ZyLAB and Deloitte
July 21, 2010
The Deloitte Discovery Platform has chosen a partner that well known in the world of e-discovery and information management solutions. With the new partnership with ZyLAB, Deloitte will be able to reduce costs in the critical areas of discovery and compliance for the modern business.
The new collaboration promises to be extremely effective when it comes to the complex searching and review of large amounts of data. The idea behind the partnership according to one official at Deloitte’s Forensic and Dispute Services (FDS) is a better analysis and search capabilities combined.
Deloitte is a well known provider of audit, tax, consulting, and financial advisory services in several different industries. ZyLAB’s modular e-discovery and enterprise information management solutions have been helping a variety of industries for the last 25 years. They also offer multi language support.
The goslings in Harrod’s Creek need a scorecard. Brainware does document management and search. ZyLAB does search and document management. Iron Mountain does everything. EMC is on the law firm horse as well. What’s happened to good old search?
What’s interesting is that law firms are cutting back and other service firms and internal legal departments are the new market. More cracks in the traditional market dividers perhaps?
Rod Starr, July 21, 2010
World Cup Tries to Score with Semantics
July 21, 2010
No referees to blame for the World Cup’s use of semantic technology. With a spiffed up Web site, the BBC can point to its non-pay wall coverage of the World Cup and especially of the semantic technologies that were used to add value and structure to the 700 pages it presented on a Web site to the world. “BBC World Cup Website Showcases Semantic Technologies” called this innovation to the addled goose’s attention. Here’s a diagram of the Beeb’s system:
There were several noteworthy changes including a far deeper and richer use of the text and other content that was available and horizontal navigation and higher quality video. The semantic technologies that were used work within the framework of automated metadata-driven web pages that automatically render links to stories of interest.
Here’s a diagram from AerospaceWeb about the physics of the Jabulani ball. Also, easy to understand?
Source: http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/aerodynamics/drag/drag-disk.jpg
The semantic technologies that were so useful here did not write the content that football fans saw on the 700 pages of the site. The semantics technologies involved worked with the metadata about the site. Overall, BBC tried to offer a combination of goals, saves and semantic technologies that fans enjoyed thoroughly.
Maybe your team needs to adopt the semantic training regimen? Seems rigorous to me and a step some of the pay wall sites may want to consider if the revenues from their for-fee customers funds this type of innovation, of course. Semantics, like search and analyzing the flight of the World Cup ball, is pretty simple too!
Stephen E Arnold, July 19, 2010
Freebie
Guess Who Is Gunning for the Google?
July 21, 2010
Microsoft and Yahoo?
Yep. Automating search requests seems to be paying off for Yahoo and Microsoft as they gained a little more ground on the industry leader Google in June. However, SFGate.com isn’t exactly optimistic the trailers will catch up to the Google any time soon. Although they might have the top search engine in their crosshairs, a recently published article Yahoo, Microsoft Gain Ground on Google in Search, still states that Google owned 62.6% of the pie all through June.
Granted these numbers are down a bit from the 63.7% they enjoyed the previous month, but in our opinion the real threat to Google supremacy doesn’t come from other search engines at all. When recent polls indicate that people are also using Facebook and Twitter to get to websites on the Internet, the real challenge might come from social media.
Yahoo and Microsoft are shivering with excitement. Google now has a laser target finder on its brow. And with rumors of more turnover in the Microsoft search unit, Microsoft wants to recruit more sharpshooters. Maybe the Microsoft search blogs will get some much needed attention and substance.
Stephen E Arnold, July 20, 2010
Former AOL Top Dog Marks the Territory
July 20, 2010
One week from now it will be a year since AOL changed their CEO giving the new one 100 days to turn things around and restore the tech industry leader to its rightful place at the top. One of the really interesting developments was the fact that during the last 12 months almost every executive left and was replaced with someone who had once worked for Google.
The resulting article in BusinessInsider.com, The Inside Story: An Anonymous Ex-AOL Exec Tells All, does just that. The company was demoralized and its employees down and out before a Google influence injected a new life to the beleaguered firm. It’s an interesting read and one that begs the question if the Googlization of America is something that will work or rather just one of those things we might have to get used to.
Rob Starr, July 20, 2010
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Sky Falls, Web Changes or Is It Sky Changes, Web Falls?
July 19, 2010
“It’s Time to Prepare for the End of the Web as We Know It” telling us we should all ready for a change in the Web is true, at least according to Morgan Stanley, a company that should know. It’s no big surprise global internet surfing will be bigger on mobile devices than on PCs in the near future, but to suggest the entire Web will change might be a little premature. It was working this morning, right?
Apps will rule and fun will take over from grandiose design, according to the piece in adage.com. and it wont be enough to repurpose content like newspapers did for the Web in the 1990s. The idea that applications will become search is a popular one. The problem is that no one defines search. In fact, few marketers define anything except their billable hours and even those reports can require a team of linguists to interpret. How many billable hours fit into a 40 hour work week?
A new way of thinking will be necessary..new designs for the apps age, according to Steve Rubel, senior VP-director of insights at Edelman Digital. He makes some good arguments but wasn’t the Web going to be the end of mass media in general way back when? The addled goose never gets it right. Is it the sky falls and the Web changes or is it the sky changes and the Web falls. Well, one or the other.
Stephen E Arnold, July 19, 2010
Partner News from BA-Insight
July 18, 2010
I received a link to a news story about BA-Insight, Microsoft SharePoint, and the Fast search system. You can read the material at this link. What interested me is not the endorsement of BA Insight by Microsoft. BA Insight, like other vendors, is a “partner” of Microsoft. Love is expected in this tie ups. What surprised me was that the page on which the story about BA Insight as a partner ran a video featuring a pirate flag, a trip to the commode, and a tour of ESA’s Mars500 and a video about turtle hatchings. I was confused because of the welter of distracting audio and video messages running live and via a link to a webinar. Interesting content-based marketing approach.
Stephen E Arnold, July 18, 2010
Freebie
What Our Uncle Microsoft Knows
July 18, 2010
They all do it , so it’s unfair to single out Microsoft because pretty much every software vendor or Internet service collects information about you. Even while the experts tell us WAT, Bing and Hotmail do collect data when you use them, they also say they are not as concerned with what Big Brother ( Microsoft) knows as compared to other what other high profile companies collect. Still, they do collect data and here’s a few ways they do it. WAT, the validation process you go through when you first start your computer, doesn’t get too personal in an Orwellian sense but they do get the make and model of your computer and the region and language that applies. Bing and Hotmail get a little closer with IP addresses and unique identifiers contained in cookies. Perhaps you don’t need to worry through. Microsoft asserts that it deletes the IP addresses after six months.
Stephen E Arnold, July 18, 2010
US Search Start Ups May Struggle for Funding
July 17, 2010
“Venture Capitalists Not Finding Funding Either” may mean good news for pharmacies selling Pepto-Bismol but bad news for search start ups. The write up said:
According to Thomson Reuters and the NVCA today, thirty-eight U.S. venture capital firms raised $1.9 billion in the second quarter of 2010, down 49 percent compared to Q1 this year, when 38 funds raised $3.7 billion. Thomson Reuters and the NVCA said that the quarter is the lowest–based on dollar commitments–since the third quarter of 2003.
I have heard that a number of search and content processing vendors are gasping for air. There’s an outfit in Chicago looking for funds or a buyer. There’s a vendor out west sweating bullets. There have been some rumors of trouble at one high profile outfit.
Without friendly VCs looking to fund the next Google, search start ups may struggle for funding.
Stephen E Arnold, July 17, 2010
Barn Burns, Horse Gone: Google and Regulation
July 16, 2010
Wow, the Danny Sullivan, the Google Public Policy Blog, the Silicon Valley Watcher, and the New York Times (you may face a dead link and have to pay). That’s a link fest. What’s the topic of this click-a-rrific moment?
Regulating Google.
The addled goose is a bit jaded with the “look at Google now” crowd. In 2002, when a client asked me to flip through Google’s technical papers and patent applications (note, not patents) and report on any interesting developments, I unearthed some interesting factoids. I have documented these in detail in my three Google monographs published by Infonortics, a new chunk in the Beyond Search study published by Gilbane, and in Success Enterprise Search Management. The span of these monographs is from 2004 to 2009. When people stop paying me to do stuff for them, I hope to push my most recent study Google Beyond Text out the door.
Let’s take a trip down memory lane:
- By 2002, Google was beavering away on making money using the one revenue model that was working at the time: slapping ads into search results. Seems easy, but Google had to get technology from Applied Semantics and other places plus re-engineering what struck Yahoo as a system that was similar to Yahoo’s. I will leave it to you to check out the pre IPO settlement with Yahoo to make this “issue” go away. The point is that the “evil” motto, although cute, seemed to be particularly elastic.
- By 2004, Google had fired up or turned loose researchers to work on projects spanning seven different business sectors. I won’t repeat those in this bullet point, but I bet you will resonate with telephony. You know, the Google Android, the wireless stuff, and spectrum gambit.
- By 2006, the present day Google was discernable, including the company’s push into rich media. I know that folks are fixated on YouTube.com, but the technical reports and patent applications suggest that YouTube.com is a single instance, not the comprehensive rich media system Google’s engineers have commented upon and disclosed in open source writings.
What’s this mean?
Well, with the realization that Google dominates Web search, has put pressure on a number of business sectors not related to search and retrieval, and is throwing its weight around, folks are now waking up to Google.
Okay, good morning, Rip Van Winkle.
Source: http://scrapetv.com/News/News%20Pages/Politics/Images/rip-van-winkle.jpg
The problem is that Google has been operating in the same manner for about a decade.
Ever hear the story about the barn burning down and the horses fleeing? In order to take meaningful action related to Google, several things have to happen?
First, competitors have to actually compete. Right now Apple (limping with a bullet in its iPhone holding hand), Facebook, and maybe Twitter have a shot. But if these outfits stumble, the Google will keep on truckin’, as we say in Harrod’s Creek.
Second, governments must do more than “study” Google. In the US, pressure centric politics ensures that the Google’s lawyers will neuter even the testosterone charged folks at an outfit like Viacom. But in other countries, the opportunity to take action may have different rhythms.
Third, Google itself has to avoid what I have variously called the Icarus problem, the Math Club behavior, or – my personal favorite – the Googzille effect. Yep, Google’s fatal flaw may be its management methods. The culture of a start up is tough to make work when you have 19,000 high IQ folks running around believing everything mom told them about how wonderful each was.
Fourth, the economic climate may be a problem. Forget global warming. Think about a chill in a double dip recession. With one source of cash – advertising – Google’s monoculture could face some problems in a climate change.
Bottomline. Read this passage from “Google Responds to Calls for Search Neutrality”:
Google is under more and more pressure from more and more groups concerned with its size. Google dominates the search market, in some countries by huge margins, and, subsequently, the online advertising market. It also has countless web products, Maps, Gmail, Docs. More and more, a call for ‘search neutrality’ is being made calling for regulation, government oversight or opening up search algorithm. It’s one thing for unheard of companies and people seeking attention to do it, it’s another when a respected news organization does it.
The only problem is that the comments were dated July 16, 2010, just a decade too late.
Stephen E Arnold, July 16, 2010
Freebie
Lucene Revolution Conference Details
July 15, 2010
The Beyond Search team received an interesting news release from a reader in San Francisco. We think the information reveals the momentum that is building for open source search. Here’s the story as we received it:
San Mateo, Calif. – July 14, 2010 – Lucid Imagination, the commercial company for Apache Lucene and Solr open source search technologies, is pleased to announce speakers for Lucene Revolution, the first-ever conference [EV1] in the US devoted to open source search. The conference will take place October 7-8, 2010 at the Hyatt Harborside, Boston, Massachusetts. Lucene Revolution is a groundbreaking event that drives broad participation in open source enterprise search , creating opportunities for developers, technologists and business leaders to explore the disruptive new benefits that open source enterprise search makes possible, in a fresh, energetic and forward thinking format.
The diverse and widespread adoption of Lucene/Solr for enterprise search applications is reflected by the broad range of speakers at the event, such as:
- Cisco Systems: Satish Gannu
- eHarmony: Joshua Tuberville
- LinkedIn: John Wang
- Sears: David Oliver
- The McClatchy Company: Martin Streicher
- The Smithsonian: Ching-Hsien Wang
- Twitter: Michael Busch
Conference speakers represent a cross-section of Lucene/Solr adoption – including new media, ecommerce, embedded search applications, content management, social media, and security and intelligence – spanning the broad spectrum of production-class enterprise search implementations, all of whom leverage the power and economics of Lucene/Solr innovation.
Other industry thought leaders participating and sharing their insights into open source enterprise search include Hadley Reynolds (Research Director, Search & Digital Marketplace Technologies, IDC) and Stephen E. Arnold (Beyond Search; Managing Partner, ArnoldIT).
Over the two days of the conference there are over 30 sessions scheduled in a variety of different formats: technical presentations, use cases, panel discussions, and Q&A sessions. In addition there will be an “un-conference” the evening of October 7, where attendees can present lightning talks and take part in hands-on community coding efforts.
Registration for Lucene Revolution is now open for the conference at: http://www.lucenerevolution.com/register. A full list of speakers, along with a complete conference agenda, is available at http://www.lucenerevolution.com/agenda.
If you are not familiar with Lucid, here’s a snapshot:
Lucid Imagination is the commercial company dedicated to Apache Lucene technology. The company provides value-added software, documentation, commercial-grade support, training, high-level consulting, and free certified distributions, for Lucene and Solr. Lucid Imagination’s goal is to serve as a central resource for the entire Lucene community and search marketplace, to make enterprise search application developers more productive. Customers include AT&T, Sears, Ford, Verizon, Elsevier, Zappos, The Motley Fool, Macy’s, Cisco, HP, The Guardian and many other household names. Lucid Imagination is a privately held venture-funded company. Investors include Granite Ventures, Walden International, In-Q-Tel and Shasta Ventures. To learn more please visit www.lucidimagination.com.
Goslings Constance Ard and Dr. Tyra Oldham will be attending. Should be useful. Certainly more timely than the plethora of SharePoint and gasping one-size-fits-all programs. Honk.
Stephen E Arnold, July 15, 2010
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