Elsevier and Its Business Model May Be Ageing Fast
July 13, 2015
If you need to conduct research and are not attached to a university or academic library, then you are going to get hit with huge subscription fees to have access to quality material. This is especially true for the scientific community, but on the Internet if there is a will there most certainly is a way. Material often locked behind a subscription service can be found if you dig around the Internet long enough, mostly from foreign countries, but the material is often pirated. Gizmodo shares in the article, “Academic Publishing Giant Fights To Keep Science Paywalled” that Elsevier, one of the largest academic publishers, is angry about its content being stolen and shared on third party sites. Elsevier recently filed a complaint with the New York District Court against Library Genesis and SciHub.org.
“The sites, which are both popular in developing countries like India and Indonesia, are a treasure trove of free pdf copies of research papers that typically cost an arm and a leg without a university library subscription. Most of the content on Libgen and SciHub was probably uploaded using borrowed or stolen student or faculty university credentials. Elsevier is hoping to shut both sites down and receive compensation for its losses, which could run in the millions.”
Gizmodo acknowledges Elsevier has a right to complain, but they also flip the argument in the other direction by pointing out that access to quality scientific research material is expensive. The article brings up Netflix’s entertainment offerings, with Netflix users pay a flat fee every month and have access to thousands of titles. Netflix remains popular because it remains cheap and the company openly acknowledges that it sets its prices to be competitive against piracy sites.
Publishers and authors should be compensated for their work and it is well known that academics do not rake in millions, but access to academic works should be less expensive. Following Netflix’s model or having a subscription service like Amazon Prime might be a better business model to follow.
Whitney Grace, July 13, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Researchers Glean Audio from Video
July 10, 2015
Now, this is fascinating. Scary, but fascinating. MIT News explains how a team of researchers from MIT, Microsoft, and Adobe are “Extracting Audio from Visual Information.” The article includes a video in which one can clearly hear the poem “Mary Had a Little Lamb” as extrapolated from video of a potato chip bag’s vibrations filmed through soundproof glass, among other amazing feats. I highly recommend you take four-and-a-half minutes to watch the video.
Writer Larry Hardesty lists some other surfaces from which the team was able reproduce audio by filming vibrations: aluminum foil, water, and plant leaves. The researchers plan to present a paper on their results at this year’s Siggraph computer graphics conference. See the article for some details on the research, including camera specs and algorithm development.
So, will this tech have any non-spying related applications? Hardesty cites MIT grad student, and first writer on the team’s paper, Abe Davis as he writes:
“The researchers’ technique has obvious applications in law enforcement and forensics, but Davis is more enthusiastic about the possibility of what he describes as a ‘new kind of imaging.’
“‘We’re recovering sounds from objects,’ he says. ‘That gives us a lot of information about the sound that’s going on around the object, but it also gives us a lot of information about the object itself, because different objects are going to respond to sound in different ways.’ In ongoing work, the researchers have begun trying to determine material and structural properties of objects from their visible response to short bursts of sound.”
That’s one idea. Researchers are confident other uses will emerge, ones no one has thought of yet. This is a technology to keep tabs on, and not just to decide when to start holding all private conversations in windowless rooms.
Cynthia Murrell, July 10, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Cloud is Featured in SharePoint 2016
July 9, 2015
Users are eager to learn all they can about the upcoming release of SharePoint Server 2016. Mark Kashman recently gave a presentation and additional information which is covered in the Redmond Channel Partner article, “Microsoft: Cloud Will Play Prominent Role in SharePoint 2016.”
The article begins:
“Microsoft recently detailed its vision for SharePoint Server 2016, which appears to be very cloud-centric. Microsoft is planning a beta release of the new SharePoint Server 2016 by the end of this year, with final product release planned for Q2 2016. Mark Kashman, a senior product manager at Microsoft on the SharePoint team, gave more details about Microsoft’s plans for the server during a June 17 presentation at the SPBiz Conference titled ‘SharePoint Vision and Roadmap.’”
Users are still waiting to hear how this “cloud-centric” approach affects the overall usability of the product. As more details become available, stay tuned to ArnoldIT.com for the highlights. Stephen E. Arnold is a longtime leader in search, and his distillation of SharePoint new, tips, and tricks on his dedicated SharePoint feed is a way for users to stay on top of the changes without a huge investment in time.
Emily Rae Aldridge, July 9, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Watson Still Has Much to Learn About Healthcare
July 9, 2015
If you’ve wondered what is taking Watson so long to get its proverbial medical degree, check out IEEE Spectrum’s article, “IBM’s Dr. Watson Will See You… Someday.” When IBM’s AI Watson won Jeopardy in 2011, folks tasked with dragging healthcare into the digital landscape naturally eyed the software as a potential solution, and IBM has been happy to oblige. However, “training” Watson in healthcare documentation is proving an extended process. Reporter Brandon Keim writes:
“Where’s the delay? It’s in our own minds, mostly. IBM’s extraordinary AI has matured in powerful ways, and the appearance that things are going slowly reflects mostly on our own unrealistic expectations of instant disruption in a world of Uber and Airbnb.”
Well that, and the complexities of our healthcare system. Though the version of Watson that beat Jeopardy’s human champion was advanced and powerful, tailoring it to manage medicine calls for a wealth of very specific tweaking. In fact, there are now several versions of “Doctor” Watson being developed in partnership with individual healthcare and research facilities, insurance companies, and healthcare-related software makers. The article continues:
“Watson’s training is an arduous process, bringing together computer scientists and clinicians to assemble a reference database, enter case studies, and ask thousands of questions. When the program makes mistakes, it self-adjusts. This is what’s known as machine learning, although Watson doesn’t learn alone. Researchers also evaluate the answers and manually tweak Watson’s underlying algorithms to generate better output.
“Here there’s a gulf between medicine as something that can be extrapolated in a straightforward manner from textbooks, journal articles, and clinical guidelines, and the much more complicated challenge of also codifying how a good doctor thinks. To some extent those thought processes—weighing evidence, sifting through thousands of potentially important pieces of data and alighting on a few, handling uncertainty, employing the elusive but essential quality of insight—are amenable to machine learning, but much handcrafting is also involved.”
Yes, incorporating human judgement is time-consuming. See the article for more on the challenges Watson faces in the field of healthcare, and for some of the organizations contributing to the task. We still don’t know how much longer it will take for the famous AI (and perhaps others like it) to dominate the healthcare field. When that day arrives, will it have been worth the effort?
Cynthia Murrell, July 9, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Is SharePoint A Knowledge Management Tool
July 9, 2015
One of the biggest questions information experts are asked a lot is, “is SharePoint a knowledge management tool?” The answer, according to Lucidea, is: it depends. The answer is vague, but a blog post on Lucidea’s Web site explains why: “But Isn’t SharePoint A KM Application?”
SharePoint’s usefulness is explained in this one quote:
“SharePoint is a very powerful and flexible platform for building all sorts of applications. Many organizations have adopted SharePoint because of its promise to displace all sorts of big and little applications. With SharePoint, IT can learn one framework and build out applications on an as-needed basis, rather than buying and then maintaining 1001 different applications, all with various system requirements, etc. But the key thing is that you need someone to build out the SharePoint platform and actually turn it into a useful application.”
The post cannot stress enough the importance of customizing SharePoint to make it function as a knowledge management tool. If that was not enough, in order to keep SharePoint working well it needs to continuously be developed.
Lucidea does explain that SharePoint is not a good knowledge management application if you expect it to be implemented in a short time frame, focuses on a single problem, the users improve the system, and can meet immediate knowledge management needs.
The biggest thing to understand is that knowledge management is a process. There are applications that can take control of immediate knowledge management needs, but for long term the actual terms “knowledge” and “management” need to be defined to get what actually needs to be controlled.
Whitney Grace, July 9, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Sprinklr Aims to Conquer Consolidation Market
July 8, 2015
Sprinklr is in a race with the likes of Salesforce as well as fellow social-consolidation startups. Forbes declares, “Sprinklr Acquires NewBrand, the $1 Billion Social Startup’s Seventh Buy in 18 Months.” Back when social media was new, companies scrambled to leverage its potential with a hodgepodge of tools. Now, Sprinklr founder Ragy Thomas sees a wave of consolidation approaching, as companies tire of struggling to unite disparate solutions. Writer Alex Konrad writes:
“Sprinklr is one of a number of companies facing pressure to provide a more complete stack to brands looking to integrate their social marketing and customer support, Thomas says. An obvious example is the Salesforce Marketing Cloud, built off a nucleus of its own acquisitions like ExactTarget, Buddy Media and Radian6. Demand for a more end-to-end solution has intensified in the last year, Thomas argues. That’s why Sprinklr has acquired so much and so quickly, the CEO argues, typically taking the absorbed startup and absorbing its code directly into Sprinklr’s main code. …
“Sprinklr will face competition from also well-financed startups like Percolate as well as from larger suite offerings like Salesforce. ‘We are in a race against time to provide the capability to brands,’ Thomas says. ‘It’s becoming a three or four horse race with a clear set of companies that big brands can bank on moving forward.’”
At the moment, it looks like Sprinklr may be ahead in that race; predictive-analytics/ business-intelligence firm NewBrand is its seventh acquisition since the beginning of 2014. NewBrand launched in 2010, and is based in Washington, DC.
Ragy Thomas founded Sprinklr in 2009. The company is headquartered in New York City, with offices around the world. The other six companies it has snapped up include Scup, Get Satisfaction, Pluck, Branderati, TBG Digital, and Dachis Group.
Cynthia Murrell, July 8, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Want To Know What A Semantic Ecosystem Is
July 8, 2015
Do you want to know what a semantic ecosystem is? The answer is available from TopQuadrant in its article, “Semantic Ecosystem-What’s That About?” According to the article, a semantic ecosystem enables patterns to be discovered, show the relationships between and within data sources, add meaning to raw data artifacts, and dynamically bring information together.
In short, it shows how data and its sources connect with each other and extracts relationships from it.
What follows the brief explanation about what a semantic ecosystem can do is a paragraph about the importance of data, how it takes many forms, etc., etc. Trust me, you have heard it before. It then makes a comparison with a natural ecosystem, i.e. the ones find in nature.
The article continues with this piece:
“As in natural ecosystems, we believe that success in business is based on capability – and the ability to adapt and evolve new capabilities. Semantic ecosystems transform existing diverse information into valuable semantic assets. Key characteristics of a semantic ecosystem are that it is adaptable and evolvable. You can start small – with one or more key business solutions and a few data sources – and the semantic foundation can grow and evolve with you.”
It turns out a semantic ecosystem is just another name for information management. TopQuadrant coined the term to associate with their products and services. Talk about fancy business jargon, but TopQuadrant makes a point about having an information system work so well that it seems natural. When a system works naturally, it is able to intuit needs, interpret patterns, and make educated correlations between data.
Whitney Grace, July 8, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
SharePoint 2016 to Feature Deeply Ingrained Cloud Services
July 7, 2015
As additional details continue to be released, the SharePoint community speculates about the role of the cloud in the upcoming 2016 version. According to the GCN article, “SharePoint 2016 Built on Cloud Foundation,” cloud will play a central role.
Read all the details in the article, which begins:
“When SharePoint Server 2016 is released next year, Microsoft’s cloud services will be deeply ingrained, creating a more unified end user experience across components. ‘Everything we’re doing in Office 365 inspires the [SharePoint Server] product going forward, and you’ll see this cadence continuing,’ said Mark Kashman, a senior product manager at Microsoft on the SharePoint team.”
It sounds like users may have a steeper learning curve on this upcoming version, but then the pace may be set for the next several years. What will be interesting to see is whether users find the cloud focus to be intuitive, or if it is a hindrance, particularly for those who have voiced a preference for on-premises capabilities to continue. Microsoft is definitely trying to walk the line and be all things to all people, but then that has always been both its greatest strength and its greatest weakness. Stephen E. Arnold is a longtime leader in search and he knows the strengths and weaknesses well. His Web service, ArnoldIT.com, features a dedicated SharePoint feed, and is a great resource for users who need to stay up to speed without a huge investment in research time.
Emily Rae Aldridge, July 7, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Coveo Partners with Etherios on Salesforce Services
July 7, 2015
Professional services firm Etherios is teaming up with Coveo in a joint mission to add even more value to customers’ Salesforce platforms, we learn from “Etherios and Coveo Announce Strategic Alliance” at Yahoo Finance. Etherios is a proud Salesforce Platinum Partner. The press release tells us:
“Coveo connects information from across a company’s IT ecosystem of record and delivers the knowledge that matters to customers and agents in context. Coveo for Salesforce – Communities Edition helps customers solve their own cases by proactively offering case-resolving knowledge suggestions, and Coveo for Salesforce – Service Cloud Edition allows customer support agents to upskill as they engage customers by injecting case-resolving content and experts into the Salesforce UI as they work.
“Etherios provides customers with consulting and implementation services in the areas of Sales, Customer Service, Field Service and IoT [Internet of Things]. … Etherios capabilities span operational strategy, business process, technical design and implementation expertise.”
Founded in 2005, Coveo leverages search technology to boost users’ skills, knowledge, and proficiency while supplying tools for collaboration and self-service. The company maintains offices in the U.S. (SanMateo, CA), the Netherlands, and Quebec.
A division of Digi International, Etherios launched in 2008 specifically to supply cloud-based tools for Salesforce users. They prefer to inhabit the cutting edge, and operate out of Chicago, Dallas, and San Francisco.
Cynthia Murrell, July 7, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Digestible Content Tool For The Busy Person
July 7, 2015
RSS feeds and Web page readers curate content from select Web sites tailored to suit a users’ needs. While all of the content is gathered in one spot and the headlines are available to read, sometimes the readers return hundreds of articles and users do not have the time to read all of them. True, sometimes users can glen the facts from the headlines and the small blurb included with it, but sometimes it is not enough.
There are apps that gather and summarize a users’ content, but these are usually geared towards a specific industry or an enterprise system. There is a content reader that was designed for the average user, while at the same time it can be programmed to serve the needs of many professionals. The Context Organizer from Content Discovery Inc. is an application that summarizes Web pages and documents in order to pinpoint relevant information. The Content Organizer works via five basic steps:
“1. Get to the point – Speed-up reading by condensing web pages, emails and documents into keywords and summaries presented in context.
- Make a Long Story Short – The Short Summary headlines most important sentences – instant information capsules.
- Accelerate Search – Search the web with relevant keywords. Summarize Google search results for rapid understanding.
- Take Notes – Quickly collect topics and sentences. Send them to WordPad or Word. Share notes – send them by e-mail.
- Visualize – View summaries in context as Mindjet MindManager maps.”
There are three different Context Organizer versions: one that specifically searches the Web, another that searches the Web and Microsoft Products, and the third is a combination of the prior versions plus it includes the Mindjet MindManager. The prices range from $60-$120 with a free twenty-one day trial, which we suggest you start with. Always start with free trial first, because you mind be throwing away money on an item you do not like. With the amount of content available on the Web, any tool that helps organize and summarize it is worth investigating.
Whitney Grace, July 7, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
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