Blog

As 2024 winds down, we’re excited to share our Top 5 blogs of the year, hand-selected by our team for their relevancy, innovations, and practicality for software developers. These blogs cover a wide range of topics from how to write better code and leveraging AI, to developing custom voice models and improving elder care communication. Each post offers actionable tips, real-world case studies, and expert perspectives that are sure to inspire and empower developers, engineers, and tech enthusiasts alike.  At the top of our list is Hana Klingova’s practical and…

In recent years, the rise of synthetic voice technology has opened up new possibilities for a variety of voice-based applications. Whether it's creating personalized voice assistants, enhancing accessibility tools, or developing unique AI-driven experiences, the potential is vast. But how easy is it to create a custom voice AI model that runs locally on your computer, without relying on cloud services? Applio offers a powerful, open-source solution making training and using a custom voice model accessible to everyone—from developers to creative teams. Unlike cloud-based alternatives, Applio does not require an…

One of our Tech Research team’s most interesting recent projects is the development of an autonomous web explorer. This tool, built on OpenAI's GPT-4o model, extends the capabilities of traditional web scrapers by performing more complex interactions, such as clicking buttons and filling out forms. This means it can navigate through dynamic states on websites—like encountering a login form with an error message about an incorrect password—by understanding and interacting with the content in context. One of the primary uses of our automated web explorer is in the creation of…

Applications powered by large language models (LLMs) need to be more than merely functional—they need to be scalable, reliable, and capable of continuous improvement over time. To make this happen, you need tools that allow you to trace and fine-tune your app's performance to identify inefficiencies, diagnose issues, and improve response quality. This is where LangSmith comes into play: a tool built for developers working with LLMs who need insight into how their AI models behave in production environments. LangSmith can be a game changer for AI developers. LangSmith gives…

New frameworks and tools are constantly emerging, each promising to make our lives easier and our applications faster. But every so often, a framework comes along that doesn’t just promise incremental improvements—it redefines the game. Qwik is one such framework: built by performance nerds, for performance nerds.  Qwik introduces novel architecture that eliminates the need for the traditional UI hydration process, a step that often bogs down web apps with unnecessary overhead. Instead of rehydrating the entire UI on the client side, Qwik only activates the parts of the application…

If you want to improve your product by developing new AI features built on top of large language models (LLMs), you have many options to choose from. GPT models from Open AI are often considered the go-to solution for most use cases. But the competition in this space is heating up. Other proprietary solutions such as Gemini from Google or Claude from Anthropic are catching up in terms of quality, features, and pricing. There are also many high-quality open-weight models such as Llama-3.1 from Meta or the Mistral family from…

Are you developing an application and looking to integrate large language model (LLM) features? With multiple options like GPT, Gemini, Claude, and open-source models from Hugging Face, choosing the right solution can be overwhelming. Each model offers unique strengths, from GPT's versatile text generation to Claude's detailed descriptions, and an open-source model's flexibility. Integrating LLM features can significantly enhance your application by providing capabilities such as natural language understanding, text generation, and intelligent automation. To make an informed decision, it’s essential to evaluate your application's specific needs, compare model performances,…

Phoenix is a popular Elixir web framework for building scalable, high-performance web applications. If you are building a large-scale Phoenix-based application platform, then you would most likely have a DevOps person or a DevOps team to deploy it in GCP or AWS with a Kubernetes orchestration engine. If you’re developing your app on your own or within a small team of developers, however, such cloud platforms and tools are unnecessarily sophisticated and complex for your needs. In this article, we will explore and compare two platforms that make the daunting…

When a user has a problem or an issue, it might seem logical to stop the conversation and immediately jump in with a solution. However, this can prevent us from truly understanding the customer’s needs and getting a broader view of the issue at hand. Active listening is an important component of any job - including in the software industry. We sat down recently with Dr. Erica Noll Webb, the senior research manager at Docker, to discuss the importance of customer-centric innovation and other timely topics related to her work.…

An API, or Application Programming Interface, is a set of rules and protocols for building software and applications. It specifies how software components should interact and allows for communication between different systems. APIs can be used to allow third-party developers to access certain features or data of an application or service, enabling them to build their own applications that integrate with it. Tech startups can use APIs in a variety of ways to expand their reach, improve their products and services, and increase their revenue. APIs enable startups to leverage…