Convera, Hakia Added to Overflight
July 13, 2009
The Overflight search intelligence service allows a person interested in search and content processing to visit a page, select a vendor, and see a report. The report is free and draws information from the ArnoldIT.com database of information about more than 350 vendors in the information retrieval sector. Today, Convera (the challenged vertical search company) and Hakia (a vendor of semantic technology and systems) have been added to Overflight. The following links will get you to the Overflight information:
- The Overflight splash page is at http://arnoldit.com/overflight/
- Convera click here
- Hakia click here.
You can watch Google’s daily incremental thrusts from the Overflight splash page as well.
Stephen Arnold, July 13, 2009
Mysteries of Online Available as a Free Report
July 13, 2009
A student at a library school in Toronto sent me an email asking for permission to reuse two of the write ups in this Web log’s “Mysteries of Online” series. I wrote nine essays which are finable via the Blossom search box on any of this Web log’s pages. After that call, I decided to make life easy for students and any other person who wanted to review what I have learned in the last couple of decades about online information and deriving revenue from that type of information.
You can now click here and download a PDF that contains the nine essays. I have added a short disclaimer and a basic table of contents so you can locate the essay you wish to review. I did not prepare an index or insert the illustrations that I use in my formal lectures and presentations.
The only caveat attached to the document is that if you work for a commercial enterprise, write me at seaky2000 at yahoo dot com to let me know what you want to do. There is some legal boilerplate that must be inserted in you want to recycle my work.
Stephen Arnold, July 13, 2009
Exalead Snags Former Autonomy Sales Director
July 12, 2009
I learned from one of my readers that Mike Hobson, formerly the UK sales director, has joined Exalead in a similar capacity. Mr. Hobson has experience in search and content processing with Verity, Information Builders, and Interleaf. Mr. Hobson said:
“We are aiming to capitalise on the possibilities offered by CloudView and continue to place the emphasis on improving operational costs and ROI for our customers. Our aim it to promote more rapid and more economical development cycles with CloudView, while enabling our clients to benefit from architecture, ergonomics and technology inspired by the Web.
You may want to read the detail on TMCnet.com. Exalead offers a scalable, extensible content processing solution. More information is available at http://www.exalead.com. You can read an exclusive interview with the founder of Exalead on the Search Wizards Speak series here.
Stephen Arnold, July 12, 2009
Convera Firstlight Online Tie Up
July 12, 2009
Convera’s financial results for the period ending April 30, 2009, came across the goose pond on June 12, 2009. The news release said that:
- Revenues decreased
- The company reported a net los of $5.4 million.
Following in the path of Lexalytics, Convera (once one of the big five in enterprise search) has merged with a European company. Same path followed by Attensity. The new company will take another run at the market. The mash up combines Convera and Firstlight Online Ltd. This tie up was announced early in June, before the financial results hit my desk. Convera will be delisted from public trading. The current CEO of Convera will become chairman of the new entity. The Firstlight CEO Colin Jeavons will run the combined company.
A recent recent positioning statement about Convera suggested that Convera was a developer of Web tools to allow publishers to crate customized search engines. Those with some mileage under their belt in search will recall that:
- Convera was Excalibur Technologies, which had some scanning, OCR, and search functions
- Excalibur bought ConQuest, a vendor with a search system
- Excalibur became Convera and entered into a search deal with Intel and the NBA.
After both the Intel and the NBA deals went south, Convera focused on rebuilding and invested some of Allen & Co.’s money in hardware to build vertical search systems. Convera sold its enterprise and government search businesses to Autonomy and Fast Search. The “new” Convera was to be a vertical search specialist. As you may know, Google gives away the functionality via its “custom search engine” program. Google also offers a “syndicated search” option as well.
The future of these tie ups could be bright. InQuira was formed from two search and content processing companies. That firm seems to have found a niche in customer support. The jury is still out on the Lexalytics / Infonic deal’s success.
Convera’s new angle will be online advertising and search. The story “Convera Corporation and Firstlight ERA to Create a new Search and Advertising Company for Publishing Market.” Convera Will Also Distribute Cash to Stockholders” in the Examiner said:
The combined new company will bring together the vertical search technology of Convera and the advertising sales and marketing capabilities of Firstlight. It will have over 60 corporate customer accounts and 120 existing Web sites with approximately 1500 advertisers. The new company will provide technology and advertising to the publishing market and expects to generate revenue from advertising sales and subscriptions.
In my opinion the trajectory from enterprise search to the Firstlight tie up underscores the lengths to which developers of search and content processing are willing to go to generate revenues. I remain skeptical of no cash tie ups or blending two organizations with different technical orientations. Search, gentle reader, is a tough business.
Stephen Arnold, July 12, 2009
Overflight Coverage Expanded
July 11, 2009
Short honk: The Beyond Search goslings have added three companies to the ArnoldIT.com Overflight service. These are Mark Logic Corp. (a next generation content processing company), Recommind (eDiscovery. Teragram (a unit of SAS) and enterprise search). Additional vendors will be added to service in the weeks ahead. Overflight allows you to get a bird’s eye view of what’s new in Web logs, YouTube videos, and Tweets. The service is free.
Stephen Arnold, July 11, 2009
Surviving Universal Search: What?
July 10, 2009
Pippa Nutt, director, online strategy, Northern Lights Direct Response, wrote “How You and Your Company Can Survive Universal Search”. I read the story in DM News and was tangled in my sneaker laces. The term “universal search” has been a baffler to me when I saw it recycled as part of Google’s PR push for putting information from its separate indexes on one result page. In the way of search, not much was new with this announcement because metasearch, federated search, and mash ups were last year’s T shirt when Google’s marketing machine produced this phrase at the hastily organized Searchology Day a couple of years ago. Now, the term is used in the first paragraph of a direct marketing publication’s story without definition or context.
This is a signal that:
- Google controls the search agenda, rendering other companies’ efforts about as important as my neighbor’s new lawn mower. He cares but I don’t.
- A buzzword is assumed to be understood by professionals in the marketing world when few can agree on what “search” itself means. “Universal search” is even more anchor free.
- The article invokes other types of search, again without context or explanation.
Little wonder that when I talk with senior managers, search is essentially a black hole of knowledge. Everyone thinks he or she knows what it is. Upon questioning, I find that defining terms is the * essential first step * when talking about search. Skip this and the conversation is for me almost meaningless.
Stephen Arnold, July 10, 2009
Lingospot: Technology for Publishers
July 10, 2009
I have been thinking about the problem facing traditional publishing companies. Some pundits suggest that publishers need to solve their problems with technology. My view is that publishers think about technology in a way that makes sense for their company’s business and work processes. I have come across two companies who have been providing publishers with quite sophisticated technology. The management of these two firms’ clients gets the credit. The technology vendors are enablers.
I provided some recent information about Mark Logic Corporation in my summary of my presentation to the Mark Logic user’s group a few weeks ago. You can refresh your memory about Mark Logic’s technology by scanning the company’s Web site.
The other company is Lingospot. Among its customers are Forbes Magazine and the National Newspaper Association. The company offers hosted software solutions. Publishing companies comprise some of Lingospot’s customers, but the firm has deals with marketing firms as well.
The company describes its technology in this way:
Lingospot’s patented topic recognition and ranking technology is the result of more than eight years of development and four years of machine learning. To date, our algorithm has identified over 30 million unique topics drawn from more than two billion pages that we have crawled and analyzed. During the last four years, we have collected over five billion data points on such topics, including the context in which readers have chosen to interact with each topic. What does all this mean for our clients? By partnering with Lingospot you have access to the leading topic recognition, extraction and ranking technology, as well as the accumulated machine learning of our platform. This translates into a more engaging experience for your readers and substantially higher metrics and revenue for you.
My understanding of this technology is that Lingospot can automatically generate topic pages from a client’s content and then handle syndication of the content. The Lingospot works with text, images, and video.
The company is based in Los Angeles. Founded by Nikos Iatropoulos, Mr. Iatropoulos was involved with several other marketing-centric companies. He worked for Credit Suisse and, like the addled goose, did a stint with Booz, Allen & Hamilton. His co founder is Gerald Chao, who is the company’s chief technical officer. Prior to founding Lingospot, Gerald served as a Senior. Programmer at WebSciences International and as a programmer at IBM. Gerald holds a MS in Computer Science and a PhD in statistical natural language processing, both from UCLA.
Publishers are embracing technology. My hunch is that the business models need adjustment.
Stephen Arnold, July 10, 2009
Overflight for Attensity
July 8, 2009
Short honk: ArnoldIT.com has added Attensity to its Overflight profile service. You can see the auto generated page here. We will be adding additional search and content processing companies to the service. No charge, and this is a version of the service I use when those who hire the addled goose to prepare competitive profiles. I have a list of about 350 search and content processing vendors. I will peck away at this list until my enthusiasm wanes. If you want a for fee analysis of one of these companies, read the About section of this Web log before contacting me. Yep, I charge money for “real” analysis. Some folks expect me to survive on my good looks and charming personality. LOL.
Stephen Arnold, June 8, 2009
Profit in Data Theft
July 8, 2009
I read Dancho Danchev’s “Microsoft Study Debunks Profitability of the Underground Economy” here. I have not read the Microsoft study, but I want to recommend both documents to my addled geese and you, gentle reader. The arguments strike me as germane to online information and data. Mr. Danchev’s view is that there is money is underground endeavors. Check out the article. My question is, “If there weren’t money in underground plays, why are there so many efforts?”
Stephen Arnold, June 7, 2009
Print and the Digital Gutenberg
July 7, 2009
The premise of my new study Google: The Digital Gutenberg is that a new medium has supplanted traditional media. I don’t mean print. I mean video, images, and constructs. The Google Wave is a bundle of Google components that eliminate the need for separate types of communication modes. Wave may or may not work, but whoever pulls it off will be rolling in money and opportunity. Hamilton Nolan, writing in Gawker, reprinted David Eggers email, which is germane to my thesis. You can find the Eggers’ email here. Mr. Eggers wrote:
Anyway. I would like to say to you good print-loving people that for every dire bit of news there is out there, there is also some good news, too. The main gist of my (rambling) speech at the Author?s Guild was that because I work with kids in San Francisco, I see every day that their enthusiasm for the printed word is no different from that of kids from any other era. Reports that no one reads anymore, especially young people, are greatly overstated and almost always factually lacking. I’ve written about youth readership elsewhere, but to reiterate: sales of young adult books are actually up. Total volume of all book sales is actually up. Kids get the same things out of books that they have before. Reading in elementary schools and middle schools is no different than any other time. We have work to do with keeping high schoolers reading, but then again, I meet every week with 15 high schoolers in San Francisco, and all we do is read (literary magazines, books, journals, websites, everything) in the process of putting together the Best American Nonrequired Reading. And I have to say these students, 14 to 18 years old, are far better read and more astute than I was at their age, and there are a million other kids around the country just like them.
I agree. I just think that a new medium will supplant ink-on-paper and to a certain extent other media that are expensive to distribute via traditional means. I have three or four publishers selling my books, and I know that a downturn is underway. My newest publication “Mysteries of Online” will be made available without charge on my Web site. One of my publishers expressed interest in the material, but I am shifting my approach. Call it a test.
Information is not at risk. Certain approaches and business models are at risk. Innovation and experimentation are needed.
Mr. Eggers wrote:
As long as newspapers offer less each day— less news, less great writing, less graphic innovation, fewer photos— then they’re giving readers few reasons to pay for the paper itself. With our prototype, we aim to make the physical object so beautiful and luxurious that it will seem a bargain at $1. The web obviously presents all kinds of advantages for breaking news, but the printed newspaper does and will always have a slew of advantages, too. It’s our admittedly unorthodox opinion that the two can coexist, and in fact should coexist. But they need to do different things. To survive, the newspaper, and the physical book, needs to set itself apart from the web. Physical forms of the written word need to offer a clear and different experience. And if they do, we believe, they will survive. Again, this is a time to roar back and assert and celebrate the beauty of the printed page. Give people something to fight for, and they will fight for it. Give something to pay for, and they’ll pay for it.
My view is that the medium of innovations like Wave may offer an opportunity. The paper “thing” is expensive and becoming an issue for some concerned with the environment. Information is thriving.
Stephen Arnold, June 6, 2009
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