What is API or Watson can Provide to Your Service or Application
With the advent of the Application Programming Interface or, briefly, the API, the life of programmers has become somewhat easier than before. In the minimum time, you can now add to your application certain functions, structures, procedures provided by another application, operating system or service. The API of their services and applications is now open to many developers.
In 2013, IBM unveiled three Watson cognitive APIs within the “Watson Ecosystem” ecosystem, which at that time included more than 40 different technologies. Thanks to these API developers have the opportunity to build their own applications and services capabilities offered by IBM Watson. Currently, the IBM API is much more open than before, and the services themselves have become more functional. In the sequel, a description of the existing APIs of the various services that a developer can access.
- Now they are divided into several groups in accordance with the basic capabilities and scope of use.
The Language group
This group includes seven different services with open APIs:
• AlchemyLanguage;
• Conversation;
• Document Conversion;
• Language Translator;
• Natural Language Classifier;
• Natural Language Understanding;
• Personality Insights;
• Retrieve and Rank;
• Tone Analyzer.
AlchemyLanguage
This includes a whole set of APIs that allows you to teach your application or service to “understand” feelings, keywords and phrases, high-level abstractions, and so on. This service can be applied in order to analyze the general mood of the buyers of a certain product. What do people think about your product or service on Twitter or friends on Facebook? This is an important information that will improve the interaction with your target audience.
In addition, the service will help to catch the moment when new competitors appear or analyze the actions of the old ones. Also, the service analyzes the content on the company’s website and evaluates it according to various criteria.
Access to the API is available here. More information is available at this link.
Conversation
Watson Conversation helps the developer to create a bot or virtual assistant in the form of an application for a mobile device, web service or even a robot “in the flesh,” able to communicate with people. As part of the service, developers are provided with a visual dialog editor, thanks to which the developer can establish a channel of communication with his visitors. No special programming skills are required here.
Access the API here, for more information click here.
Document Conversion
This service allows you to convert various document formats to a format that is used by one of the Watson services. Document Conversion is an auxiliary service that is used along with other capabilities of the cognitive system.
Access the API here, for more information click here.
Language Translator
Translates different types of content into different languages. Can work in real time. This service is convenient because with its help you can create an application with which any user from any part of the world can work. That is, the company, for example, from Russia, will be able to offer its products to a buyer from Japan. But the possibilities of this service are much wider than just establishing a dialogue with buyers and users from different countries.
Service self-learning. So if there was a mistake somewhere, and it was fixed, then this error will no longer appear. In addition, the service “remembers” specific product names, people’s names and terms so that the translation is as correct as possible.
Access the API here, for more information click here.
Natural Language Classifier
This service classifies the content of its content. For example, it allows you to “explain” to the computer that questions like “What’s the weather today”, “Is it hot today”, “Can I go to sea” have to do with weather and temperature. Accordingly, the developed bot can “understand” what the user asks for and give a relevant answer.
Access the API here, for more information click here.
Natural Language Understanding
Analysis and extraction of meta-data from this type of content, such as terms, keywords, categories, description of feelings, emotions, relationships, semantic roles. This service can work with unstructured text.
Access the API here, for more information click here.
Personality Insights
This service allows you to evaluate some aspects of the author’s personality of a certain text (for example, a business message). The analysis is based on the content written and how the message or document is drawn up. In order for the service to work correctly, it is recommended to download texts containing at least 1200 words.
Access the API here, for more information click here.
Retrieve and Rank
With the help of this service, the developer can extract the most relevant information from a group of documents. For example, by applying Retrieve and Rank, the developer can quickly find a solution to a problem with any equipment by analyzing the instructions for this equipment. With its help, you can improve the work of the call center, when an employee quickly finds a solution to a question with the help of the service. As a result, the response time is shortened, and the client receives a complete information on his or her question.
Access the API here, for more information click here.
Tone Analyzer
IBM Watson Tone Analyzer uses linguistic analysis to determine the tone of a message. It helps to immediately assess the emotional content of the content, in order to quickly navigate in the way you need to respond. The service can be used for social media analysis – for example, a social network page with feedback on the product or service of the company. You can also work with it when communicating with customers.
Access the API here, for more information click here.
Speech Group
This includes services such as:
• Speech to Text;
• Text to Speech.
Speech to Text
This service is used, as you can already understand by name, to translate speech into text. Thus, it is possible to decipher audio auditions of clients, translating them into a text document, and also to analyze the general tone of calls using the services mentioned above. Of course, this is only one way, in fact, there are much more.
Access the API here, for more information click here.
Text to Speech
Well, this service converts printed text to speech, using different voices, tonality, and languages. Thus, the developer can customize the pronunciation of the bot by any words for closer communication with the audience. As an example of using the service, you can develop an interactive toy, create an automatic call center, a navigation system with a speaking virtual assistant.
Access the API here, for more information click here.
Image Processing group
There is only one service in this group:
Visual Recognition
The service allows you to “explain” the machine that is shown in the picture. He recognizes food, dishes, people’s faces with the definition of their approximate age and sex, looking for similar images. You can also create your own custom templates. Such service can be useful for retailers and representatives of many other spheres.
Access the API here, for more information click here.
Data Working Group
And this group includes services that allow you to conduct a detailed analysis of data from any complex documents of different subjects:
• AlchemyData News;
• Discovery;
• Discovery News.
AlchemyData News
This service indexes from 250 to 300 thousand English-language news every day. Search on the news story is available for the last two months. A search is conducted for the keywords. Thus, you can embed the service API in your application and offer it to users who need structured news on different topics.
Access the API here, for more information click here.
Discovery
Structuring the data from the analyzed news with the selection of the main content. The service works mainly with English. Every day, this service analyzes over 300,000 news items and blog entries from 100,000 sources. The service allows you to search and analyze the information received feedback on a specific product or service with the definition of the frequency of mentioning different names and perform other actions with the data.
Access the API here, for more information click here.
Discovery News
This service provides access to a collection of data collected as a result of the analysis of hundreds of thousands of new articles and blog entries on various topics. The number of sources reaches 100,000.
Access the API here, for more information click here.
How to work with all these tools?
In order to get started with IBM Watson and its services, you need to do the following:
1. Get a free account on the Bluemix platform. The first month of work with this platform is free;
2. Configure the account by specifying the data and setting up the environment. This will help the master;
3. Find the necessary service that you need. In fact, Bluemix offers much more services than indicated above. It’s very easy to start working with them;
4. Create an instance. To do this, select the Watson service and then click the Create button;
5. Get the necessary data for embedding in your application.
6. Create your own service or application.
Now the Watson API is used by thousands of partners of the company, including the largest corporations, such as the Japanese company Softbank, and independent developers. Assess the capabilities of the IBM Watson cognitive system is completely free.
