Google Releases the Teachable Machine

From the Official Google Blog.  No coding. Quite a thought. Exploring.

Now anyone can explore machine learning, no coding required

From helping you find your favorite dog photos, to helping farmers in Japan sort cucumbers, machine learning is changing the way people use code to solve problems. But how does machine learning actually work? We wanted to make it easier for people who are curious about this technology to learn more about it. So we created Teachable Machine, a simple experiment that lets you teach a machine using your camera—live in the browser, no coding required.

Teachable Machine is built with a new library called deeplearn.js, which makes it easier for any web developer to get into machine learning by training and running neural nets right in the browser. We’ve also open sourced the code to help inspire others to make new experiments.

Check it out at g.co/teachablemachine.

Open AI Framework by Microsoft and Facebook

From the Facebook research blog.  A further indication of the progress in standardizing how such systems should be built and maintained.   Would be useful to now compare this to work by Google in TensorFlow.   Is it comparable?

Facebook and Microsoft introduce new open ecosystem for interchangeable AI frameworks

By: Joaquin Quinonero Candela

Facebook and Microsoft are today introducing Open Neural Network Exchange (ONNX) format, a standard for representing deep learning models that enables models to be transferred between frameworks. ONNX is the first step toward an open ecosystem where AI developers can easily move between state-of-the-art tools and choose the combination that is best for them.

When developing learning models, engineers and researchers have many AI frameworks to choose from. At the outset of a project, developers have to choose features and commit to a framework. Many times, the features chosen when experimenting during research and development are different than the features desired for shipping to production. Many organizations are left without a good way to bridge the gap between these operating modes and have resorted to a range of creative workarounds to cope, such as requiring researchers work in the production system or translating models by hand.

We developed ONNX together with Microsoft to bridge this gap and to empower AI developers to choose the framework that fits the current stage of their project and easily switch between frameworks as the project evolves. Caffe2, PyTorch, and Cognitive Toolkit will all be releasing support for ONNX in September, which will allow models trained in one of these frameworks to be exported to another for inference. We invite the community to join the effort and support ONNX in their ecosystem. Enabling interoperability between different frameworks and streamlining the path from research to production will help increase the speed of innovation in the AI community. .... " 

Internet of Things Needs Design

Well, yes, have been saying this for decades, even when the 'thing' was only an attached RFID strip. Classic architecture and standards argument.  Make it 'Open' too, please.    In the HBR:   Largely non-technical.

Making Open Data Work with Visualization

In Federal Times: 
The DATA Act legislation means that federal agencies need to make their data open to the public: government leaders, watchdog groups, journalists, and citizen activists are demanding accountability and transparency. Everyone wants accountability into budget expenditures and mission success, and no one has a tolerance for fraud or inefficiency. This presents challenges for agencies that struggle to keep up with their data, much less share it publicly in a way that's timely and easy-to-use.

Thanks to data visualization software, such goals are easily in reach. While cumbersome spreadsheet tools tax the patience and eyesight of virtually everyone, data analysis software is designed with people in mind. The strengths and weaknesses of our visual processing systems inform every aspect of the software—using color, font size, page architecture, etc.—to make the viewing experience intuitive and pleasant, not painful.  ... " 

Open Data Center Steering Group

The Open Data Center Alliance Welcomes The Coca-Cola Company And Intel To Steering Group  by Priya Rana
The Open Data Center Alliance (ODCA), the global organization where members work together to advance the deployment of enterprise cloud solutions and services that are interoperable, secure and free of vendor lock-in, today announced The Coca-Cola Company as the newest member of its Steering Group. Intel Corporation, which previously served as a technical advisor to the ODCA, has transitioned its role to Steering Group member.     "

KNIME Analytics

Brought to my attention, have not looked at closely, but one of a large number of packages available today.

KNIME - Professional Open-Source Software
KNIME is a user-friendly graphical workbench for the entire analysis process: data access, data transformation, initial investigation, powerful predictive analytics, visualisation and reporting. The open integration platform provides over 1000 modules (nodes), including those of the KNIME community and its extensive partner network.

KNIME can be downloaded onto the desktop and used free of charge. KNIME products include additional functionalities such as shared repositories, authentication, remote execution, scheduling, SOA integration and a web user interface as well as world-class support. Big data extensions are available for distributed frameworks such as Hadoop. KNIME is used by over 3000 organizations in more than 60 countries.

Open Data Portals and Data Value for Future Analytics

The breadth of what is happening here is interesting.  The problem here is that the data is often not in the right form, or is incomplete, for specific uses.   Big Data approaches being adopted  may mean that saved data will be more 'atomic' and less structured, leading to better long term and general usability.  

" ... Not only governments are sitting on huge piles of data, also governments are known for creating enormous amounts of data. In fact, they are one of the biggest data-creators in the world and all this (raw) data can be worth a lot of money. McKinsey estimated in 2011 that the potential value of Big Data for the European Sector would be up to € 250 billion per year in 2020.  Most of all the data is created with public money, and therefore it would be logical that this data is also returned to the public for public usage. This would allow them to create new and innovative services that could have a significant impact on economic growth. .... " 

In Smart Data Collective, by Mark van Rijmenam   Via Gib Bassett:

Unilever Seeks Open Technology

In CGT:  Unilever seeks technologies that will support sustainable growth.  " ... Unilever put out an open call for cost-effective innovation on three technical challenges it wants to solve to meet sustainability goals: It is looking for an environmentally friendly way to break down fat deposits on clothes and hard surfaces, a way to reduce sugar by 30% in ready-made tea without affecting taste and a water-soluble way to stabilize natural red color used in fruit and dairy in a cost-effective manner throughout shelf life. The company put out the call after the success of an online platform launched in March to seek submissions for other technical challenges ... "