National Geographic Sells Out
September 30, 2015
The National Geographic Society is one of the most respected institutes in regards to science and journalism related to nature. For 127 years, National Geographic managed itself as a non-profit organization. Buzzfeed reports that 21st Century Fox purchased National Geographic in the article, “Rupert Murdoch Is Buying National Geographic.” Before you start getting upset that National Geographic has “sold out” in the same manner that Sesame Street has a new partnership with HBO, be aware that 21st Century Fox already owned and operated a joint-venture partnership with the company.
The bulk of National Geographic’s properties are being turned over to 21st Century Fox, who will manage them and allow the National Geographic Society to focus on:
“The National Geographic Society said the deal will let the foundation invest more money in sponsoring explorers and scientists. ‘The value generated by this transaction, including the consistent and attractive revenue stream that National Geographic Partners will deliver, ensures that we will have greater resources for this work, which includes our grant making programs,’ said CEO Gary Knell, in a statement.”
While National Geographic is still popular, it faces stiff competition from other news outlets that generate similar if not more content. National Geographic wants to have better, modern storytelling “so that we may all know more of the world upon which we live.”
Hopefully this will free up more monies for scientific research, endeavors to protect endangered species, educational programs, and better ways to educate people on the natural world.
Whitney Grace, September 30, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Recommind Hits $70 Million
September 16, 2015
A video from the Big Data Landscape, part of their Big Data TV series, brings us an interview with Recommind’s CEO, Bob Tennant. The 11-and-a-half minute video and its transcript appear under the headline, “How Recommind Grew to $70M in Big Data Revenue.”
The interview by Dave Feinleib explores Recommind’s right-moves-at-the-right-time origin story, what its intelligence and eDiscovery software does, and why Tennant is confident the company will continue to thrive. This successful CEO also offers advice for aspiring entrepreneurs in any field, so check out the video or transcript for those words of wisdom.
Interestingly, the technology Tennant describes reminds us of early Autonomy methods [pdf]. He discusses working with unstructured data:
“So what you have to do is try to understand at a deeper level what’s happening semantically. What Recommind does is marry up a very highly scalable system for dealing with unstructured information– and the kind of database you need for doing that is different than what you would utilize for online transaction processing. But it also marries that up with a very deep knowledge of machine learning, which is the root of the company and where our post-docs were doing their research, to help understand what the key pieces of information in the sea of textual stuff are. And once you understand the key pieces, then you can put that into applications for further use or you can provide it to business intelligence applications to make sense of, or you can feed it elsewhere. But that’s very different from dealing with very structured data that most people are familiar with.”
Launched in 2000 and headquartered in San Francisco, Recommind provides search-powered analysis and governance solutions to customers around the world. The company’s Malolo technology stack is built upon their CORE information management platform.
Cynthia Murrell, September 16, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
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
Microsoft Puts the Cloud First with SharePoint Server 2016
June 30, 2015
Discussion of the cloud seems to push users into two camps: for and against. While hybrid is probably truly the way of the future, folks are still currently either of the “love it” or “hate it” variety. Redmond Magazine has provided good ongoing coverage of the upcoming SharePoint Server 2016 release, and their article, “Microsoft Taking a ‘Cloud First’ Approach with SharePoint 2016,” gives more details about what can be expected.
The article says:
“SharePoint Server 2016 will be a very cloud-inspired product when commercially released next year . . . Microsoft’s cloud services have been looming in the background of prior SharePoint Server releases . . . Office 365 cloud services have played a role since SharePoint Server 2013, and they will do so going forward with SharePoint Server 2016.”
One of the main promotional points of the new release is a promised “unified experience” for SharePoint users. While cloud skeptics still have reason to be cautious, the promised improvements may win them over. To stay up-to-date with the latest news regarding SharePoint, stayed tuned in to ArnoldIT.com and the dedicated SharePoint feed. Stephen E. Arnold is a longtime leader in search and his expertise comes in handy when trying to stay current without spending a lot of time doing independent research.
Emily Rae Aldridge, June 30, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Is Collaboration the Key to Big Data Progress?
May 22, 2015
The article titled Big Data Must Haves: Capacity, Compute, Collaboration on GCN offers insights into the best areas of focus for big data researchers. The Internet2 Global Summit is in D.C. this year with many exciting panelists who support the emphasis on collaboration in particular. The article mentions the work being presented by several people including Clemson professor Alex Feltus,
“…his research team is leveraging the Internet2 infrastructure, including its Advanced Layer 2 Service high-speed connections and perfSONAR network monitoring, to substantially accelerate genomic big data transfers and transform researcher collaboration…Arizona State University, which recently got 100 gigabit/sec connections to Internet2, has developed the Next Generation Cyber Capability, or NGCC, to respond to big data challenges. The NGCC integrates big data platforms and traditional supercomputing technologies with software-defined networking, high-speed interconnects and visualization for medical research.”
Arizona’s NGCC provides the essence of the article’s claims, stressing capacity with Internet2, several types of computing, and of course collaboration between everyone at work on the system. Feltus commented on the importance of cooperation in Arizona State’s work, suggesting that personal relationships outweigh individual successes. He claims his own teamwork with network and storage researchers helped him find new potential avenues of innovation that might not have occurred to him without thoughtful collaboration.
Chelsea Kerwin, May 22, 2014
Stephen E Arnold, Publisher of CyberOSINT at www.xenky.com
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