Sunday, March 26, 2017

Airbnb Open Source


Airbnb created an internal Knowledge Repo, combining git version control and Markdown templates for reporting results. Airbnb recently open-sourced its Knowledge Repository Beta, seeking contributors to help move the project forward.

Git allows the same sort of peer review and version control that developers typically use to collaborate on code, while Markdown offers a mixture of text and code in a single, easily reproducible file. You can see RStudio's tutorial on R Markdown for more info of what Markdown in general can do. Markdown is available for other languages such as Python as well.

The Airbnb framework setup requires Python and supports "knowledge posts" in several formats.

A next-generation curated knowledge sharing platform for data scientists and other technical professions, is available at https://github.com/airbnb/knowledge-repo

Thursday, March 16, 2017

2021 IT Trends


1. Internet-of-things (IoT) software and solutions: IoT will be driving new levels of customer insight and engagement for some by 2021, but technology diversity and the need for organizational changes will still stymie or delay many firms.

2. Intelligent agents: Intelligent agents and related robots will have eliminated a net 6% of jobs by 2021.

3. Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR): By 2021, AR will be commonplace, while VR will remain niche.

4. Artificial intelligence (AI) and cognitive technology: Solutions powered by AI/cognitive technology will displace jobs with the biggest impact felt in transportation, logistics, customer service, and consumer services.

5. Hybrid wireless: 5G will be rolling out by 2021, creating a high-bandwidth cellular backbone to support IoT devices. In addition, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi will expand their capabilities to support IoT devices.

Sunday, March 12, 2017

Google Kaggle


Couple of days ago, Google acquired a coding competition platform called Kaggle.

Founded in 2010, Kaggle allows developers and data scientists to run machine learning contests, host datasets, and to write and share code. The platform reportedly has half a million data scientists that Google would try to capitalise on in some way.

Kaggle has raised $12.5 million (£10.3 million) in investment from the likes of Index Ventures, Google chief economist Hal Varian, and Russian investor Yuri Milner. 

Google reportedly teamed up with Kaggle earlier this month to run a $100,000 (£82,000) machine learning competition around classifying YouTube videos.

Kaggle CEO Anthony confirmed the news in the company blog - I’m proud and excited to share that Kaggle is joining Google Cloud.  Ref: http://blog.kaggle.com/2017/03/08/kaggle-joins-google-cloud/


Saturday, March 11, 2017

SanDisk in India


This week, SanDisk has announced the launch of three new products in India, including Extreme Pro and Extreme Go USB 3.1 flash drives, and a 256 GB microSD card with A1 SD specifications.

Extreme Go is a high-speed flash drive, up to 35x faster than standard 2.0 drives, and enables users to copy data quickly. 

SanDisk Extreme Pro USB 3.1 Solid State Flash Drive has reading speeds up to 420 MB per second and writing speeds up to 380 MB/s while the Extreme Go USB 3.1 has reading and writing speeds up to 200 MB/s and 150 MB/s, respectively.

256 GB SanDisk Ultra microSD card is the world's first microSD card with Application Performance Class 1 (A1) standardisation. It is compatible with the SanDisk Memory Zone app for Android for backing up and managing content, which can be downloaded from Google Play Store. 

It has been indicated that the microSD card will be available from April 1, pricing at Rs 18,990.

Tuesday, March 7, 2017

Making Time


One of the famous quote is ringing back in my mind “It is not about having time; it is about making time”

College of Engineering Guindy (CEG) is a top most engineering institute in my state Tamilnadu, INDIA. Itz not only brightest but also one of the oldest engineering college, founded in 1794.

CEG used to conduct the national level technical symposium during the first quarter of every year. This year, it was scheduled between Mar 1 and Mar 3 at CEG campus of Anna University, Chennai.

This well renowned national level event is a platform for the student/research communities to gain insight of the contemporary technical contraptions. My strong belief is that Industry and Institutes must have stronger collaboration on day to day business. Apparently, it provides an opportunity to triumph in this fast pacing disruptive digital world.

As every engineering department was hosting their relevant areas, CS (Computer Science) engineering executed their sessions for IT geeks to take a plunge on IT innovation. It creates an opportunity for the demanding industry needs. CS department had TWO days workshop on IoT (Internet of Things), which is an emerging technology in the current industry.

Back to me. I always crazy about prime institutes, since my childhood days. CEG is one among them. With high degree of aspiration / passion, became CEG alumni through my degree between 2008 and 2010. Today, Time promoted me to be the chief guest of this great institute with high degree of blessings. Thanks Almighty!

Being hot core IT product engineer, blessed with multiple opportunities / challenges to work around the emerging disruptive technologies like IoT and BigData, for last 5 years; prior to my .NET space. With great amount of learning from my beloved colleagues/mentors, drafted a practical approach presentation entitled “Big Data weds IoT”. CEG session was well received by the enthusiastic researchers, which got reflected in multiple smart shoots of questions. Happy learning to me!

With this nostalgic feeling, time to appreciate all time, environment, mentors for my transition. Thanks with closing note: “Time is always with the people who have courage to fly.“

Wednesday, March 1, 2017

Angular Releases


The fact that breaking changes will arrive, doesn’t mean they will arrive every other week. The Angular team committed to time based releases that occur in three cycles:
  1. patch releases every week,
  2. 3 monthly minor release after each major release and
  3. major release with easy-to-migrate-over breaking changes every 6 months.
The next 3 months will be dedicated to finalizing Angular 4.0.0.

After Angular 4.0.0, the tentative schedule is shared in the attached image for further releases.
Due to this misalignment of the router package’s version, the team decided to go straight for Angular v4.

In this way again, all the core packages are aligned which will be easier to maintain and help avoid confusion in the future. 

Also it is important to understand how Angular is being used and integrated inside Google.