Big Data in 2012: Reliable Open-Source Software Required
January 11, 2012
Enthusiasm and optimism that Big Data as a concept is the next big thing. We are almost ready to board the Big Data bull dozer. The hoopla surrounding Big Data has not died down in 2012. Instead, the concept demonstrates the continuing environment of processing and analysis.
As businesses become aware that the Big Data trend is here to stay, publishers are looking for reliable support. The Apache Hadoop project develops open-source software for reliable, scalable, distributed computing. The company offers much in the way of dealing with unstructured data and is setting the pace for consolidation as well as personalization. I came across an interesting article, “State of the World IT: Big Data, An Offer That is Formed” (The original article is in French, but http://translate.google.com works well for this gosling). We learn:
As a recognition of the market in 2011, Hadoop has also attracted the top names in the IT industry who put this framework in the heart of their range of data processing volume. One reason: the cost mainly reminded us James Markarian, executive vice president and technical director of Informatica confirming that the framework ‘helped to change the economic model of the Big Data.’ Adding that flexibility… was as a criterion for adoption.
It is clear that the excess of data will only continue to grow by the minute. Generations of search, publishing, and consolidation will continue to emerge. I recommend staying informed of the products and the specific capabilities of each. However, Big Data which is filtered may pose some interesting problems; for example, will the outputs match the pre-filtered reality? Will predictive methods work when some data are no longer in the stream? So far the cheerleading is using chants from an older, pre-filtering era. Is this a good thing or a no-thing?
Andrea Hayden, January 11, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Digimind Develops Social Media Solution for the Enterprise
January 11, 2012
Social media has infiltrated every aspect of our lives, be it personal or professional. The fact that anyone can leave a negative comment and blast it around the world in mere seconds means that companies need to engage with those individuals in an online forum.
According to the recent PR Web news release “Digimind Launches Social Media Engagement Solution,” intelligence and web based monitoring solutions provider Digimind announced the launch of a new social media harnessing agent for the enterprise called Digimind Engagement.
According to the article, Digimind Engagement enables organizations to utilize the power of social media and manage their online communities. It allows community managers, PR professionals and intelligence practitioners to track, measure and engage on blogs, forums, discussion boards and social media networks such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Patrice Francois, co-founding Director of Digimind said:
We are excited about helping businesses to revolutionize their social media strategy through a comprehensive suite of monitoring, analysis and engagement tools. Digimind Engagement is vital for companies who take their online reputation seriously and want to identify and manage risks as well as new sales opportunities. Our clients will also benefit from having on-demand access to real-time insights and analysis capabilities so they can respond quickly and effectively in the event of a crisis situation.
By finding a way to harness the previously unregulated created by social networking sites, Digimind Engagement is one of the products transforming content management as we know it. What happens if social content is filtered or censored? Interesting question.
Jasmine Ashton, January 11, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Temis, Spammy PR, and Quite Silly Assertions
January 11, 2012
I am working on a project related to semantics. The idea is, according to that almost always reliable Wikipedia resource is:
the study of meaning. It focuses on the relation between signifiers, such as words, phrases, signs and symbols, and what they stand for, their denotata.
Years ago I studied at Duquesne University, a fascinating blend of Jesuit obsession, basketball, and phenomenological existentialism. If you are not familiar with this darned exciting branch of philosophy, you can dig into Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint by Franz Brentano or grind through Carl Stumpf’s The Psychological Origins of Space Perception, or just grab the Classic Comic Book from your local baseball card dealer. (My hunch is that many public relations professionals feel more comfortable with the Classic approach, not the primary texts of philosophers who focus on how ephemera and baloney affect one’s perception of reality one’s actions create.)
But my personal touchstone is Edmund Husserl’s body of work. To get the scoop on Lebenswelt (a universe of what is self-evident), you will want to skip the early work and go directly to The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. For sure, PR spam is what I would call self evident because it exists, was created by a human (possibly unaware that actions define reality), to achieve an outcome which is hooked to the individual’s identify.
Why mention the crisis of European thought? Well, I received “American Society for Microbiology Teams Up With TEMIS to Strengthen Access to Content” in this morning’s email (January 10, 2012). I noted that the document was attributed to an individual identified as Martine Fallon. I asked to be removed from the spam email list that dumps silly news releases about Temis into my system. I considered that Martine Fallon may be a ruse like Betty Crocker. Real or fictional, I am certain she or one of her colleagues, probably schooled in an esoteric discipline such as modern dance, agronomy, and public relations are familiar with the philosophical musings of Jean Genet.
You can get a copy of Born to Lose at this link.
I recall M. Genet’s observation:
I recognize in thieves, traitors and murderers, in the ruthless and the cunning, a deep beauty – a sunken beauty.
Temis, a European company in the dicey semantic game, surely appreciates the delicious irony of explaining a license deal as a “team”. The notion of strengthening access to content is another semantic bon mot. The problem is that the argument does not satisfy my existential quest for factual information; for example, look at the words and bound phrases in bold:
Temis, the leading provider of Semantic Content Enrichment solutions for the Enterprise, today announced it has signed a license and services agreement with the American Society for Microbiology (ASM), the oldest and largest life science membership organization in the world.
Do tell. Leading? Semantic content enrichment. What’s that?
The “leading” word is interesting but it lacks the substance of verifiable fact. Well, there’s more to the news story and the Temis pitch. Temis speaks for its client, asserting:
To serve its 40,000 members better, ASM is completely revamping its online content offering, and aggregating at a new site all of its authoritative content, including ASM’s journal titles dating back to 1916, a rapidly expanding image library, 240 book titles, its news magazine Microbe, and eventually abstracts of meetings and educational publications.
I navigated to the ASM Web site, did some poking around, and learned that ASM is rolling in dough. You can verify the outfit’s financial status at this page. But the numbers and charts allowed me to see that ASM has increasing assets, which is good. However, this chart suggests that since 2008, revenue has been heading south.
Source: http://www.faqs.org/tax-exempt/DC/American-Society-For-Microbiology.html
In my limited experience in rural Kentucky, not-for-profits embrace technology for one of three reasons. Let me list them and see if we can figure out what causes the estimable American Society for Microbiology.
Data Harmony: Sweet Tune for Knowledge Management Experts
January 10, 2012
Short honk: Here in Harrod’s Creek, we find meet ups, hoe downs, and webinars plentiful and out of tune with our needs. We want to put on your calendar an event that seems to offer a sweet tune about knowledge management.
The Eighth Annual Data Harmony Users Group (DHUG) meeting, scheduled February 7 to 9, 2012, in Albuquerque, New Mexico will focus on helping users get the most from their investment in the knowledge management software suite, which helps users organize information resources based on a well-built and systematically applied taxonomy or thesaurus.
We learned:
This meeting is an exciting opportunity to learn how to fully utilize the power of Data Harmony software to maximize the effectiveness and profitability of your organization for your members, customers and staff,” said Marjorie M.K. Hlava, president of Access Innovations.
You can get complete details from Access Innovations. The widely read Web log Taxodiary is encouraging anyone who wishes to share their story at the meeting to contact Data Harmony at this link. Registrations are also now being accepted. For more information about the Eighth Annual Data Harmony Users Group meeting, click here or call (505)998-0800 or 1-800-926-8328. We hope that Access Innovations captures their knowledge in a monograph. Too many amateur taxonomists and knowledge mavens pumping out inaccurate or incomplete information. In our experience, the go-to experts gravitate to the performances by the Mozarts of mark up.
Sounds excellent to us.
Stephen E Arnold, January 10, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
The Urgency of the Cloud for Enterprise
January 10, 2012
It seems that moving IT infrastructure to the cloud is no longer an innovative alternative, but is rather becoming the standard, the norm. IT teams need to embrace the change and shift their thinking away from the football team sized IT staffs of the future. This is not just a general trend, but one that specifically applies to large organizations’ enterprise solutions as well. Rob Lamear focuses on the need to move SharePoint to the cloud in, “Why You NEED SharePoint in the Cloud Now.”
Lamear is referring here to the budget crunch pushing the urgency of the Cloud:
C-levels in every country are no longer telling me that the Cloud is something ‘we are looking at,’ but rather have turned the conversation to ‘We need the Cloud!’ They know they need to slash IT budget dollars and use them in other areas of the business. At best, they use the extra money to innovate and differentiate in the global marketplace. At worst, they need to save to survive.
The question we have to ask is how complicated and costly is the initial move to the cloud. Is there a simpler solution that combines efficient enterprise search with functional, affordable cloud services? We think Fabasoft Mindbreeze might be just that solution.
Read a little more about their cloud services:
The Cloud makes your business mobile; Mindbreeze finds its way in the Cloud. This intelligent search is available as a Cloud service. This means that, if you so desire, Fabasoft Mindbreeze can run without any installation whatsoever – we operate the search engine for you. All the data that you manage in the Cloud is made searchable by Fabasoft Mindbreeze. This makes Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise the center of excellence for your knowledge in the Cloud too.
Implementing Fabasoft Mindbreeze in the cloud alongside your existing SharePoint installation is a switch that improves the efficiency of your search as well as your infrastructure. There’s no configuration and no maintenance. If your organization spent less time and money maintaining your enterprise system, in what other areas could you invest those resources? It is definitely worth consideration, and Fabasoft Mindbreeze is worth a second look.
Emily Rae Aldridge, January 10, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Connotate Embraces Big Data
January 10, 2012
The Internet is an environment where unregulated data is being created at rapid rates. It has become far too much for company staff to keep track of. Therefore, software that collects and organizes Big Data is becoming a hot commodity for enterprises all over the world.
According to the recent news release “Staffing and the Volume of Information are the Primary Big Data Challenges” Connotate, Inc., a provider of solutions that help organizations monitor and collect data and content from the Web, announced the results of its Big Data Attitudes and Perceptions Survey.
Connotate CEO Tom Meyer said:
Our research shows that Big Data goes beyond technology and is an HR challenge for corporate America. While it is important that organizations devote resources to Big Data, employees must be freed from the information fire hose so they can concentrate only on the information that is relevant to their tasks. Connotate’s Agent Community data extraction and monitoring tools are a proven force multiplier, enabling companies to drastically reduce the amount of personnel needed to run and achieve significant ROI from Big Data projects.
The Connotate survey suggests that companies are finding it too time consuming and impractical for their staff to sort through Big Data. Companies focused on data fusion are responding to the explosion in social content. Clients demand; vendors respond.
Jasmine Ashton, January 10, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Inteltrax: Top Stories, January 2 to January 6
January 9, 2012
Inteltrax, the data fusion and business intelligence information service, captured three key stories germane to search this week, specifically, the way many industries are rightfully and wrongfully utilizing analytics.
One of the best stories about traditional industries embracing big data was our story, “Police and Intelligence Communities Share Analytics Needs” which showed how law enforcement and data mining are a match made in heaven.
Slightly further down the scale was our look, “Auto Industry Needs Analytics to Survive,” which showed some small successes in the car industry with analytics and encouraged a wider adoption of practices.
And something completely different came from our article, “Online Reputation Analytics a Mixed Bag,” which chronicled the companies that use analytics to gauge a person’s online reputation and fix it. Our opinion is not so high, however.
This is one of the most exciting aspects of big data analytics. It’s fun to see how established businesses and industries utilize the technology for improvement. At least in most cases (We’re looking at you Reputation.com). Keep up with us as we follow more industry exploits in the world of big data analytics.
Follow the Inteltrax news stream by visiting www.inteltrax.com
Patrick Roland, Editor, Inteltrax.
January 9, 2012
Language Functionality of SharePoint 2010
January 9, 2012
SharePoint 2010 offers language packs that when installed allow for site and site collection creation in various languages without separate SharePoint installations. However, there are reported errors when trying to make the language packs work on top of Windows 7. A workaround is provided here in, “How to install SharePoint Server 2010 Language Packs on Windows 7.”
The blogger suggests:
When trying to install SharePoint Server 2010 Language Packs on top of Windows 7 you might receive the following error – ‘Setup is enable to proceed due to the following errors: this product requires Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2 …’ – to work around this you can use the same procedure with the language pack installation files as the one outlined for the normal SharePoint installation on Windows 7.
Instead of struggling through language packs and error messages, we wondered if there were easier multi-national alternatives available in the world of third party enterprise. One solution that seems like a great alternative is Fabasoft Mindbreeze. Based in Austria, Fabasoft caters to a multi-national and international audience, which has created a product line devoted to quality, usability, and style.
Note the following from the Mindbreeze product description:
Mindbreeze has a user interface that is available in 18 languages. We want all users to be able to enjoy the Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise interface in their native language. Whether Bulgarian, German, English, French, Croatian, Italian, Dutch, Norwegian, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovakian, Slovenian, Spanish, Czech or Hungarian – Mindbreeze is as international as your business partners.
Instead of adapting an English solution to meet additional language needs, users might save time and anguish by adopting a solution that is created to meet a variety of language needs. If your organization is in the market for a multi-national enterprise solution, give Mindbreeze a second look and see if it might meet your needs.
Emily Rae Aldridge, January 9, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
SharePoint Q & A With Worldwide Community Experts
January 6, 2012
The FUMSI Forum picked up the SharePoint StackExchange, a Q & A site directed at SharePoint users and enthusiasts.
The discussion pointed out:
One of a network of user-driven Q&A sites, the SharePoint edition of the StackExchange help forum allows you to ask, answer and search for previous questions about customising your implementation of the software.
The StackExchange serves as an innovative message board, allowing SharePoint users to discuss common pains and solutions alike. With a broad and highly customizable enterprise infrastructure like SharePoint, attention to detail is likely to come from other users instead of from Microsoft.
This is a collaboratively edited question and answer site for SharePoint enthusiasts. It’s 100% free, no registration required.
While message board and forums like this are a lifeline for SharePoint users, we think third party solutions might offer an opportunity to avoid some of the pitfalls of SharePoint in the first place. Fabasoft Mindbreeze offers an enterprise implementation that either stands alone or supports an existing SharePoint infrastructure.
Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise finds every scrap of information within a very short time, whether document, contract, note, e-mail or calendar entry, in intranet or internet, person- or text-related. The software solution finds all required information, regardless of source, for its users. Get a comprehensive overview of corporate knowledge in seconds without redundancy or loss of data. But an all-inclusive search is not everything. Creating relevant knowledge means processing data in a comprehensible form and utilizing relations between information objects. Data is sorted according to type and relevance.
Fabasoft Mindbreeze is widely touted for its intuitive solution, one that keeps the user from worrying about customization. Updates are seamlessly and automatically rolled out on a regular basis. So while SharePoint is fast becoming an essential tool for organizations, we think a third party solution is just as essential for ensuring that SharePoint users get the efficiency and relevancy they are seeking.
Emily Rae Aldridge, January 6, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Perfection in the Details: Enterprise Search Solutions with SharePoint IVP
January 5, 2012
Today we want to focus on a company that offers a great enterprise search solution, one that can stand alone or work alongside the more common SharePoint infrastructure. Fabasoft Mindbreeze is operated out of Austria. Having won the KM World Trendsetting Product of the Year four years in a row, Fabasoft is now getting positive attention from Gartner and its MarketScope Report.
The Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise Winter 2012 Release is now available for download.
Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise is built on 3 pillars: Simplicity, speed, efficiency. The Fabasoft Mindbreeze 2012 Winter Release stands under the motto ‘quicker to the point.’ Perfection is the sum of the details.
Check out the short and helpful YouTube tutorial videos embedded in the page. Each demonstrates a new feature added to the Winter 2012 Release. One particularly useful feature, especially for those already invested in a SharePoint installation, is the additional efficiency added to the SharePoint connector feature.
A survey by German market analysts has shown that practically every second company uses SharePoint. However, in SharePoint only one facet of a company’s knowledge can be presented. The Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise 2012 Winter Release puts an end to this shortcoming.
The video tutorial for this new SharePoint feature shows how easy it is to retrieve search results from every facet of an organization’s network, not just the SharePoint infrastructure. Results are not only efficiently retrieved, but sorted and classified. Retrieve an email address? Just click on the address for immediate embedded usability, unlike many other enterprise solutions that only retrieve. No more cut and paste.
Updates such as this one are rolled out monthly for the cloud and quarterly for enterprise customers. Updates are seamless and require no additional customization. If your organization is seeking an intuitive enterprise search solution, Fabasoft Mindbreeze is worth your attention.
Emily Rae Aldridge, January 5, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
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