reader? Well, they can! Fever has the ability to add sharing options as long as the service provides a URL to add new items, and Radio3 does just that.

    To add Radio3 as a sharing option in Fever, perform the following steps:

    1. Select Preferences from the Fever menu.
    2. Click the Sharing tab.
    3. Click the plus (+) button to add a new service.
    4. Enter Radio3 in the Service Name field.
    5. Enter the following in the Service URL field:
    http://radio3.io/?link=%u&title=%t&description=%t

    %u represents the site URL, and %t represents the site title. Fever also has a shortcut to include the excerpt that I suppose could be used for the description portion of the Radio3 URL, but I have chosen to use the title which seems to be the default behavior of the bookmarklet when no text is selected in the browser.
    6. Enter r in the Key field.
    7. Click Save.

    FeverPreferences

    That’s all there is to it. Radio3 can now be selected as one of the sharing options directly in Fever.

    feversharing

    This is a great example of two web apps working together to make reading and sharing a whole lot more enjoyable.

  • Probstism 6

    Responding to every client comment or question as if your hair is on fire is an incredibly unproductive way to run a technology project.

  • New Skype for iOS 8 uses extensions for answering calls from the iPhone lock screen – Tech News and Analysis.

    https://gigaom.com/2014/09/22/skype-ios-8-extensions-lock-screen-notifications/

  • iMessages for the Rest of Us

    My Dearest Apple,

    It saddened me greatly to receive your email today regarding the ending of the Messages beta program for Mac OS X Lion. Even though the app is technically in beta, it has been very stable and has been a pleasure to use.

    Unfortunately, my MacBook is the 2008 model that you decided wasn’t quite recent enough for Mac OS X Mountain Lion although I am certain it would run just fine based on the specs of the next model you did decide to support. What this means to me is that I will lose the ability to use iMessages on my MacBook on December 14th.

    I do have to admit that I’m a little confused about this whole thing. Clearly, Messages runs on Mac OS X Lion. I have a working app to prove it. If this is a matter of revenues or some other technicality, I would gladly fork over a few bucks to buy Messages from the Mac App Store. Remember FaceTime? How about you do something similar to that approach. It would be great to continue to enjoy iMessages on my MacBook that still has a lot of useful life left.

    Please let me know what you think when you have a chance.

    Best regards,
    Tim

  • Who Has An Apple Household?

    Last week, one of my Facebook friends asked if it made sense to share one Apple ID between he and his wife so they did not have to buy their apps twice on each of their iPhones. The short answer here is yes, but does it really make sense in a world where individuals personalize their devices?

    As a family with more iOS devices than I would like to admit, we use the same Apple ID on all of our devices and in iTunes on all of our computers. This works for us now because my wife and I don’t mind using the same Apple ID, and our kids are too young to have accounts of their own. In less than a year, the oldest will want an account of her own, and I can’t really blame her. I would too.

    So, how does Apple solve this issue with an insanely great solution? Well, here’s my plan.

    It is time for Apple to implement the Apple Household. A Household will be comprised of one or more Apple IDs. All purchases made with any of the Apple IDs in the Household will roll up into one iTunes in the Cloud library. This will make purchases available to anyone in the Household.

    So what are the benefits of having several Apple IDs rolling up into one Apple Household? The biggest advantage is that a family will be able to easily consolidate their purchases in the cloud and will be able to take advantage of iTunes in the Cloud and iTunes Match as a family while still maintaining individual accounts on iOS devices.

    Of course, an Apple Household would also create a lot of opportunity for parents to monitor and control the purchases of their minor children. Apple already provides a way for parents to give an iTunes allowance to their kids. The Household could take this even further by using the concept of a head of household. The head of household, most likely a parent or guardian, would have the ability to easily set parental controls over all of the minor accounts in the Household via a simple iTunes-based control panel.

    So, to summarize, the Apple Household provides the individualism that typical Apple users need, families get the consolidated iTunes library they want, and parents get the controls they require. Seems like everyone wins. Apple, let’s make this happen!