Month: December 2016

Microsoft’s new service turns FAQs into bots

Enrico

Finding customer service help online can be a pain. Filtering through a knowledge base to find the right answer to your question can be an exercise in fighting with nested frequently asked questions documents. Microsoft is aiming to help by making it easier for companies to create intelligent bots that can answer common questions. The QnA Maker, launched in beta on Tuesday, will let users train an automated conversation partner on existing frequently-asked-questions content. After that information is fed in, the service will create a bot that will respond to…

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How do I extract text that lies between two strings?

Enrico

My initial problem was to extract from a SQL string generated by MySql, all fields. I had a string like 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 INSERT INTO `inventoryapp`.`inventory_keys` (`Id`, `PropertyId`, `AppointmentId`, `SectionType`, `KeysDescription`, `FobsWorking`, `EntryCodes`, `AlarmCodes`, `Notes`, `Version`, `CreatedDate`, `CreatedBy`, `UpdatedDate`, `UpdatedBy`, `IsDeleted`) VALUES (<{Id: }>, <{PropertyId: }>, <{AppointmentId: }>, <{SectionType: }>, <{KeysDescription: }>, <{FobsWorking: }>, <{EntryCodes: }>, <{AlarmCodes: }>, <{Notes: }>, <{Version:…

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Amazon just launched a cashier-free convenience store

Enrico

Amazon just unveiled a grocery store without lines or checkout counters. Amazon Go, a 1800-square-foot retail space located in the company’s hometown of Seattle, lets shoppers just grab the items they want and leave; the order gets charged to their Amazon account afterwards. Amazon Go works by using computer vision and sensors to detect what items you’re taking out of the store. You start by scanning an app as you enter the Amazon Go shop. You do your normal shopping, and the sensors throughout the store identify the items in…

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It’s a Good Day to Be a C# Developer

Enrico

Recently at Connect(), Microsoft made a slew of new announcements. First, the public availability of Visual Studio 2017 Release Candidate. This just isn’t a new version of the signature developer tool, it also includes the latest bits for C# 7.0. Second, Google announced they were joining the .NET Foundation. This means that Google, technically a competitor of Microsoft, wants to be actively involved in the evolution of .NET (and indirectly C#). Third, the first public release of Visual Studio for Mac. As a native environment, Visual Studio for Mac will…

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Migrate SQLite to MySQL

Enrico

I’m developing a huge app made with Xamarin Forms in my company. A problem was to create all tables in the device with SQLite to the main database MySql. I found a way to create all tables quickly with a tool called SQLite to MySQL. SQLite-to-MySQL is a powerful and reliable tool to convert SQLite databases to MySQL, MariaDB or Percona format. The program has high performance due to direct connection to source and destination databases (it does not use ODBC or any other middleware software). Command line support allows…

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Microsoft’s Home Hub ambitions aim to crush Google Home and Amazon Echo

Enrico

In what might be the most exciting part of this whole project, Microsoft is working on bringing the connected "smart home" to Windows 10 with Home Hub. The goal is to make Windows 10 the central hub for all your smart home devices, including lights, doors, locks and more. With Cortana integration allowing you to use your voice to toggle and control the smart devices in your home, the picture for Home Hub becomes complete: it brings Windows 10 to the center of your entire home. Microsoft is building a…

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