All You Can View Patents
November 18, 2015
Patent information is available to peruse via the USPTO Web site and Google has an accurate patent search (that is significantly easier to use than USPTO’s search), but this does not tell the complete story of US patents. GCN announced that the USPTO plans to remedy missing patent information in the article, “USPTO Opens The Door To Four Decades Of Patent Data.”
With the help of the Center of Science and Innovation Policy (CSSIP), the USPTO launched the new tool PatentsView:
“The new tool allows individuals to explore data on patenting activity in the United States dating back to 1976. Users can search patent titles, types, inventors, assignees, patent classes, locations and dates. The data also displays visualizations on trends and patent activity. In addition, searches include graphic illustrations and charts.”
People will be able to conduct the equivalent of an “advanced search” option of Google or an academic database. PatentsView allows people to identify trends, what technology is one the rise or dropping, search a company’s specific patents, and flexible application programming interface to search patent information.
The USPTO wants people to access and use important patent and trademark data. It faces the issue that many organizations are dealing with that they have the data available and even with the bonus of it being digital, but its user interface is not user-friendly and no one knows it is there. Borrowing a page from marketing, the USPTO is using PatentsView to rebrand itself and advertise its offerings. Shiny graphics are one way to reach people.
Whitney Grace, November 18, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Google Hacks to Make You Grin
October 30, 2015
Google is run by a bunch of geeks that entertain themselves using the high tech toys at their fingertips. Beyond the insertion of Douglas Adams references in search results, there are other Google hacks that the tech geeks developed to make themselves and you smile. Digital Spy tracked down “Eleven Google Secrets That Will Change The Way You Search, From Playing Pac-Man To Lego Street View.”
“Day after day you hammer out search after search, overlooking not only the hidden gems lurking beneath the surface, but the very thing that makes Google such an anomaly amongst the world’s biggest companies – its sense of humor. Here are a few thinks you might not have known you can do in Google.”
Google can do numerous things just by typing a few simple commands into the search bar. Try typing: “askew” or “tilt,” “do a barrel roll,” and “Zerg rush.” Google is also a time machine and can take you back to the 1998 Google interface or you can spend hours playing Pac-Man on an uploaded Google Doodle from May 2010. The yellow stick figure on Google Street View also likes to play dress-up when he visits certain places.
But our absolute favorite is the six degrees of Kevin Bacon calculator. Based off an old Internet meme that everyone in Hollywood has worked with Kevin Bacon in less than six degrees, type in a famous person and “bacon number” to find out how close their careers are.
Little hacks and fun games like this show the human side to the Google empire. What will they think of next? However, it would be nice if Google added some practical functions, such as a time and date feature.
Whitney Grace, October 30, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Monkeys Cause System Failure
July 28, 2015
Nobody likes to talk about his or her failures. Admitting to failure proves that you failed at a task in the past and it is a big blow to the ego. Failure admission is even worse for technology companies, because users want to believe technology is flawless. On Microsoft’s Azure Blog, Heather Nakama posted “Inside Azure Search: Chaos Engineering” and she explains that software engineers are aware that failure is unavoidable. Rather than trying to prevent failure, they welcome potential failure. Why? It allows them to test software and systems to prevent problems before they develop.
Nakama mentions it is not a sustainable model to account for every potential failure and to test the system every time it is upgraded. Azure Search borrowed chaos engineering from Netflix to resolve the issue and it is run by a bunch of digital monkeys
“As coined by Netflix in a recent excellent blog post, chaos engineering is the practice of building infrastructure to enable controlled automated fault injection into a distributed system. To accomplish this, Netflix has created the Netflix Simian Army with a collection of tools (dubbed “monkeys”) that inject failures into customer services.”
Netflix basically unleashes a Search Chaos Monkey into its system to wreck havoc, then Netflix learns about system weaknesses and repairs accordingly. There are several chaos levels: high, medium, and low, with each resulting in more possible damage. At each level, Search Chaos Monkey is given more destructive tools to “play” around with. The high levels are the most valuable to software engineers, because it demonstrates the largest and worst diagnostic failures.
While letting a bull loose in a china shop is bad, because you lose your merchandise, letting a bunch of digital monkeys loose in a computer system is actually beneficial. It remains true that you can learn from failure. I just hope that the digital monkeys do not have digital dung.
Whitney Grace, July 28, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Sprinklr Aims to Conquer Consolidation Market
July 8, 2015
Sprinklr is in a race with the likes of Salesforce as well as fellow social-consolidation startups. Forbes declares, “Sprinklr Acquires NewBrand, the $1 Billion Social Startup’s Seventh Buy in 18 Months.” Back when social media was new, companies scrambled to leverage its potential with a hodgepodge of tools. Now, Sprinklr founder Ragy Thomas sees a wave of consolidation approaching, as companies tire of struggling to unite disparate solutions. Writer Alex Konrad writes:
“Sprinklr is one of a number of companies facing pressure to provide a more complete stack to brands looking to integrate their social marketing and customer support, Thomas says. An obvious example is the Salesforce Marketing Cloud, built off a nucleus of its own acquisitions like ExactTarget, Buddy Media and Radian6. Demand for a more end-to-end solution has intensified in the last year, Thomas argues. That’s why Sprinklr has acquired so much and so quickly, the CEO argues, typically taking the absorbed startup and absorbing its code directly into Sprinklr’s main code. …
“Sprinklr will face competition from also well-financed startups like Percolate as well as from larger suite offerings like Salesforce. ‘We are in a race against time to provide the capability to brands,’ Thomas says. ‘It’s becoming a three or four horse race with a clear set of companies that big brands can bank on moving forward.’”
At the moment, it looks like Sprinklr may be ahead in that race; predictive-analytics/ business-intelligence firm NewBrand is its seventh acquisition since the beginning of 2014. NewBrand launched in 2010, and is based in Washington, DC.
Ragy Thomas founded Sprinklr in 2009. The company is headquartered in New York City, with offices around the world. The other six companies it has snapped up include Scup, Get Satisfaction, Pluck, Branderati, TBG Digital, and Dachis Group.
Cynthia Murrell, July 8, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Improving the Preservica Preservation Process
April 17, 2015
Preservica is a leading program for use in digital preservation, consulting, and research, and now it is compatible with Microsoft SharePoint. ECM Connection has the scoop on the “New Version Of Preservica Aligns Records Management And Digital Preservation.” The upgrade to Preservica will allow SharePoint managers to preserve content from SharePoint as well as Microsoft Outlook, a necessary task as most companies these days rely on the Internet for business and need to archive transactions.
Preservica wants to become a bigger part of enterprise system strategies such as enterprise content management and information governance. One of their big selling points is that Preservica will archive information and keep it in a usable format, as obsoleteness becomes a bigger problem as technology advances.
“Jon Tilbury, CEO Preservica adds: ‘The growing volume and diversity of digital content and records along with rapid technology and IT refresh rates is fuelling the need for Records and Compliance managers to properly safe-guard their long-term and permanent digital records by incorporating Digital Preservation into their overall information governance lifecycle. The developing consensus is that organizations should consider digital preservation from the outset – especially if they hold important digital records for more than 10 years or already have records that are older than 10 years. Our vision is to make this a pluggable technology so it can be quickly and seamlessly integrated into the corporate information landscape.’ ”
Digital preservation with a compliant format is one of the most overlooked problems companies deal with. They may have stored their records on a storage device, but if they do not retain the technology to access them, then the records are useless. Keeping files in a readable format not only keeps them useful, but it also makes the employee’s life who has to recall them all the easier.
Whitney Grace, April 17, 2015
Stephen E Arnold, Publisher of CyberOSINT at www.xenky.com
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