SurfRay Round Up
October 24, 2008
SurfRay and its products have triggered a large number of comments on this Web log. On my recent six day trip to Europe, I was fortunate to be in a position to talk with people who knew about the company’s products. I also toted my Danish language financial statements along, and I was able to find some people to walk me through the financials. Finally, I sat down and read the dozens of postings that have accumulated about this company.
I visited the company on a trip to Copenhagen five or six years ago. I wrote some profiles about the market for SharePoint centric search, sent bills, got paid, and then drifted away from the company. I liked the Mondosoft folks, but I live in rural Kentucky. One of my friends owned a company which ended up in the SurfRay portfolio. I lost track of that product. I recall learning that SurfRay gobbled up an outfit called Ontolica. My recollection was that, like Interse and other SharePoint centric content processing companies’ technology, Ontolica put SharePoint on life support. What this means is that some of SharePoint’s functions work but not too well. Third party vendors pay Microsoft to certify one or more engineers in the SharePoint magic. Then those “certified” companies can sell products to SharePoint customers. If Microsoft likes the technology, a Microsoft engineer may facilitate a deal for a “certified” vendor. I am hazy on the ways in which the Microsoft certification program works, but I have ample data from interviews I have conducted that “certification” yields sales.
An Ontolica results list.
Why is this important? It’s background for the points I want to set forth as “believed to be accurate” so the SurfRay folks can comment, correct, clarify, and inform me on what the heck is going on at SurfRay. Here are the points I about which comments are in bounds.
Silobreaker: Two New Services Coming
October 24, 2008
I rarely come across real news. In London, England, last week I uncovered some information about Silobreaker‘s new services. I have written about Silobreaker before here and interviewed one of the company’s founders, Mats Bjore here. In the course of my chatting with some of the people I know in London, I garnered two useful pieces of intelligence. Keep in mind that the actual details of these forthcoming services may vary, but I am 99% certain that Silobreaker will introduce:
Contextualized Ad Retrieval in Silobreaker.com.
The idea is that Silobreaker’s “smart software” called a “contextualization engine” will be applied to advertising. The method understands concepts and topics, not just keywords. I expect to see Silobreaker offering this system to licensees and partners. What’s the implication of this technology? Obviously, for licensees, the system makes it possible to deliver context-based ads. Another use is for a governmental organization to blend a pool of content with a stream of news. In effect, when certain events occur in a news or content stream, an appropriate message or reminder can be displayed for the user. I can think of numerous police and intelligence applications for this blend of static and dynamic content in operational situations.
Enterprise Media Monitoring & Analysis Service
The other new service I learned about is a fully customizable online service that delivers a simple and effective way for enterprise customers to handle the entire work flow around their media monitoring and analysis needs. While today’s media monitoring and news clipping efforts remain resource intensive, Silobreaker Enterprise will be a subscription-based service that will automate much of the heavy lifting that either internal or external analysts must perform by hand. The Silobreaker approach is to blend–a key concept in the Silobreaker technical approach–in a single intuitive user interface disparate yet related information. The enterprise customers will be able to define monitoring targets, trigger content aggregation, perform analyses, and display results in a customized web-service. A single mouse click allows a user to generate a report or receive an auto-generated PDF report in response to an event of interest. Silobreaker has also teamed up with a partner company to add sentiment analysis to its already comprehensive suite of analytics. Currently in final testing phase with large multinational corporate test-users and due to be released at end of 2008/early 2009.
Silobreaker is a leader in search enabled intelligence applications. Check out the company at www.silobreaker.com. A happy quack to the reader who tipped me on these Silobreaker developments.
Stephen Arnold, October 23, 2008
Able2Act: Serious Information, Seriously Good Intelligence
October 23, 2008
Remember Silobreaker? The free online aggregator provides current events news through a contextual search engine. One of its owners is Infosphere, an intelligence and knowledge strategy consulting business. Infosphere also offers a content repository called able2act.com. able2act delivers structured info in modules. For example, there are more than 55 000 detailed biographies, 200,000-plus contacts in business and politics, company snapshots, and analyst notebook files, among others. Modules cover topics like the Middle East, global terrorism, and information warfare. Most of the data, files, and reports are copyrighted by Infosphere, a small part of the informatioin is in the public domain. Analysts update able2act to the tune of 2,000 records a week. You access able2act by direct XML/RSS feed, the Web site, or even feed into your in-house systems. The database search can be narrowed by making module searches, such as searching keywords only in the “tribes” module. We were able to look up the poorly reported movements of the Gandapur tribe in Afghanistan. Please, take a look at the visual demonstration is available online here. We found it quite good. able2act is available by subscription. The price for a government agency to get full access to all modules starts at $70,000 a year. Only certain modules are available to individual subscribers. You can get more details by writing to opcenter at infosphere.se.
Stephen Arnold, October 23, 2008
Clear Thinking about Clouds
October 23, 2008
I just finished reading Kevin Kelly’s The Technium post about “Cloud Culture.” Please, click here to get the full text of this prescient article. The run down of cloud features is among the best I have seen. I don’t want to spoil your experience of reading Mr. Kelly’s article. I suggest you make a note of the attributes he identifies. Two or three of these are likely to spawn books or monographs. For me the most telling remark in the write up was this statement:
The cloud is a collective. Social media is a type of socialism. Open source software projects are kinds of communitarian schemes. When people share their medical records (Patients Like Me), or personal genomes (23andme), or their family photo albums — they are feeding a collective because by sharing them, their goods increase in value. The success of Wikipedia, Linux, and the web in general is priming a generation to be open to the power of the group. But unlike the old socialism models of old, the top-down social media of communism, the individuals are not forced to homogenize. Instead in this emerging Socialism 2.0, individuals (anyone can edit the encyclopedia!) are liberated via the power of the group.
If you have points to add to Mr. Kelly’s list, feel free to use the comments section of this Web log. I look forward to your remarks. A quiet two quacks to Mr. Kelly. High praise indeed.
Stephen Arnold, October 23, 2008
Mozenda: SaaS Data Extraction
October 23, 2008
Software as a Service vendor Mozenda is offering a free 30-day trial of its screen scraping/data extraction software – go here to register and download. The online software constructs customized data extraction agents. All mechanics and data are hosted by Mozenda. There are demos available, as well as individual pricing solutions. Might be useful for search enabled applications but it is early days.
Jessica Bratcher, October 22, 2008
Autonomy in Hall of Fame
October 23, 2008
International Business Times ran a story here with the headline “Autonomy Enters the European Private Equity and Venture Capital Association’s Hall of Fame. The award, according to the story:
was created to highlight the success of technologies from European companies,” said Mike Lynch, CEO of Autonomy. “I am delighted that Autonomy has been recognized by this prestigious organization.Autonomy’s Meaning Based Computing has revolutionized the way people interact with information and computers, and we have continued to grow from strength to strength since inception.”
The IBT write up also noted that Autonomy grew from start up to a $1 billion company. You can check this number with the data available on Google here and on Yahoo here. Autonomy is on track to break $400 million per year in revenue. The $1 billion figure may refer to the firm’s market capitalization. A careless reader might misunderstand this figure.
Stephen Arnold, October 23, 2008
UAE Goes Googley
October 23, 2008
MacroWorld Investor reports some news that almost certain to annoy Microsoft. You can read “UAE MoFT Adopts Google Solutions” here. MoFT means Ministry of Foreign Trade. UAE MoFT is the “governmental institution in the Gulf to formally adopt Google services in its daily operations.” The news story runs through the due diligence the UAE performed. To make a long story short, the GOOG continues to make headway in the enterprise market. The deal in UAE is bigger than the one for Google in the District of Columbia. UAE has more cash than DC too.
Stephen Arnold, October 22, 2008
Google: A Powerful Mental Eraser
October 23, 2008
Earlier today I learned that a person who listened to my 20 minute talk at a small conference in London, England, heard one thing only–Google. I won’t mention the name of this person, who has an advanced degree and is sufficiently motivated to attend a technical conference.
What amazed me were these points:
- The attendee thought I was selling Google’s eDiscovery services
- I did not explain that organizations require predictive services, not historical search services
- I failed to mention other products in my talk.
I looked at the PowerPoint deck I used to check my memory. At age 64, I have a tough time remembering where I parked my car. Here’s what I learned from my slide deck.
Mention Google and some people in the audience lose the ability to listen and “erase” any recollection of other companies mentioned or any suggestion that Google is not flawless. Source: http://i265.photobucket.com/albums/ii215/Katieluvr01/eraser-2.jpg.
First, I began with a chart created by an SAS Institute professional. I told the audience the source of the chart and pointed out the bright red portion of the chart. This segment of the chart identifies the emergence of the predictive analytics era. Yep, that’s the era we are now entering.
Second, I reviewed the excellent search enabled eDiscovery system from Clearwell Systems. I showed six screen shots of the service and its outputs. I pointed out that attorneys pay big sums for the Clearwell System because it creates an audit trail so queries can be rerun at any time. It generates an email thread so an attorney can see who wrote whom when and what was said. It creates outputs that can be submitted to a court without requiring a human to rekey data. In short, I gave Clearwell a grade of “A” and urged the audience to look at this system for competitive intelligence, not just eDiscovery. Oh, I pointed out that email comprises a larger percentage of content in eDiscovery than it has in previous years.
Mahalo May Trim Staff
October 22, 2008
TechCrunch reported on October 22, 2008, here that Mahalo.com will reduce its staff. TechCrunch references the Mahalo.com Web log. Going forward, Mahalo.com will seek to reduce costs. Earlier this week, Wikia indicated that it would reduce its staff. Mahalo.com offers a human-intermediated search system. The idea of a Search Engine Deathwatch is not longer a joke. Search, content processing, and text mining system vendors may face a tough quarter as the woes of the economy strike information access firms.
Stephen Arnold, October 22, 2008
Two New Animals: Newsosaur and Yahoosaur
October 22, 2008
Alan D. Mutter’s “Reflection of a Newsosaur” is a very good Web log post. You can find the Web log at http://newsosaur.blogspot.com and “Fat Newspaper Profits Are History” here. Mr. Mutter points out that newspapers are going to have to live with declining profits. He cites a number of papers that have debt that adds to broader sector woes such as declines in sales and circulation. He does a solid job of explaining the interplay of certain cost factors for publishers. His analysis does not apply just to newspapers. Any book, magazine, or journal publisher cranking out hard copies faces the same set of problems. The data in this article are worth saving because he has done a better job of identifying key figures and metrics than some of the high-priced consultants hired to help traditional publishers adapt to today’s business realities. For me, the keystone comment in Mr. Mutter’s analysis was:
Although the economy will recover in the fullness of time, there are very real doubts about whether newspapers still have the time, resources and ingenuity to migrate to a viable new financial model to assure their long-term survival.
After reading this article, I realized that traditional publishers, not the author of the Web log, are Newsosaur. What also occurred to me was that Yahoo is becoming a high profile Yahoosaur. As a 15 year old Internet company, Yahoo’s management faces problems that its business model and management pool cannot easily resolve.
Keep in mind that newsosauri are trapped in the dead tree problem; that is, a fungible product in an environment where young people don’t buy newspapers or read them the way their parents and grandparents did. Advertisers want to be in front of eyeballs attached to people who will buy products and services.
Yahoo may be the first identified Yahoosaur. The company’s financial results and the layoffs are not good news. The deal with Google may be in jeopardy. Yahoo’s home run technology plays like the push to open source and BOSS may not have the traction to dig the company out of its ecological niche. I think the Yahoosaur and the Newsosaur are related.
Mr. Mutter provides a useful description of the traditional publishing company woes. Perhaps he will turn his attention to the Yahoosaur.
Stephen Arnold, October 22, 2008
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