Neural Networks and Thought Commands
July 22, 2015
If you’ve been waiting for the day you can operate a computer by thinking at it, check out “When Machine Learning Meets the Mind: BBC and Google Get Brainy” at the Inquirer. Reporter Chris Merriman brings our attention to two projects, one about hardware and one about AI, that stand at the intersection of human thought and machine. Neither venture is anywhere near fruition, but a peek at their progress gives us clues about the future.
The internet-streaming platform iPlayer is a service the BBC provides to U.K. residents who wish to catch up on their favorite programmes. In pursuit of improved accessibility, the organization’s researchers are working on a device that allows users to operate the service with their thoughts. The article tells us:
“The electroencephalography wearable that powers the technology requires lucidity of thought, but is surprisingly light. It has a sensor on the forehead, and another in the ear. You can set the headset to respond to intense concentration or meditation as the ‘fire’ button when the cursor is over the option you want.”
Apparently this operation is easier for some subjects than for others, but all users were able to work the device to some degree. Creepy or cool? Perhaps it’s both, but there’s no escaping this technology now.
As for Google’s undertaking, we’ve examined this approach before: the development of artificial neural networks. This is some exciting work for those interested in AI. Merriman writes:
“Meanwhile, a team of Google researchers has been looking more closely at artificial neural networks. In other words, false brains. The team has been training systems to classify images and better recognise speech by bombarding them with input and then adjusting the parameters to get the result they want.
But once equipped with the information, the networks can be flipped the other way and create an impressive interpretation of objects based on learned parameters, such as ‘a screw has twisty bits’ or ‘a fly has six legs’.”
This brain-in-progress still draws some chuckle-worthy and/or disturbing conclusions from images, but it is learning. No one knows what the end result of Google’s neural network research will be, but it’s sure to be significant. In a related note, the article points out that IBM is donating its machine learning platform to Apache Spark. Who knows where the open-source community will take it from here?
Cynthia Murrell, July 22, 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
What Watson Can Do For Your Department
July 6, 2015
The story of Justin Chen, a Finance Manager, is one of many “Stories by Role” now displayed on IBM. Each character has a different job, such as Liza Hay from Marketing, Donny Cruz from IT and Anisa Mirza from HR. Each job comes with a problem for which Watson, IBM’s supercomputer, has just the solution. Justin, the article relates, is having trouble deciding which payments to follow. Watson provides solutions,
“With IBM® Watson™ Analytics, Justin can ask which customers are least likely to pay, who is most likely to pay and why. He can analyze this information… [and] collect more payments more efficiently… With Watson Analytics, Justin can ask which customers are likely to leave and which are likely to stay and why. He can use the answers for analysis of customer attrition and retention, predict the effect on revenue and determine which customer investments will lead to more profitable growth.”
It seems that the now world-famous Watson has been converted from search to a basket containing any number of IBM software solutions. It isn’t stated in the article, but we can probably assume that the revenue from each solution counts toward Watson’s soon to be reported billions in revenue.
Chelsea Kerwin, July 6, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Attivio ReachesTop 100 Status
June 29, 2015
The Data Dexterity Company announced the brand new Database Trends and Applications (DBTA) 100 and according to Yahoo Finance, Attivio is now on the list: “Attivio Named By Database Trends Applications To Its Prestigious Top 100 List.”
“We are pleased to be recognized by Database Trends and Applications as one of the most important firms in the data space; it further validates the type of feedback that our customers provide on a daily basis,” said Stephen Baker, CEO of Attivio. “As firms continue to be more reliant on maximizing their data to drive business-critical insights, we expect to play a critical role in driving this type of business innovation.”
Attivio joins the ranks of other companies that have made huge innovations in the data industry; they include EMC, Amazon, IBM, and more. Attivio is an industry leader in enterprise systems with its intelligence search platform. Attivio’s search platform enables users to make immediate insights with data visibility. Attivio has a well-known client use that encompasses such names as National Instruments, Nexen, GE, UBS, and Qualcomm. The company believes that there are many innovations to be made from all types, not just the type that is easily found in a database. Attivio uses its search platform to uncover insights in unstructured data that would otherwise be missed by other enterprise search platforms.
We have been following Attivio for many years and by having its name added to DBTA 100 proves it can perform well and deliver useful results. Enterprise search continues to be an important factor for enterprise systems, though people are often forgetting that today. Attivio’s addition to the DBTA 100 stresses that not everyone has forgotten.
Whitney Grace, June 29, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Search Cheerleader Seeks Text Analytics Unicorns
June 12, 2015
The article on Venture Beat whimsically titled Where Are the Text Analytics Unicorns provides yet another cheerleader for search. The article uses Aileen Lee’s “unicorn” concept of a company begun since 2003 and valued at over a billion dollars. (“Super unicorns” are companies valued at over a hundred billion dollars like Facebook.) The article asks why no text analytics companies have joined this exclusive club? Candidates include Clarabridge, NetBase and Medallia.
“In the end, the answer is a very basic one. Contrast the text analytics sector with unicorns that include Uber — Travis Kalanick’s company — and Airbnb, Evernote, Flipkart, Square, Pinterest, and their ilk. They play to mass markets — they’re a magic mix of revenue, data, platform, and pizazz — in ways that text analytics doesn’t. The tech companies on the unicorn list — Cloudera, MongoDB, Pivotal — provide or support essential infrastructure that covers a broad set of needs.”
Before coming to this conclusion, the article posits other possible reasons as well, such as the sheer number of companies competing in the field, or even competition from massive companies like IBM and Google. But these are dismissed for the more optimistic end note that essentially suggests we give the text analytics unicorns a year. Caution advised.
Chelsea Kerwin, June 12, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Lexalytics: GUI and Wizard
June 12, 2015
What is one way to improve a user’s software navigational experience? One of the best ways is to add a graphical user interface (GUI). Software Development @ IT Business Net shares a press release about “Lexalytics Unveils Industry’s First Wizard For Text Mining And Sentiment Analysis.” Lexalytics is one of the leading companies that provides sentiment and analytics solutions and as the article’s title explains it has made an industry first by releasing a GUI and wizard for Semantria SaaS platform and Excel plug-in. The wizard and GUI (SWIZ) are part of the Semantria Online Configurator, SWEB 1.3, which also included functionality updates and layout changes.
” ‘In order to get the most value out of text and sentiment analysis technologies, customers need to be able to tune the service to match their content and business needs,’ said Jeff Catlin, CEO, Lexalytics. ‘Just like Apple changed the game for consumers with its first Macintosh in 1984, making personal computing easy and fun through an innovative GUI, we want to improve the job of data analysts by making it just as fun, easy and intuitive with SWIZ.’”
Lexalytics is dedicated to helping its clients enjoy an easier experience when it comes to data analytics. The company wants its clients to get the answers they by providing the tools they need to get them without having to over think the retrieval process. While Lexalytics already provides robust and flexible solutions, the SWIZ release continues to prove it has the most tunable and configurable text mining technology.
Whitney Grace, June 12, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
IBM Elevates Tape Storage to the Cloud
June 9, 2015
Did you think we left latency and bad blocks behind with tape storage? Get ready to revisit them, because “IBM Cloud Will Reach Back to Tape for Low-Cost Storage,” according to ComputerWorld. We noticed tape storage was back on the horizon earlier this year, and now IBM has made it official at its recent Edge conference in Las Vegas. There, the company was slated to present a cloud-archiving architecture that relies on a different storage mediums, including tape, depending on an organization’s needs. Reporter Stephen Lawson writes:
“Enterprises are accumulating growing volumes of data, including new types such as surveillance video that may never be used on a regular basis but need to be stored for a long time. At the same time, new big-data analytics tools are making old and little-used data useful for gleaning new insights into business and government. IBM is going after customers in health care, social media, oil and gas, government and other sectors that want to get to all of their data no matter where it’s stored. IBM’s system, which it calls Project Big Storage, puts all tiers of storage under one namespace, creating a single pool of data that users can manage through folders and directories without worrying about where it’s stored. It incorporates both file and object storage.”
A single pool of data is good. The inclusion of tape storage in this mix is reportedly part of an attempt to undercut IBM’s cloudy competitors, including AWS and Google Cloud. Naturally, the service can be implemented onsite, as a cloud service, or as a hybrid. IBM hopes Big Storage will make cloud pricing more predictable, though complexity there seems inevitable. Tape storage is slower to deliver data, but according to the plan only “rarely needed” data will be stored there, courtesy of IBM’s own Spectrum Scale distributed storage software. Wisely, IBM is relying on the tape-handling experts at Iron Mountain to run the tape-based portion of the Big Storage Project.
Cynthia Murrell, June 9, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
IBM Provides Simple How-To Guide for Cloudant
April 24, 2015
The article titled Integrate Data with Cloudant and CouchDB NoSQL Database Using IBM InfoSphere Information Server on IBM offers a breakdown of the steps necessary to load JSON documents and attachments to Cloudant. In order to follow the steps, the article notes that you will need Cloudant, CouchDB, and IBM InfoSphere DataStage. The article concludes,
“This article provided detailed steps for loading JSON documents and attachments to Cloudant. You learned about the job design to retrieve JSON documents and attachments from Cloudant. You can modify the sample jobs to perform the same integration operations on a CouchDB database. We also covered the main features of the new REST step in InfoSphere DataStage V11.3, including reusable connection, parameterized URLs, security configuration, and request and response configurations. The JSON parser step was used in examples to parse JSON documents.”
Detailed examples with helpful images guide you through each part of the process, and it is possible to modify the examples for CouchDB. Although it may seem like a statement of the obvious the many loyal IBM users out there, perhaps there are people who still need to be told. If you are interested in learning the federation of information with a logical and simple process, use IBM.
Chelsea Kerwin, April 24, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Partnership Between Twitter and IBM Showing Results
March 27, 2015
The article on TechWorld titled IBM Boosts BlueMix and Watson Analytics with Twitter Integration investigates the fruits of the partnership between IBM and Twitter, which began in 2014. IBM Bluemix now has Twitter available as one the services available in the cloud based developer environment. Watson Analytics will also be integrated with Twitter for the creation of visualizations. Developers will be able to grab data from Twitter for better insights into patterns and relationships.
“The Twitter data is available as part of that service so if I wanted to, for example, understand the relationship between a hashtag on pizza, burgers or tofu, I can go into the service, enter the hashtag and specify a date range,” said Rennie. “We [IBM] go out, gather information and essentially calculate what is the sentiment against those tags, what is the split by location, by gender, by retweets, and put it into a format whereby you can immediately do visualisation.”
From the beginning of the partnership, Twitter gave IBM access to its data and the go-ahead to use Twitter with the cloud based developer tools. Watson looks like a catch all for data, and the CMO of Brandwatch Will McInnes suggests that Twitter is only the beginning. The potential of data from social media is a vast and constantly rearranging field.
Chelsea Kerwin, March 27, 2015
Stephen E Arnold, Publisher of CyberOSINT at www.xenky.com
IBM Hadoop
March 18, 2015
For anyone who sees setting up an instance of Hadoop as a huge challenge, Open Source Insider points to IBM’s efforts to help in, “Has IBM Made (Hard) Hadoop Easier?” Why do some folks consider Hadoop so difficult? Blogger Adrian Bridgwater elaborates:
“More specifically, it has been said that the Hadoop framework for distributed processing of large data sets across clusters of computers using simple programming models is tough to get to grips with because:
Hadoop is not a database
Hadoop is not an analytics environment
Hadoop is not a visualisation tool
Hadoop is not known for clusters that meet enterprise-grade security requirements
Foundation fixation
This is because Hadoop is a ‘foundational’ technology in many senses, so its route to ‘business usefulness’ is neither direct or clear cut in many cases.”
Hmm. So, perhaps one should understand what Hadoop is and what it does before trying to implement it. Still, the folks at IBM would prefer companies just pay them to handle it. The article cites a survey of “bit-data developers” (commissioned by IBM) that shows about a quarter of the respondents us IBM’s Hadoop. Bridgwater also mentions:
“IBM also recently conducted an independently audited benchmark, which was reviewed by third-party Infosizing, of three popular SQL-on-Hadoop implementations, and the results showed that IBM’s Big SQL was the only Hadoop solution tested that was able to run all 99 Hadoop-DS queries…. Smith says that this new report and benchmark are proof that customers can ask more complex questions of IBM when it comes to Hadoop implementation.”
I’m not sure that’s what those factors prove, but it is clear that many companies do turn to the tech giant for help with Hadoop. But is their assistance worth the cost? Unfortunately, this article includes no word on IBM’s Hadoop pricing.
Cynthia Murrell, March 18, 2015
Stephen E Arnold, Publisher of CyberOSINT at www.xenky.com
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
