Tips for Enterprise Search Vendors When They Disappoint Their Venture Pals
July 16, 2015
The video is not about enterprise search vendors. But I found the video via a recommendation from a person who spends endless hours with a dragline for odd ball management advice.
I clicked on the link to “Disappoint Someone.” The video is interesting because it provides the sort of advice that is guaranteed to create some excitement combined with consternation.
The video omits one tip which I have found helpful now that I am retired.
Make a video and send the person whom you wish to disappoint a link.
Works really well, but if you are into the face to face thing with funders who want revenue and profits now. Go for it.
I assumed the creator of the video would have included this tip. Their video delivered the goods for me.
Stephen E Arnold, July 16, 2015
Microsoft Takes SharePoint Criticism Seriously
July 16, 2015
Organizations are reaching the point where a shift toward mobile productivity and adoption must take place; therefore, their enterprise solution must follow suit. While Office 365 adoption has soared in light of the realization, Microsoft still has work to do in order to give users the experience that they demand from a mobile and social heavy platform. ComputerWorld goes into more details with their article, “Onus on Microsoft as SharePoint and OneDrive Roadmaps Reach Crossroads.”
The article states Microsoft’s current progress and future goals:
“With the advent of SharePoint Server 2016 (public beta expected 4Q 2015, with general availability 2Q 2016), Edwards believes Microsoft is placing renewed focus on file management, content management, sites, and portals. Going forward, Redmond claims it will also continue to develop the hybrid capabilities of SharePoint, recognizing that hybrid deployments are a steady state for many large organizations, and not just a temporary position to enable migration to the cloud.”
Few users chose to adopt the opportunities offered by Office 365 and SharePoint 2013, so Microsoft has to make SharePoint Server 2016 look like a new, enticing offering worthy of being taken seriously. So far, they have done a good job of building up some hype and attention. Stephen E. Arnold is a longtime leader in search and he has been covering the news surrounding the release on ArnoldIT.com. Additionally, his dedicated SharePoint feed makes it easy to catch the latest news, tips, and tricks at a glance.
Emily Rae Aldridge, July 16, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Algorithmic Art Historians
July 14, 2015
Apparently, creativity itself is no longer subjective. MIT Technology Review announces, “Machine Vision Algorithm Chooses the Most Creative Paintings in History.” Traditionally, art historians judge how creative a work is based on its novelty and its influence on subsequent artists. The article notes that this is a challenging task, requiring an encyclopedic knowledge of art history and the judgement to decide what is novel and what has been influential. Now, a team at Rutgers University has developed an algorithm they say is qualified for the job.
Researchers Ahmed Elgammal and Babak Saleh credit several developments with bringing AI to this point. First, we’ve recently seen several breakthroughs in machine understanding of visual concepts, called classemes. that include recognition of factors from colors to specific objects. Another important factor: there now exist well-populated online artwork databases that the algorithms can, um, study. The article continues:
“The problem is to work out which paintings are the most novel compared to others that have gone before and then determine how many paintings in the future have uses similar features to work out their influence. Elgammal and Saleh approach this as a problem of network science. Their idea is to treat the history of art as a network in which each painting links to similar paintings in the future and is linked to by similar paintings from the past. The problem of determining the most creative is then one of working out when certain patterns of classemes first appear and how these patterns are adopted in the future. …
“The problem of finding the most creative paintings is similar to the problem of finding the most influential person on a social network, or the most important station in a city’s metro system or super spreaders of disease. These have become standard problems in network theory in recent years, and now Elgammal and Saleh apply it to creativity networks for the first time.”
Just what we needed. I have to admit the technology is quite intriguing, but I wonder: Will all creative human endeavors eventually have their algorithmic counterparts and, if so, how will that effect human expression?
Cynthia Murrell, July 14, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Watson Based Tradeoff Analytics Weighs Options
July 13, 2015
IBM’s Watson now lends its considerable intellect to helping users make sound decisions. In “IBM Watson Tradeoff Analytics—General Availability,” the Watson Developer Community announces that the GA release of this new tool can be obtained through the Watson Developer Cloud platform. The release follows an apparently successful Beta run that began last February. The write-up explains that the tool:
“… Allows you to compare and explore many options against multiple criteria at the same time. This ultimately contributes to a more balanced decision with optimal payoff.
“Clients expect to be educated and empowered: ‘don’t just tell me what to do,’ but ‘educate me, and let me choose.’ Tradeoff Analytics achieves this by providing reasoning and insights that enable judgment through assessment of the alternatives and the consequent results of each choice. The tool identifies alternatives that represent interesting tradeoff considerations. In other words: Tradeoff Analytics highlights areas where you may compromise a little to gain a lot. For example, in a scenario where you want to buy a phone, you can learn that if you pay just a little more for one phone, you will gain a better camera and a better battery life, which can give you greater satisfaction than the slightly lower price.”
For those interested in the technical details behind this Watson iteration, the article points you to Tradeoff Analytics’ documentation. Those wishing to glimpse the visualization capabilities can navigate to this demo. The write-up also lists post-beta updates and explains pricing, so check it out for more information.
Cynthia Murrell, July 13, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Semantic Search: How Far Will This Baloney Tube Stretch?
July 12, 2015
I have seen a number of tweets, messages, and comments about “Semantic Search: the Future of Search Marketing?”
For those looking for traffic, it seems that using the phrase “semantic search” in conjunction with “search marketing” is Grade A click bait. Go for it.
My view is a bit different. I think that the baloney manufactured from semantic search (more correctly the various methods that can be grouped under the word semantic) is low grade baloney.
Search marketing is on a par with the institutional pizza pumped out for freshman in a dorm in DeKalb, Illinois. Yum, tasty. What is it? Oh, I know it is something that is supposed to be nutritious and tasty. The reality is that the pizza isn’t. That’s search marketing. The relevant result may not be. Relevance is jiggling results so that a message is displayed whether the user wants that message or not. Not pizza.
Here’s a passage in the write up I highlighted in pale yellow, the color in my marker set closest to the dorm pizza:
Semantic search is the technology the search engines employ to better understand the context of a search.
Contrast this definition with this one from “Breakthrough Analysis: Two + Nine Types of Semantic Search” published in 2010, five years before the crazy SEO adoption of the buzzword, if not the understanding of what “semantic” embraces:
Semantics (in an IT setting) is meaningful computing: the application of natural language processing (NLP) to support information retrieval, analytics, and data-integration that compass both numerical and “unstructured” information.
The article then trots out these semantic search options:
- Related searches and queries
- Reference results (dictionary look up)
- Annotated results
- Similarity search
- Syntactic annotations
- Concept search
- Ontology based search
- Semantic Web search
- Faceted search
- Clustered search
- Natural language search
Now there are many, many issues with this list. How about differentiating faceted, concept, and clustered search? Give up yet?
The point is that semantic search is not one thing. If one accepts this list as the touchstone, the functions referenced are going to contain other content processing operations.
The problem is that these functions on their own or used in some magical, affordable combination are not likely to deliver what the user wants.
The user wants relevant results which pertain directly to her specific information need.
The search engine optimization and marketing crowd want the results to be what they want to present to a user.
The objectives are different and may not be congruent or even similar.
In short, the notion of taking crazy, generalized concepts and slapping them on marketing is likely to produce howlers like this write up and the equally wonky list from 2010.
The point is that semantic baloney has been in the supermarket for a long time.
Obviously this baloney has a long shelf life.
In the meantime, how is ad supported Web search working for you? Oh, how is that in house information access system working for you?
If you want traffic, buy Adwords. Please, do not deliver to me the six pack of baloney.
Stephen E Arnold, July 12, 2015
What Is Watt? It Is the Innovation That Counts.
July 11, 2015
Years ago I worked with a polymath named Fred Czufin. Czufin was an author, writer, consultant, and former Office of Strategic Services cartographic specialist. Today Czufin would be buried in geocoding.
Why am I mentioning a fellow who died in 2009.
Czufin introduced me to James Watt. I knew the steam engine thing, but Czufin was bonkers over James Watt’s innovative streak.
I thought of Czufin, my ignorance of an important scientist, and our reasonably fun times when we collaborated on some interesting projects.
I read “A Twelve Year Flash of Genius.” The write up sparked anew my effort to chip away at my ignorance of this 18th century inventor. Watt struggled with the engineering problems of early Newcomen pumps. Mostly these puppies exploded.
Watt went for a walk and cook dup the idea of a condenser. Eureka. Steam engines mostly worked. Even my server room air conditioner contains a version of Watt’s invention.
I am not going to take sides in the flash of genius approach to innovation. One can argue that the antecedents for Watt’s thinking littered the laboratories of his predecessors, tinkerers, and fellow scientists.
My hunch is that there was no single epiphany. The result of sifting through many facts, fiddling around, and then trying to figure out if and then why something worked made him a bright person.
As I think about James Watt, I wonder when a similar thinker will come up with a breakthrough in information access. Most of the search systems with which I am familiar are in their pre-condenser stage. They blow up, fizzle, disappoint, hiss, and produce more angst than smiley faces.
My hunch is that Czufin would be as impatient as I about the opportunity a modern day James Watt can deliver. Search has more in common with Newcomen’s pump than a solution to a very important information problem.
Stephen E Arnold, July 11, 2015
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
SAS Text Miner Promises Unstructured Insight
July 10, 2015
Big data is tools help organizations analyze more than their old, legacy data. While legacy data does help an organization study how their process have changed, the data is old and does not reflect the immediate, real time trends. SAS offers a product that bridges old data with the new as well as unstructured and structured data.
The SAS Text Miner is built from Teragram technology. It features document theme discovery, a function the finds relations between document collections; automatic Boolean rule generation; high performance text mining that quickly evaluates large document collection; term profiling and trending, evaluates term relevance in a collection and how they are used; multiple language support; visual interrogation of results; easily import text; flexible entity options; and a user friendly interface.
The SAS Text Miner is specifically programmed to discover data relationships data, automate activities, and determine keywords and phrases. The software uses predictive models to analysis data and discover new insights:
“Predictive models use situational knowledge to describe future scenarios. Yet important circumstances and events described in comment fields, notes, reports, inquiries, web commentaries, etc., aren’t captured in structured fields that can be analyzed easily. Now you can add insights gleaned from text-based sources to your predictive models for more powerful predictions.”
Text mining software reveals insights between old and new data, making it one of the basic components of big data.
Whitney Grace, 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
The Bing Listicle: Bing Search Strategy
July 8, 2015
I noted a slide show designed to pump up page views for eWeek. Navigate to “What the Bing Search Engine Brings to Microsoft’s Web Strategy.” Prepare to be patient because the code used to display the content makes life interesting.
Strategy means the big picture. Tactics means changing the color of an item in the picture. Bing has been an interesting search engine. The team has had a bit of a revolving door. The spin of the door has sucked in Australian and Chinese search wizards. The Bing thing sold its map “business.” The Bing thing cut a deal with AOL to provide search and ads, a sure fire combination for improved relevance in search results.
The listicle hits a number of strategic points. I want to comment on three. Visit the original listicle for the remaining strategic gems.
Strategic Move 1: Apple and Microsoft have a search partnership. Now Apple is rumored to be poking around in the Web search space. The listicle asserts that “Apple, Microsoft Form Search Partnership.” I find this interesting. It may be tactical for Apple and strategic for Microsoft. If Apple creates a semi workable search system, will Apple continue to embrace the besieged Microsoft? My money is on Apple for a deal that helps out Apple until the deal no longer helps out Apple.
Strategic Move 2: Bing offers a rewards program. This is pay to play. If lots of people use rewards, will Microsoft find the offer untenable. My hunch is that this Rewards thing is like the annoying and now-dead Scroogle: A desperate tactic, not a strategic move.
Strategic Move 3: Bing is “handy on Microsoft hardware.” Okay, but I use Apple computers. The notion that Bing is baked into Windows 10 and Windows hardware seems to make sense. But I turn off the crazy Microsoft search functions and rely on third party tools. The strategic move is great for Microsoft internal pitches. The tactic is one that may annoy some folks who use Windows hardware and is essentially another tactic to make Bing zing. If Bing is so wonderful, what’s Microsoft doing with Fast Search technology and the Delve search? I would conclude there is no search strategy at Microsoft.
Stephen E Arnold, July 8, 2015
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