Chemse: Not Chem Abs but Useful and Free
January 12, 2010
Most of the pundits ignore the real world search problems. Ternary phase diagrams, math recipes, and chemical information to name three. But what you don’t know makes it easy to point out that content management is a great business and search is really simple. Dorkiness from pundits aside, the real world tackles information retrieval in subject areas the search poobahs rarely trek. For those interested in chemicals, chemical suppliers, and chemical industry news, check out Chemse, a free chemical search engine. About Us reported:
Our vision is the creation of a 100% transparence over the chemical market. Therefore we want to be an established partner for your daily business activities. We achieve this with sharing our experience, strong network, willingness for continuous improvement, a good team and with a steady improvement of our existing and new information.
A search for calcium permanganate returned vendors and this surprise:
Yes, a chemical structure. That’s a trick that the Google has not yet added to their online service.
The service operates a useful service. I can locate a seller of the chemical, scan news, and register. That’s free and delivers some additional services:
- Search history
- Predefine one’s inquiry text
- Keep an inquiry history
- See mail addresses for certain entities
- Manage inquires sent to a vendor.
More details as I locate them.
Stephen E Arnold, January 12, 2010
A freebie. I think I will report this sad fact to the National Nuclear Security Administration.
Another Stab at the Cost of Finding Documents
January 12, 2010
Some folks watch a few professionals flounder when looking for information. Others guesstimate how much time is required to locate a needed document. Fresh Business Thinking quotes a wizard, offering factoids like:
SMEs spend approx. 3 months a year looking for documents. (SME is a small-sized or mid-sized organization)
87% of respondents spend up to 2 hours every day looking for documents (on average, one hour of a person’s time is worth £86.61 so that’s £173.22 per person per day wasted across the UK!) (This is the easy route to a cost estimate and probably not a number to take to the bank.)
93% of people surveyed think they waste time looking for documents every day (I want to meet the other seven percent and find out their methods)
On average 46.93% of documents handled by SMEs are still paper based which is incredibly dangerous should there be a fire or flood. (Paper equals danger. I prefer “risk”)
I don’t doubt these figures, but it would have been helpful to get a bit more information about the size of the sample.
That thought these figures triggered was, “No wonder there is such high dissatisfaction with enterprise search systems.” If I spent 25 percent of my time hunting, I would have less time for thinking. We had to locate a single file last used in 1998. It took 30 minutes, which included snarfing through storages devices that had to be reconnected. Search systems have to meet business user needs. The goslings and I are lucky, we have the pick of the litter when it comes to search systems. In fact, that is the secret—multiple tools indexing the same corpus. You would be surprised to compare the difference in search results across systems, each indexing the same corpus. I know I was when I discovered this a decade ago.
But most organizations, or at least those in this sample, could not find the sand in the Mojave Desert. Are the vendors at fault? The procurement teams? The individual users? My thought is that each group shares responsibility for the waste that finding imposes on organizations and individual users of search systems.
Change in 2010? Nope.
Stephen E Arnold, January 12, 2010
I disclose to the General Services Administration’s purchasing group that I was not paid to write this article.
X1 Wants a UNC
January 9, 2010
Short honk: We are grinding through our annual test of various search systems. Today with the X1 system we noticed an issue that might confuse some. When you want to specify a drive to index such as our Drobo with the test collection, we now follow this procedure:
- Click on Tools, Options, Index, Files
- Browse returns the network share
- Delete what’s in the box and add the UNC path; for example, \\Nippy\Drobo-p\…..
A sample entry in the Files box would be helpful. The path that does not work is not helpful.
Donald Anderson, January 9, 2010
The addled goose paid Engineer Anderson to work out this method. No one else kicked in any dough. I will report this to the Railway Retirement Board. Ooops, not that kind of engineer.
Shining Light on IT Failures
January 7, 2010
Tim Bray’s “Doing It Wrong” provides some common sense, useful perspective on failures in traditional information technology in organizations, and a couple of killer quotes. Bray was among the first to tackle SGML. He labored at Sun Microsystems, cranked out an interesting content processing and visualization system, and contributed to various Web standard efforts. His “doing it wrong” essay makes one point: traditional IT methods produce some spectacular and all-too-common flops. He writes:
Obviously, the technology matters. This isn’t the place for details, but apparently the winning mix includes dynamic languages and Web frameworks and TDD and REST and Open Source and NoSQL at varying levels of relative importance. More important is the culture: iterative development, continuous refactoring, ubiquitous unit testing, starting small, gathering user experience before it seems reasonable. All of which, to be fair, I suppose had its roots in last decade’s Extreme and Agile movements. I don’t hear a lot of talk these days from anyone claiming to “do Extreme” or “be Agile”. But then, in Web-land for damn sure I never hear any talk about large fixed-in-advance specifications, or doing the UML first, or development cycles longer than a single-digit number of weeks.
There’s no one size fits all, just use the newer methods whether you snap together components in the cloud or build an on premises system. In short, emulate the Facebook / Google approach and when possible. Minimize the approaches recommended by the IBM type experts. The cloud and iterative approaches make sense.
One of his most interesting comments in my opinion is:
So if your enterprise wants the sort of outcomes we’re seeing on the Web (and a lot more should), you’re going to have to adopt some of the cultures and technologies that got them built.
Spot on. The problem is that the changes technologists like Tim Bray identify do not compute in certain organizations where business methods deny that a fundamental change is taking place. When Eric Schmidt suggests that publishing companies use technology, the publishing companies here this as “use new printing methods”. What Messrs. Bray and Schmidt are saying is closer to “shift technical domains.” That is going to be almost impossible for many organizations because the time required to figure out how to merge technical domains is in a race with available cash.
Lots of business dislocation awaits organizations unable to understand what folks like Messrs. Bray, Schmidt, and W. Brian Arthur are trying to communicate. That sucking sound I hear so often is companies going out of business.
Stephen E. Arnold, January 7, 2010
Oyez, oyez, this is a freebie. Ah, so many of my blogs posts are. I must report this miserable situation to the Labor Department (DOL).
IBM Mainframes on Linux
January 6, 2010
Behold IBM’s zSeries mainframes [yep, it is a 404 error. I just wanted to provide a reminder that IBM makes it tough to locate its product information when pushing marketing ideas without communicating with the technical writers in the affected engineering unit. The second link here points you to support, which is the real reason for the Linux on mainframes play.] running Linux. Now you won’t be using one of these installations at Starbuck’s to check your email. In fact, you may wonder why Beyond Search is writing about an IBM mainframe. Well, I like mainframes, having worked on an ITRC search project decades ago and then some other, more modest undertakings on the Bellcore MVS TSO environment when the Baby Bells had to keep track of what each did with one another.
Linux on zSeries opens up a brave new world for search. I must admit that world is a little out of step with the sorts of computing infrastructures I track, but IBM has its own symphony. Goose honks don’t matter at all.
This is a a testudo. One can mount a surface-to-air missile on the top of the formation, using the shields as a base. The question is, “Why?” Why not put the missile installation on the ground and avoid creating an anachronistic kludge? Image source: http://ferrelljenkins.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/soldiers_54sm.jpg
Navigate to “Pity the Poor Mainframe Salesman Scraping by on Cheap Linux”. The idea is that Linux eliminates a big chunk of the cost of working with mainframe systems. I think IBM is hoping that Linux experts will see the mainframe as the ideal vehicle for goosing [no pun intended] performance of some applications. The article explains:
With Linux, Blue figures it stands a better chance of moving iron, noting that the Linux capacity it shipped in the last two years was up 100% and that more than 3,000 of the 6,300 applications available on the System z platform are Linux-based. The two shiny new Enterprise Linux Servers, based on a special Linux processor known as an IFL or Integrated Facility for Linux, start at $212,000 for an entry-level two-processor model with three years worth of maintenance thrown in and go up over a million bucks from there for configurations with 10 or 64 IFLs.
What strikes me as interesting is that there is an assumption that a Linux wizard will be able to deal with the zSeries plumbing, its hardware, and some of those IBM oddities. Last week, we tore down an IBM server and counted five different fans, each with a proprietary connector. These puppies were not repairable; they were FRUs, or field replaceable units. How much does it cost to get an IBM service tech to drive over and order the device, go back to the IBM office, and then drive back to put the gizmo in. Some of the engineering of these mainframes requires a tear down to get to certain jumpers. Now the tear down isn’t difficult if you have some familiarity with IBM engineering logic for mainframes. A Linux wizard more familiar with pancakes from HP will be stumped. DASD configuration? Well, that is also a bit of work which begins with special screws, special housings, special cables, and – well – you get the idea.
I think that IBM is using external motivators in its labs these days. The IBM wizards put in their time and come up with quasi innovations. The intrinsic innovators at other outfits approach performance and stability in quite different ways.
I think that the idea of running Lucene or Solr on a zSeries is interesting. I wouldn’t mind having a couple of zSeries machines, a petabyte of DASD storage, and some time to run my test corpus on the gizmo. My hunch is that I could achieve equivalent velocity with some commodity hardware, a couple of Drobos, and some time. I can even rig white box servers to die quietly allowing back up servers to keep on trucking. If I need real speed, I could make a couple of phone calls and tap the engineering expertise of the folks at Coveo, Exalead, or Perfect Search, among others. Each company delivers sizzling performance via different engineering routes.
IBM is becoming more like the Burroughs Corporation. There are still D825s kicking around, and I ran across a person who told me that a small publishing company was running a Burroughs B25 with he BTOS operating system. You can still get support through Unisys I would guess. The problem is that the technical world is moving forward and grafting Linux to a mainframe is like mounting a surface-to-air missile to the shields of Roman soldiers in the testudo formation. It can be done, but why do anachronisms when innovations are much more interesting.
Stephen E. Arnold, January 6, 2009
A freebie. I will report this unpleasant situation to the War College which finds the testudo a useful tactic to discuss with young officers.
Coveo Lands an Energy Deal
January 5, 2010
I saw a new item on January 1, 2010, and I thought it was interesting. I have been a fan of the Coveo technology for a number of years. One of the goslings worked to integrate Coveo into a local firm’s enterprise offerings. The Coveo technology was integrated into a new corporate Web site for Tenaris, a company supplying products to the energy industry. According to the new story “Global Supplier for the World’s Energy Industry Launches New Website Developed on Sitecore by Roundedcube”:
The content model and architecture of the website was extremely important due to the immense amount of content and depth of navigation levels within the website. In addition to using Sitecore for content management, the website also includes the customization and integration of Coveo Advanced Enterprise Search. Roundedcube also made significant use of advanced JavaScript libraries for enhanced user experience and Flash for video and multimedia content. To facilitate the launch of the new website and enhance search engine optimization (SEO), Roundedcube developed a 301 redirect management tool directly within Sitecore CMS to allow Tenaris the ability to specify URLs from the former website to be redirected to the new pages and indicate to search engines that the page has permanently moved to the new location. A .NET web app compliments the solution by allowing the initial massive number of redirects to be loaded automatically.
A happy quack to the Coveo team.
Stephen E. Arnold, January 5, 2010
Beaks up. This is a post for which I was not compensated. A year ago, a Coveo person promised me a taco and so far, no go. I must report this sad state of affairs to the Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion.
SharePoint Sunday: January 3, 2010 Round Up
January 4, 2010
Herd them SharePoint geese. Yee-hah. The goslings and I love SharePoint almost as much as Exchange. If you are a SharePoint 2010 wrangler, you may find these tips and tricks helpful. If not, click away, partner. The addled goose may trample you with its stampeding goslings who are full as a tick after New Year’s Eve partying.
- Do you know how to get the Search Query API calls to be logged in the search usage analysis reports? If the answer is no, then you will need to mosey over to Trailblazer’s SharePoint Blog. You will find the explanation and a code snippet to get you started. Check out the pre requisites. Omit one, partner, and the method won’t work. Log analysis is too much work for some busy SharePoint administrators in my opinion.
- If you are not aware of the social freight that will be heaped on SharePoint and its supporting servers, you will want to take a look at “Ray Ozzie’s New Social Lab: What It Means For Enterprise 2.0.” Microsoft has been gnawing on social functions for five or more years, but its seems that everything old is new again, including a social lab, big ideas, and more bloat for SharePoint. SharePoint may be getting roostered up.
- We had a client call us last week and talk about enterprise memory and knowledge management. We are not sure what knowledge is, but we poked around and provided some ideas. In the course of our research, we came across Melodika.net’s “Building a Corporate Knowledge Structure with KWizCom’s Wiki Plus.” the idea is that this tool runs within SharePoint and it seems to provide the type of content capture and access functions our caller wanted. You can get more information about KWizCom’s products and services here.
As a final note, one of the Microsoft execs (Chris Liddell) on duty when the $1.23 billion acquisition of Fast Sear ch & Transfer SA took place has skedaddled from Redmond. The fellow is now working at General Motors. I wonder what super acquisitions he will engineer at that fine organization. I think the assets of the Tucker Corporation and Studebaker Corporation may be in play. GM may not want to let those hot properties go up the flume.
Stephen E. Arnold, January 4, 2010
No one paid me to provide this summary of SharePoint search information, darn it. I suppose I need to alert the Joint Fire Science Program because I wrote about such a hot product as SharePoint without taking cash.
IT Consumerization and Search
January 2, 2010
“Consumerization of IT Unstoppable, Says European Telecom Giant” kick started my thinking about search, content processing, and information access in organizations. The premise of the article is that “consumerization [of information technology] is unstoppable. The comment was made in the context of a discussion about security. No matter. The point is that in order to deliver a system that works, the days of the wild and crazy complexity may have to give way to enterprise software that works like a refrigerator or an iPad.
Now this type of statement can whip computer wizards into a frenzy. I think I understand their concern. Since 2000, nerds have been the big winners. The big success stories have come from companies able to create products and services that almost anyone can use. If you can’t figure out an iPad or a Google search box, you are pretty much screwed in today’s world.
What’s happening is that the top tech people will just become more powerful. The outfits able to crack the consumer appliance code will do pretty well. The users, well, the users get products and services anyone can use without much effort. For those not in the top tier or inhabiting a job in the shrinking middle, turn on the TV and do whatever.
One interesting factoid in the write up was:
“At Check Point, we have been looking at application usage, and 75 percent of our bandwidth is for non office-based services – it was for consumer oriented apps. How do you control that?
If personal use is growing, those lucky few with jobs may want to think about how to cover their online tracks.
How long will consumerization take? A long time if IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and SAP have any part to play. These companies thrive on complex products, lots of support services revenue, and certified professionals who play the witting or unwitting role as friction on the wheels of change.
And search? My hunch is that hosted services will see an uptick in 2011. I don’t have too much enthusiasm for appliances. Each appliance is different and I don’t want to learn how to handle proprietary gizmos unless I absolutely have to. Will Microsoft consumerize search? Have you taken a look at SharePoint and Fast search server yet?
Stephen E Arnold, January 2, 2011
Freebie
A Google Cheerleader Gently Disses MSFT
December 31, 2009
Short honk: A few years ago, I had difficulty finding examples of Google technology “in the wild.” In fact, I telephoned a Google reseller to ask a question. The reseller would not speak with me until the reseller coordinated with Google. I can’t reveal the details of why I called, but let us say that the call was not an unfriendly one.
Flash forward to December 22, 2009, and the blog post by a boss / janitor: “How Google and the Cloud Changed My Company.” The write up has plenty of gory details: executive resistance at the idea of using Google Apps. The best part was this comment:
Oh, did I mention the price? I estimate we will have saved almost $1,000 per employee between hardware and software costs — not to mention the deployment and maintenance savings that we reap over time. Woah. I just took a moment to re-read what I have written. Sounds like I work for Google. I don’t. But this blog is about what works for business and I feel that Google made a bold move to make businesses work better. I actually am not a Microsoft Hater anymore. Outgrew that when I put away the code. I just think they are an old and overpriced model. It will be interesting to see how good their response to Google Docs is: Office Web Apps. I bet MSFT isn’t used to playing catch-up on one of their core businesses!
How times have changed. Google’s burgeoning PR team could not have crafted a better testimonial. Oh, I found this using Google Blogsearch too. Indexed right smartly as well.
Stephen E. Arnold, December 30, 2009
I wish to report to the National Institutes of Health that Google’s grassroots PR is doing fine, thank you. And, because I am not PhD, I was not paid for my write up, attention, or scrutiny of the patient.
Another SharePoint Search Update
December 30, 2009
Short honk: You can download updates to WSS from the links in this TechNet post. Yes, constant refinement. Happy holidays.
Stephen E. Arnold, December 28, 2009
A freebie. I officially report this to the Senate Police, located above a museum and labeled as something other than the police.
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