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Ryan welcomes Benny Chen, co-founder of Fireworks AI, to the show to explore what actually makes an AI application good or not, how to balance qualitative signals with quantitative metrics when evaluating AI, and how open-source eval protocols and community efforts are setting the standard for AI evaluation.
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Sr. Content Developer at Microsoft, working remotely in PA, TechBash conference organizer, former Microsoft MVP, Husband, Dad and Geek.
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This article reviews "Blazor WebAssembly by Example (Third Edition)," a practical book that guides developers through building real-world Blazor WebAssembly applications. It covers key topics like components, routing, state management, API integration, authentication, deployment, and AI integration, demonstrating how Blazor fits into the modern .NET ecosystem. The author emphasizes learning by building complete projects and highlights Blazor's versatility for full-stack development within the Microsoft stack.
Pennsylvania, USA
This is pretty much a real-life Tricorder, like the one used by the Starfleet crew in Star Trek. But take a look under the hood, and you’ll see that it’s actually a powerful tool designed to help the user survive unforgiving terrain. And it’s all running on RP2350, our secure, high-performance microcontroller.
ATLAS (Advanced Tactical Laboratory and Analysis System) is a rugged handheld field tool designed for explorers, engineers, and anyone who needs real, actionable intelligence, not just sensor readings. With pro-grade sensors measuring radiation, CO₂, VOCs, temperature, humidity, light, sound, and magnetic fields, ATLAS gives you direct, plain-English warnings like “Safe background radiation levels”, “Leave area now”, or “Storm incoming in 2 hours. 68% chance”.
Integrated GPS means every reading, warning, and anomaly is geo-tagged and timestamped for complete field awareness. The on-board 5MP camera and Google Coral Mini AI enable instant identification of rocks, bugs, and plants without the need for Wi-Fi or Bluetooth.
ATLAS also delivers real-time, on-device weather forecasts and storm alerts, using its sensors to warn you about dangerous conditions as they happen. The data is even logged for later review.
RP2350’s power-lifting capabilities
Maker Apollo Timbers is an engineer who set out to build an environmental, biological, and threat detection system in a single device. It took about a year to develop and runs on our RP2350 microcontrollers: one RP2350A and one RP2350B, with their roles deliberately split.
RP2350B is the main brain, running the sensor stack responsible for environmental and weather monitoring, threat detection, and overall device coordination. Its higher pin count and memory capacity made it the right choice for the heavy I/O load this build demands.
Elsewhere, an RP2350A runs a TMS5100-class linear predictive coding (LPC) speech synthesiser, providing the voice ATLAS speaks with. Apollo tuned the vocabulary so that ATLAS’s spoken words — numbers, status updates, alerts, and so on — sound the way they would coming from a Tricorder. As the maker explains: “A 1978-lineage voice on your 2024 silicon, in a real device in 2026. It felt right.”
Massive sensor stack
We’re a British company, so we’re largely averse to tooting our own horn. T’would be crass. So instead, we’ll subtly share this quote from the maker — the grandfather of the modern Tricorder, if you will — about how endlessly powerful our silicon is:
“…the sensor stack is massive — IMU (Inertial Measurement Unit), pressure, CO, CO₂, radiation, light, microphone, and more. ATLAS doesn’t just collect data, it runs sensor fusion across the stack to understand where it is and what’s happening around it, and warns the operator when something is going to hurt them. The two RP2350s powering the ATLAS Command Module make all of that run… And frankly, the datasheet is readable, which is rarer than it should be.”
This compact handheld device has a number of possible applications, and its potential for monitoring human safety is immeasurable. Take a look at more designs from Apollo Timbers’ company, Second Robotics.
The post ATLAS: a modern Tricorder designed to survive unforgiving terrain appeared first on Raspberry Pi.
Pennsylvania, USA
Pennsylvania, USA
Claude Sonnet 5 developer decision guide. Sections: What changed from Sonnet 4.6 (agentic capabilities, tool use, longer output stability), Sonnet 5 vs Opus 4.8 vs DeepSeek V4 for coding tasks (decision matrix, not benchmark table), accessing Sonnet 5 via API (model ID: claude-sonnet-5, available on Claude API, Bedrock, Vertex AI), Claude Code integration (how Sonnet 5 performs as default CLI model), the August 31 pricing transition ($2/$10 intro → $3/$15 standard), and what ‘agentic’ means for your daily coding (real examples of Sonnet 5 autonomous workflow capabilities).
Continue reading Claude Sonnet 5: The Developer’s Guide to Anthropic’s New Default Model on SitePoint.
Pennsylvania, USA
For this month's SharePoint showcase, we're zooming in on AI skills in SharePoint and real Microsoft use cases for Copilot in SharePoint. We're also introducing a new "Product Drops" standing section to recap all the new GA functionality across the platform each month.
As always, would love to hear from you in the comments. Let's get into it!
Start with the playbook: building AI skills that actually work
Before the new capabilities below, start with the thinking behind them. In a new companion post, our team distills what we've learned working with customers building real skills in Copilot in SharePoint — why some AI workflows take off and others stall after the demo. Three lessons stand out:
- Pick the right workflow. Most efforts succeed or fail here. A quick filter: is it worth building, is it content-centric, and is there a repeatable path to a known-good outcome? Proposal drafting, compliance checks, and vendor evaluation pass; one-off creative work doesn't.
- Build it the way work actually happens. Skills beat ad-hoc prompts the moment judgment needs to be consistent. Design around the handoff to the next person, set the human checkpoint first, and let site memory carry lessons forward.
- Make it stick. Skills survive when skipping them costs more than using them. Target high value and high volume workflows at starter scenarios.
→ Read the full post: Lessons from Building AI Skills in the Real World
How Microsoft uses Copilot in SharePoint, and how you can get started
Every month in the SharePoint Showcase we walk through new capabilities across SharePoint. This month we want to show you something different: how we use it.
As a complex company with over 200,000 employees, Microsoft has a massive data estate. We deeply understand the need for complex data estate management; the actions we take ourselves translate into the features we build.
Copilot in SharePoint delivers an agentic experience that helps teams create, organize, and act on content with AI. We introduced these capabilities at Microsoft Ignite 2025, and moved to an expanded public preview this month.
Here are 4 examples of where it’s making a difference for us, the numbers behind it, and exactly how you can get started.
Partner Incentives & Operations An employee-built solution automated the creation of retail partner offer letters for sales incentive campaigns. The automation improved finance and sales operations efficiency — saving roughly 6,000 hours — and improved Microsoft Partner organization interactions by 30%.
Microsoft Advertising AI-generated metadata tags made a sales-collateral site far easier to navigate, boosting content discovery by 75% and cutting the time to surface the right material from about two days to half a day. The result: less time searching, faster document processing and publishing, and more productive sellers.
Legal Frontline Support Auto-categorization of incoming emails into predefined categories streamlined the support process, with a 95% reduction in time spent on data tracking and a 15% reduction in follow-up cases. Power Platform automation supplied scripted replies to employees asking common legal questions.
Nuance Business Operations AI surfaced clauses and terms in contracts to speed reviews, accelerate deal processing, and strengthen data accuracy and legal compliance in customer subscription renewals. It saved two vendor resources annually and cut processing time per renewal cycle by 35%.
In their words
Two of our own teams on what changed in their day-to-day:
We have a team of legal professionals who provide legal counsel and guidance to internal product groups and engineering teams during product lifecycle, development and release planning (we call this team “CELA E+D”). A SharePoint orchestration initiative maintained over 10K contracts and legal documentation in a SharePoint "Data Lake" to enable this team to provide better support to E+D.
“By replacing ad-hoc storage with a structured, AI-ready repository, the team reduces duplicative legal work, improves time to answer for product groups, and increases trust in Copilot and Agent outputs.”
Jaymee Torres, Senior Paralegal, Microsoft CELA E+D (SharePoint orchestration initiative)
Agent Launchpad is an internal user adoption campaign for Agent Extensibility, run by Microsoft Digital (MSD) with a SP site, Viva Engage community and a series of showcases, demos and user story sessions promoting custom Copilot Agents built by employees.
“We used the AI capabilities in SharePoint, paired with targeted SEO and metadata optimization, to improve how Copilot understands, ranks, and surfaces the Agent Launchpad site. As a result, Copilot responses are now more consistently pointing users to the right guidance when needed, reducing friction, improving time to value, and driving better adoption of AI tools across the organization.”
Cadie Kneip, Senior BPM, Microsoft Digital (Agent Launchpad)
How you can get started
Simply go to SharePoint Online to begin. You need one high-value library and one repeatable workflow. Here’s are some example paths you can follow:
- Turn on metadata. Pick one high-value library, choose the Copilot button, and select Add autofill columns. Let Copilot tag what manual effort never finished. Then, ask Copilot in SharePoint to use the metadata to generate an HTML report summarizing the content of the document library for easy visibility to what’s there.
- Make a site answerable. Enable Copilot in SharePoint chat (contextual Q&A) on an HR, Legal, or IT site so employees get cited answers instead of digging through pages.
- Build a page with AI. Use Copilot in SharePoint to turn a prompt into a structured first draft.
- Codify one workflow. Choose something repeatable and content-centric, build around the handoff, and design the human checkpoint first.
- Mind your labels. Confirm sensitivity labels are applied so AI processes what it should while leaving Highly Confidential content untouched.
Get started with Copilot in SharePoint
- Adoption page: the home for everything Copilot in SharePoint
- Nominate your scenario: partner with the SharePoint product team to co-build your solution at no-cost (subject to selection – see link for full details).
Additional resources:
- Quick start guide: a step-by-step path to your first wins
- Intro video: a quick product overview to share with your team
- SharePoint skills: a blog on tips for incorporating skills into your AI workflows
- Get started with Copilot in SharePoint: see learn documentation about Copilot in SharePoint
- SharePoint Showcase landing page: every monthly post in one place
Product drops
Here's what's new in SharePoint this month, all now generally available:
Create a SharePoint News post from Copilot Pages: Once you've finished researching, creating, and collecting content in Copilot Pages, take it to a SharePoint News post with the press of the 'SharePoint' button under 'Create.' Roadmap 557566
AI news summary for SharePoint News in Teams: Access an AI-generated audio summary of SharePoint News posts in the SharePoint app for Teams (Viva Connections). Roadmap 562018
eSignature for Microsoft 365: recipient groups: Recipient groups let a signing slot be assigned to multiple people, so any one of them can fulfill the signing requirement on behalf of the group. Roadmap 560822
A reimagined SharePoint experience: A simpler, more intuitive SharePoint centered on discovering knowledge, publishing content, and building solutions. It sets the foundation for AI-assisted creation across the product, with updated information architecture and a cohesive design language for a clean, consistent experience across surfaces. Roadmap 547732
Updates to SharePoint home sites: A new resources web part, a new way to customize the SharePoint app (Viva Connections) for Teams desktop and mobile, and the ability to set up a home site in the SharePoint admin center. The Announcements web part and the new News web part layout will also become available in all sites. Roadmap 557983
Stay tuned every month for the SharePoint Showcase, where we share updates, best practices, and real-world examples of how SharePoint helps teams move faster, work smarter, and stay in control as AI reshapes work.
Pennsylvania, USA
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