Cognition Rolls Out Semantic Medline
July 30, 2008
Resource Shelf reports that Cognition Technologies has indexed Medline content with its semantic search system. The new service is free, and you can try it yourself at http://www.semanticmedline.com/. Remember that you will be searching abstracts, not the full text of medical documents.
You can read the Resource Shelf story here. The point that jumped out at me was:
[This is] a new free service that enables complex health and life science material to be rapidly and efficiently discovered with greater precision and completeness using natural language processing (NLP) technology.
Cognition Technologies, like Hakia, develops semantic search and content processing systems. You can find out more about the company here. The company also offers a demonstration of its content processing applied to the Wikipedia. You can access that service here.
Stephen Arnold, July 30, 2008
SharePoint Wild Card Search
July 30, 2008
You may know Sridhar. He is “an escalation resource with the SharePoint/CMS Developer support team, Microsoft.” His Web log is Sridhar’s SharePoint Developer Blog. You can find it here. The tag line for the Web log is pretty darned interesting. Sridhar writes, “Creativity is out of the box. Then why customize?” Today Sridhar tackles the notion of wild card search. Wild card search to me means using a character like * or ? to represent any character. Well, wild card search is not provided in SharePoint. To implement wild card search, you use Sridhar’s sample code and he adds:
try using the sample web part (oh yep, you need to have the latest WSS 3.0 Tools: Visual Studio 2005 Extensions, Version 1.1 installed to be able to open the enclosed VS solution) and let me know how it is.
The addled goose would deliver a happy quack to Sridhar, but there’s one minor problem. Sridhar does not include his sample code or a link to the sample code in his Web log post here. I assume this is an oversight which will be rectified quickly. Unfortunately, SharePoint needs quite a bit of customization because “out of the box” installations are not too useful. I am supportive of Microsoft’s blogging efforts, but the omission of the code to implement wild card search is becoming more and more characteristic of the company’s attention to detail.
Stephen Arnold, July 30, 2008
Intel Chases the Cloud a Second Time
July 30, 2008
I wrote about Convera’s present business in vertical search here because I heard that Intel was going to chase clouds again. But before we look at the new deal with Hewlett Packard (the ink company), Yahoo (goodness knows what its business is now), and Intel, let’s go back in time.
Remember in late 2000 when Intel signed a deal with Excalibur? Probably not. Convera was the result of a fusion of Intel’s multimedia unit and Excalibur Technologies. When this deal took form, Intel had 10 data centers.
An Intel executive at the time was quoted in Tabor Communications DSstar saying:
We are creating a global network of Internet data centers with the goal of becoming a leader in world-class Internet application hosting and e-Commerce services, said Mike Aymar, president, Intel Online Services. The opening of a major Internet data center in Virginia is a key step toward this goal. We’ll bring our reliable and innovative approach to hosting customers running mission-critical Internet applications, both in the U.S. and around the world.
Part of the deal included the National Basketball Association. Intel and Convera would stream NBA games. These deals were complex and anticipated the online video boom that is now taking place. The problem was that Intel jumped into this game with Convera technology that was shall we say immature. In less than a year, the deal blew up. The NBA terminated its relationship with Convera. By the time the dust and law suits settled, the total price tag of this initiative was in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Outside of a handful of Wall Street analysts and data center experts, few people know that Intel anticipated the cloud, made a play, muffed the bunny, and faded quietly into the background until today.
Intel is back again and demonstrating that it still doesn’t have a knack for picking the right partners. The big news is that Intel, HP, and Yahoo are going to tackle cloud computing. The approach is to allow academic researchers to collaborate with industry on projects. The companies will create an experimental network. In short, risk is reduced and the costs spread across the partners. You can read Thomson Reuters’ summary here.
Will the chip giant’s Cloud Two initiative work?
Sure, anything free will garner attention among academics and corporate researchers. Will the test spin money for the ink vendor and the confused online portal? Probably not.
Rounding up more cloud computing suspects.
But there’s another angle I want to discuss briefly.
Intel pumped money in Endeca, a well-regarded search and content processing company. You can refresh your memory about that $10 million investment here.
Is there a connection between this investment in Endeca and today’s cloud computing announcement from Intel? I believe there is. Intel is making chips with CPU cycles to spare. Few applications saturate the processors. With even more cores on a single die coming, software and applications are lagging far behind the chips capabilities.
SharePoint How To: Search Property Filters in SharePoint Server 2007
July 29, 2008
Joel Krist, Akona Consulting, wrote “Using Enterprise Search Property Filters in SharePoint Server 2007.” The document is here. My routine scan of MSDN snagged a link to this 5,000 word document.
A property filter in SharePoint means a software gizmo that narrows the focus of key word search. Property filters allow you to use search scopes and managed properties to focus your searches and to handle duplicates results collapsing. Filters are not something the user slaps on a query. In SharePoint land, filters are assigned within the context of a SharePoint site by using the enterprise search query object model. You can also apply a filter remotely from outside the context of Office SharePoint Server by using the enterprise search query Web service.
If these terms don’t mean anything to you, you won’t find this MSDN document too helpful. If the buzzwords give you a kick like Jolt Cola, then you will benefit from Mr. Krist’s write up. If you run aground, you can contact Akona here, and the firm’s wizards will come to your rescue. The site plays welcoming music, so adjust your speakers before you navigate to Akona Web site.
This is a useful write up, and it includes screen shots. Mr. Krist also clarifies some of the Scope wackiness that the addled geese at Beyond Search had to figure out before we had the Akona roadmap. A happy quack to Mr. Krist. An annoyed honk to the SharePoint team for making a needed function unnecessarily opaque. I mean 5,000 words pages to explain a property filter. A harried SharePoint administrator could fall out of love with Microsoft with this type of set up procedure.
Stephen Arnold, July 29, 2008
Funnelback CTO Interview Now Available
July 29, 2008
Dr. David Hawking, the chief technical officer of Funnelback, has joined the search and content processing company full time. Dr. Hawking is well known among the information retrieval community. His students have joined Google and Microsoft Research. Dr. Hawking’s interview with ArnoldIT.com is now available as part of the Search Wizards Speak series at www.arnoldit.com/search-wizards-speak.
Dr. Hawking said that Funnelback, now in version 8, delivers search ranking quality and tunability, geospatial query processing, folksonomy tagging of search results, streamlined set up and configuration, customizable work flows, and a software as a service option. In short, Funnelback is a capable enterprise search solution.,
Located in Canberra, Australia, the Funnelback system has a number of high profile clients in Australia and New Zealand. The company also has clients in the United Kingdom and Canada.,
Dr. Hawking said,
Funnelback includes an intuitive Web based administration interface for configuration, user interface customization and viewing query reports. No programming skills are required for the majority of configuration tasks, but deeper integrations can be achieved by developing specific interfaces to work with various enterprise application such as content management systems or portal applications.
The next release of Funnelback will appear in the first half of 2009. The company has plans to expand into other countries, but Dr. Hawking would not reveal specific plans for new offices. He hinted that Funnelback is working on solutions for vertical markets. The company already has a vertical implementation for one of Australia’s law enforcement agencies. That project has been well received by the users.
You can read the full text of the interview here. Information about the company is here.
Stephen Arnold, July 29, 2008
Google’s Publishing Baby Step
July 29, 2008
I have written about Knol, Google’s publishing technology in Google Version 2.0. Outsell (a consulting firm) recycled some on of my Google publishing research in the summer of 2007. I will have an update available from my UK publisher, Infonortics, Ltd., in Tetbury, Glou., in September 2008. If you want to read my take of Google’s publishing technology, you can snag a copy of Google Version 2.0 here. In my analysis, Knol is a publishing baby step, but it is an important one because it delivers two payoffs: [a] content to monetize and [b] inputs for Google’s smart software. I explain why Google wants to process quality content, not just Webby dogs and cats in Google Version 2.0.
You may also want to read Andrew Lih’s “Google Know Wikipedia Comparison Faulty” analysis here. Mr. Lih does a good job of pointing out what Knol is and is not. Particularly useful to those confused about the competition Google faces, Mr, Lih’s identification of Google’s “real competition” is solid. The part of his essay I enjoyed was his “grading” of those who were covering the Knol story. He identifies who did poorly, those who were stuck in the mire of the bell curve, and the informed souls who received a gold star for excellence. I won’t spoil your fun, but you will find at the back of the class some names with which you will be familiar.
A happy quack to Mr. Lih.
Stephen Arnold, July 29, 2008
Financial Close Dance: Connotate and High Step Rumba
July 29, 2008
BobsGuide.com revealed on July 23, 2008, that High Step Capital (yep, a money outfit) is using Connotate’s agent technology in a clever new way. In the financial world, clever means finding a way to make money in today’s unsettled market.
BobsGuide.com reports:
By creating a group of agents that monitor real-time changes to information on multiple Web sites-for example, for monitoring the prices of electronic products from competing companies-and aggregating the results, a user can create a real-time feed of prices or other information… That feed is loaded into a database hosted by Connotate, which provides a Web portal for Jones to view the data online or to download the information into spreadsheets…
You can read the full story “High Step Adds Connotate Data to Models” here. For more information about Connotate, you can visit the company’s Web site here, or you can buy a copy of my April 2008 study Beyond Search here. Connotate competes with Relegence, a unit of America Online which is owned by Time Warner. You can read about Relegence here.
Why is this important?
Services that merge internal and external data are one of the Web 2.0 technologies that work and deliver fungible payoffs. Some Web 2.0 functions are nifty but tough to tie to a financial benefit.
Stephen Arnold, July 29, 2008
Convera: Vertical Search Is a Slow Climb
July 29, 2008
In 2000, Convera was one of the big dogs in the enterprise search engine game. The company showed promise. Then the company hit a rough patch, losing deals with Intel and the NBA. More information about this 2001 business shift is here. The company reinvented itself by selling its enterprise search unit. Autonomy nabbed a small chunk. Fast Search & Transfer gobbled the balance. The streamlined Convera emerged as a company specializing in indexing selected sets of Web sites. Convera describes itself as a vertical search engine company. A person with a list of urls can create a vertical search engine for free using Google’s Custom Search Engine. You can read about it here. I’m doing most of this math in my head, so if you find an error, please, use the comments section to set me straight. I am a bit rushed after a weekend in the hospital watching my mom sleep.
How is Convera doing? The answer can be found it the company’s financial results for the period ending April 30, 2008.
- Revenue from continuing operations for the first quarter of fiscal 2009 increased to $402,000 or 44% over the $280,000 in revenue recorded in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2008.
- Backlog, grew from $4.0 million at January 31, 2008 to $4.7 million April 30, 2008. These backlog balances represent future revenues stemming from the contractual minimum revenue commitment amounts from customers.
- As of April 30, 2008, a total of 45 Excalibur supported vertical search sites from 25 different publishers that have been commercially launched. There were 39 vertical search sites from 24 publishers that had been commercially launched at January 31, 2008.
- Search traffic activity from the Excalibur supported vertical sites continued to grow, increasing 187% from 9.5 million searches in the fourth quarter of last year to 17.8 million in the first quarter ended April 30, 2008.
- A total of 75 Excalibur supported vertical search sites are under contract with customers, 47 of these sites have been commercially launched and 28 of these sites are in development. These contracted sites represent publications in over 15 major vertical industries. Convera is presently providing vertical search services to 30 different trade publishers.
More information about Convera’s financial are available here. The company’s historical financials are quite interesting, and I have not figured out what has happened to Convera’s debt. The company lost $47 million in 2007 and is still losing money in 2008. Allen & Co. has a stake in the firm, and two Allens serve on the Convera Board of Directors.
The Outsell consulting firm, a group of true wizards in Burlingame, California, described Convera as “a rising star in 2008”. I don’t think I would characterize Convera’s losses in 2007 and 2008 as characteristics of a rising star. But I live in Harrods Creek, Kentucky, and watch my neighbors shoot squirrels with shotguns, so what do I know?
You can see the Convera system in action. Navigate to DwellingWell.com and enter the query “outdoor paint”? Did you get results? I did not. The screen was blank. Zero results. I wish vendors would keep their demo sites current, don’t you?
You can navigate to PureContemporarySearch here. Enter the query “wall coverings”. The result set appears below:
The results seemed useful. The search page allows the user to narrow the query to editor-selected sites, the Web, and other categories. The results show suggestions with more slices of content available by clicking on the tabs above the results display.
IBM: Fact of the Day
July 29, 2008
A happy quack to ZDNet UK for this useful IBM factoid:
In the past five years, IBM has spent $21bn (£10bn) on buying 70 software companies, of which the biggest was Cognos…
You can read the fact in context in “IBM to Buy French Software House Ilog here. What’s an Ilog? The company makes rule management tools. Rules have to be coded by humans. Humans are compensated with a salary. IBM’s Ilog buy ensures a flow of services revenue for this $100 billion giant. For more about Ilog click here.
Stephen Arnold, July 29, 2008
Opinion: Cuil, Google, and Microsoft
July 28, 2008
Before I go out and feed the geese on my pond in Harrods Creek, I wanted to offer several unsolicited comments about Microsoft, Cuil, and search.
First, now that Microsoft has its own search technologies, Fast Search & Transfer’s search technologies for the enterprise and the Web, and Powerset’s search technologies, does Cuil look cool?
This is a tough question, and I don’t think that Microsoft had much knowledge of the Cuil team and its work ins search. My research suggests that work on Cuil began for real in 2007. The work profiles of the Cuil team is decidedly non-Microsoft. My thought is that Microsoft did not have a competitive profile about this company. My working hypothesis is that this search system struck Microsoft like a bolt from the blue.
Second, will Microsoft buy Cuil? This is a question that will probably garner some discussion at Microsoft. The Linux “heads” at Microsoft will probably resonate with the idea. Cuil incorporates some of the “beyond” Google technology that one can find at Exalead and now at Cuil. The architecture of these “beyond” Google operations might be quite useful to Microsoft. On the other hand, Microsoft is charging forward with its own approach to massively parallel distributed systems that the “beyond” Google engineering would be a touch pill to swallow.
Third, will Cuil get traction? The answer is yes. My hypothesis is that the folks who flock to Cuil will be Google users, but the real impact of Cuil may well be taking orphaned or disaffected users from Ask.com, Live.com, and Yahoo.com search.
The short term impact on Google may be significant for several reasons:
- Cuil has poked a finger in Google’s eye with its user tracking policy. Simply stated, Cuil won’t build user and usage profiles that tie to an individual in a stateful session or to an individual assigned to a fine grained group of clusters in a stateless session. See my July August KMWorld feature for more about the data model of this type of tracking.
- Cuil hit Google with its larger index of 120 Web pages processed to Google’s 30 to 40 million pages. Keep in mind that size doesn’t matter, but it is a public relations hook that could snare Googzilla around the ankles.
- Cuil includes bells and whistles that have not be released on the public Google system. For example, there are snazzier results displays, insets for suggested searches, and tabs to allow slicing results. Google has these features, but the GOOG keeps them under wraps. Right now, Cuil looks cooler (pun intended). The Cuil search page is black which even says “green”. Clever.
Google now has to sit quietly and watch Xooglers implement features that Google has had in the can for years. Interesting day for both Microsoft (Should we buy Cuil too?) and Google (What’s the next step for the Xooglers’ service?).
Stephen Arnold, July 28, 2008
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