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Need a GIF file? Check out “5 GIF Search Engines & Tools You Haven’t Heard Of Yet.” Searching for GIFs using some Web search engines can yield interesting results.
Stephen E Arnold, April 26, 2015
Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under Image search, News, Search | Comments Off on Looking for GIF Files?
In 2014, we noted that Scientel’s Norman Kutemperor was a leader in NoSQL data management. We learned that Scientel is beating the drum for an integrated, user friendly content management, search, and analytics system. Kutemperor has been described as the father of NoSQL.
According to “Scientel Releases EZContent Content Management and Search System for the Small Enterprise,”
Scientel’s EZContent™ Content Management and Search system operating under GENSONIX® NoSQL DB is an advanced ECM solution for “Big Data” content for the smaller enterprise. Scientel’s EZContent is derived from Scientel’s primary Enterprise Content Management & Search System (ECMS). It is the ideal, most cost-effective, and simple to operate tool for organizing, managing, and retrieving your Big Data contents at all organizational levels. Powerful, yet comprehensive and fun to use, it can start small and is highly scalable. The system can be configured for various system requirements. This makes it ideal for use in small offices/organizations as well as medium and large enterprises.
The company asserts that it has a search system which displays an information object thumbnail. The user drags a document to the system. EZContent processes 40 different file types, including images and video clips. Kutemperor explained the search system this way:
With ECMS, we are able to move the contents of that CD into our ECMS system, and all 100+ people can access that all at the same time. They can also do searches from within what we call textual documents – PDFs, Microsoft documents mostly are all textual documents, whereas clips, videos and pictures are not. By being able to search inside the textual document, we can actually locate what we are looking for and get to the right page that we want to read. Content management is a very valuable tool for all of us, and it is a very helpful tool for all organizations, whether it is non-profit or profit, commercial, corporate, scientific, medical, city government, small businesses or large enterprises. Everybody needs it and now can have it cost-effectively. The basic offering that we can start with is a very small appliance that is turnkey and virtually maintenance free. It is easily installed into the network and pretty much goes to work without having to do too much in the way of setup. For larger organizations, we offer appliances that can scale to very large configurations, that can store very large numbers of documents efficiently, and that are able to locate these documents rapidly.
According to CIOReview:
Scientel’s Gensonix DB is an all in one SQL. Gensonix based solutions can take the place of SQL, NoSQL and storage systems and can process large data sets in real time. Its massive core based parallel solutions deliver performance in range with in memory systems. thus performance of Gensonix on Scientel LDWA hardware matches the performance of in memory systems and with higher reliability.
In 2014 the database was described as “polymorphic.” One explanation is:
Polymorphism is the ability of an entity to behave like more than 1 of its counter parts given a set of circumstances or criteria; or, the provision of a single interface (a shared boundary across which separate components of a computer system exchange information) to entities of different types. In other words, in a polymorphic DB, you can use a relational approach when that is appropriate, hierarchical when that is, and so on. No one paradigm is fully implemented, but the DB uses enough of the features/capabilities needed to provide a reasonable solution to a problem.
These are envelope stretching assertions. The Manta entry for the company reports, perhaps erroneously, that the company has three employees. Another Manta entry asserts that the company employs five to nine people and has revenues of $1.0 million to $2.5 million. For more information about Scientel, navigate to the company’s Web site at www.scientel.com.
Should MarkLogic and other vendors offering similar products up their game? Worth monitoring this Swiss Army knife approach to information access.
Stephen E Arnold, April 25, 2015
Sponsored by CyberOSINT: Next Generation Information Access
I read “Study: Googling Gives You an Inflated Sense of Your Own Intelligence.” Let’s assume that the data are statistically significant and good enough to earn the researchers a high mark in Psych 200.
The article reports that Yale University researchers learned that:
The people who had used search engines to look up the answers in the first part of the experiment rated their abilities higher than the people who were given text. In other words, the act of searching the internet made people believe they knew more about everything.
The write up points out:
“If you don’t know the answer to a question, it’s very apparent to you that you don’t know, and it takes time and effort to find the answer,” Matthew Fischer, one of the researchers, told the American Psychological Association. “With the internet, the lines become blurry between what you know and what you think you know.”
I mentioned to a former Gartner consultant that the issue of “you don’t know what you don’t know” is one that leads to some interesting decisions. These range from licensing an enterprise search system and then discovering that users cannot find their documents to investing tens of thousands in a Web site redesign only to discover that Google’s crawler down checks the site because it is not mobile friendly.
You may have your own “you don’t know what you don’t know moment.” I suppose one could search Google and just accept what the ad oracle delivers. On the other hand, one can just guess. I am not sure how many knowledge workers want to do the old fashioned, “learn the hard way” type work. Maybe it is better to ask a Windows Phone? That works really well.
Stephen E Arnold, April 23, 2015
Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under Consulting, News, Search | Comments Off on Google Dependence: An Unintended Consequence
Searching is an essential function for basic Internet use and it is a vital function in enterprise systems. While searching on the Internet with a search engine might not seem like a security risk, the comparable action on enterprise search could be potentially dangerous. Security Enterprises points out the potential security risks in the article, “SearchBlox Vulnerabilities Underscore Importance Of Updating Enterprise Search Tools.”
Recently the Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute CERT Division compiled a list of all the security risks from SearchBlox’s software. They included ways for hackers to view private information, upload files, cross-site (XSS) scripting, and cross-site request forgeries. Enterprise security developers can learn from SearchBlox’s vulnerabilities by being aware and repairing them before a hacker discovers the information leak.
The problem, however, might come from within an organization rather than out:
“Of all the possible threats, the ability for cybercriminals to conduct XSS attacks from within the product’s default search box is likely the most concerning, Threatpost reported. On the other hand, anyone trying to take advantage of such SearchBlox vulnerabilities would need to be an authenticated user, though there is no shortage of stories about insider threats within the enterprise.”
The article alludes that SearchBlox’s vulnerabilities came from day-to-day activities that keep an organization running. Using SearchBlox as an example, other organizations with enterprise systems will be able to learn where their own products need patches so the same issues don’t happen with them. So what do you take away: most hackers are probably insiders and look for holes in the ordinary, everyday routines.
Whitney Grace, April 23, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Searching is an essential function for basic Internet use and it is a vital function in enterprise systems. While searching on the Internet with a search engine might not seem like a security risk, the comparable action on enterprise search could be potentially dangerous. Security Enterprises points out the potential security risks in the article, “SearchBlox Vulnerabilities Underscore Importance Of Updating Enterprise Search Tools.”
Recently the Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute CERT Division compiled a list of all the security risks from SearchBlox’s software. They included ways for hackers to view private information, upload files, cross-site (XSS) scripting, and cross-site request forgeries. Enterprise security developers can learn from SearchBlox’s vulnerabilities by being aware and repairing them before a hacker discovers the information leak.
The problem, however, might come from within an organization rather than out:
“Of all the possible threats, the ability for cybercriminals to conduct XSS attacks from within the product’s default search box is likely the most concerning, Threatpost reported. On the other hand, anyone trying to take advantage of such SearchBlox vulnerabilities would need to be an authenticated user, though there is no shortage of stories about insider threats within the enterprise.”
The article alludes that SearchBlox’s vulnerabilities came from day-to-day activities that keep an organization running. Using SearchBlox as an example, other organizations with enterprise systems will be able to learn where their own products need patches so the same issues don’t happen with them. So what do you take away: most hackers are probably insiders and look for holes in the ordinary, everyday routines.
Whitney Grace, April 1, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under News, Search, Security | Comments Off on Search Updates and Security Issues
The article titled Oracle Adds Big Data Integration Tool To Streamline Hadoop Deployments on Silicon Angle discusses the news from Oracle that follows its determination that putting the right tools before users is the only way to allow for success. The Data Integrator for Big Data is meant to create more opportunities to pull data from multiple repositories by treating them the same. The article states,
“It’s an important step the company insists, because Big Data tools like Hadoop and Spark use languages like Java and Python, making them more suitable for programmers rather than database admins (DBAs). But the company argues that most enterprise data analysis is carried out by DBAs and ETL experts, using tools like SQL. Oracle’s Big Data integrator therefore makes any non-Hadoop developer “instantly productive” on Hadoop, added Pollock in an interview with PC World.”
Pollock also spoke to Oracle’s progress, claiming that they are the only company with the capability to generate Hive, Pig and Spark transformations from a solitary mapping. For customers, this means not needing to know how to code in multiple programming languages. HP is also making strides in this line of work with the recent unveiling of the software that integrates Vertica with HP Autonomy IDOL. Excitement ahead!
Chelsea Kerwin, April 22, 2014
Stephen E Arnold, Publisher of CyberOSINT at www.xenky.com
I just finished reading articles about IBM’s quarterly report. The headline is that the company has reported slumping revenues for three years in a row. Pretty impressive. I assumed that Watson, fueled with Lucene, home brew scripts, acquisitions, and liberal splashes of public relations, would be the revenue headliner.
How does IBM Watson’s unit, newly enhanced with a health component, respond to what I would call “missing a target.” Others, who are more word worthy than I, might use the word “failure.”
I read a blog post which lured me because at age 70 I am not sure where I left my dog, wife, and automobile this morning. Short term memory is indeed thrilling. Now what was I thinking?
Oh, right, “Embrace Selective Short-Term Memory to Move Past Failure Quickly.” The point of the write up is that those who have failed can more forward using this trick:
Rather than get caught up trying to emotionally soothe yourself, just forget it happened.
I have a theory that after an enterprise search vendor finds itself in a bit of a sticky wicket, the marketers can move on to the next client, repeat the assertions about semantic search or natural language processing or Big Data or whatever chant of buzzwords lands a sale.
Ask the marketer about an issue—for example, Convera and the NBA, Fast Search and the Norwegian authorities, or Autonomy and the Department of Energy—and you confront a team with a unifying characteristic: The memory of the “issues” with a search system is a tabula rasa. Ask someone about the US Army’s search system or the UK National Health Service about its meta indexing.
There is nothing quite like the convenient delete key which operates the selective memory functions.
Stephen E Arnold, April 21, 2015
Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under Marketing, News, Search | Comments Off on Enterprise Search Vendors: One Way to Move Past Failure
I read “IBM Sales Fall for 12th Quarter, Currency Weighs.” Nary a word about Watson. I then read “IBM Operating Profits Rise, but Strong Dollar Takes Toll.” Again a subject about which I sought information was not included. (The New York Times, April 21, 2015, business section, dead tree edition).
I learned that mainframes are still selling. I learned that not much else is selling. But the fact I wanted was missing.
I must conclude that sales of Watson’s cook book are not sufficient to bolster IBM’s financial results. Maybe next quarter along with Watson Health’s revenues.
One fact did stick with me. IBM has reported revenue declines for three years in a row. What advice does Watson offer? Also not reported. I hear a voice whispering, “Patience, grasshopper.”
Got it. Patience.
Stephen E Arnold, April 21, 2015
Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under Financial, News, Search | Comments Off on Short Honk: Big Blue Gets Smaller. Cook Book Sales Not Reported
For users anxious to start working with SharePoint Server 2016, the wait just got a little longer. Microsoft just announced that the next version would not be available until the second quarter of 2016, a delay of full year from initial projections. ZD Net covers the latest news in their article, “Microsoft Pushes Back Next SharePoint Server Release to Q2 2016.”
The article breaks the news:
“When Microsoft announced the name of the next version of SharePoint Server — SharePoint Server 2016 — company officials said the product would debut in the second half of calendar 2015. But on April 16, Microsoft execs said that there’s a new delivery plan, and SharePoint Server 2016 won’t be generally available until the second calendar quarter of 2016.”
The delay doesn’t seem to be related to Windows Server, although it has also been pushed back to calendar year 2016. The new version is still very much anticipated as it promises updates to content management, team connectivity, and hybrid functionality. For users who are closely following all the news, stay tuned to ArnoldIT.com, specifically the SharePoint feed. Stephen E. Arnold maintains his site with a focus on search and all the expertise of a lifelong career.
Emily Rae Aldridge, April 21, 2015
Stephen E Arnold, Publisher of CyberOSINT at www.xenky.com
The article titled Microsoft Beefs Up Office 365’s Delve, Aims To Complete Its Rollout By May on Computerworld discusses the improvements to the enterprise search and discovery app Delve. Delve was built for Office 365’s Office Graph machine learning engine, and helps create and analyze detailed data on users by linking to content through card icons. The article states,
“Based on what it learns about the user’s work, it determines which files, colleagues, documents and data are most relevant and important at any given point, and displays links to them in a graphically rich, card-based dashboard. Delve provides this assistance in real time, so that users can prioritize their work and find the information they need as they participate in whatever work projects and tasks they’re involved in.”
This means that Delve can figure that a user’s upcoming meeting will be about a particular topic with particular colleagues, and then collect information that is relevant in a timely manner for display in the dashboard. Microsoft is currently working to make Delve capable of analyzing email content within Exchange Online attachments. Yammer actions will also be performable in the near future from the Delve interface. It can also, of course, be used more traditionally as a search engine, but Microsoft has big plans for more dynamic and innovative capabilities.
Chelsea Kerwin, April 20, 2014
Stephen E Arnold, Publisher of CyberOSINT at www.xenky.com
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