Inside Google
June 4, 2010
Short honk: If you are interested in a view of Google that is at times different from Google’s view of itself, check out Inside Google. When I was a contractor at Bell Labs, I remember driving by a big building that housed a company whose main business was reporting about AT&T. Maybe Inside Google will emerge as the Google monitoring service of choice?
Stephen E Arnold, May 27, 2010
Freebie.
Exalead Cloudview Lets Fingers Do the Walking and Caring
June 4, 2010
Yellow Pages Group’s phone application, Urbanizer, selected Exalead Cloudview to collect customer sentiment information. This innovative product is the first restaurant recommendation application that aligns with the emotional element of consumer decision making.
Sys-Con Media reports in “Urbanizer iPhone Application Uses Exalead CloudView to Collect Customer Sentiment Data” () that this new phone application allows users to choose from a selection of pre-defined moods or use Urbanizer’s equalizer function to create a custom mood based on combinations of cuisine, ambiance and service categories. Exalead’s CloudView search-based application platform is embedded into the Urbanizer application architecture and uses semantic extraction capabilities to distill sentiment from unstructured web data from consumer comments posted to Urbanizer.
The advanced semantic technology that Exalead brings to the table seems to be reshaping the digital content landscape. Cloudview collects data from virtually any source, in any format, and transforms it into structured business information that can be directly searched and queried.
Melody K. Smith, June 4, 2010
A freebie but maybe a Coca lite when I am next in Paris?
Booshaka: Search Engine for Facebook Posts
June 3, 2010
FreshEgg’s take in “Booshaka – The Social Search Engine” is a lackluster one. While the concept is novel: searching all public Facebook posts (and pages, etc.) for keywords, it fails to help deliver tangible results compared to the almighty Google archives. The author’s few example queries yield a lot of “noise” – mostly glimpses into personal lives of users who haven’t messed with their privacy settings. “I cannot see George McDougal from Townchester influencing my decision to purchase a product from his personal rants.” And who would? Booshaka may not be for solid product advice, but instead for seeing who’s talking about Lady Gaga, and what they think of her (she happens to be a popular topic on the splash page). Don’t let Booshaka tarnish your idea of social search, it still has some serious refining to do. Just our opinion.
Samuel Hartman, June 3, 2010
Freebie
Barcodes Go Content Crazy
June 3, 2010
With pundits predicting that search is now apps and that metadata will index apps which are really content, I turn to more mundane topics. A case in point is “StickyBits: Attach Unlimited Content to Barcodes On Any Product (iPhone + Android).” I found the write up fascinating. I don’t think too much about barcodes unless I am at the self check out trying to get the barcode reader to recognize blue codes on a blue background.
For me the core of the article was:
StickyBits allows people to attach digital content to barcodes. When those barcodes are scanned (via our iPhone or Android apps), you’ll see all the content that has been attached. What makes us unique is that all this is done in a social and fully open read/write way. Imagine putting a barcode on your business card that when scanned showed your resume. Or put a StickyBits sticker into a birthday card and record a personal video. Then when your friend scans it, they’ll see the video. Take that one step further and have all your friends attach videos to the same card. You’ll also get notified when it gets scanned. It doesn’t just stop there. Something unique and strange is happening with the barcodes all around you. People are scanning soda cans, cereal boxes, beer bottles, etc. and adding digital content to them. Since each unique product shares a barcode, little communities are popping up around each of these products.
The notion of information becoming objects has a barcode bedfellow. And about search? Another challenge it seems. More information about StickyBits is available at http://www.stickybits.com.
Stephen E Arnold, June 3, 2010
Freebie
Expresso 2.0 from Coveo Available
June 3, 2010
We learned about Coveo’s release of Expresso 2.0 in a news item sent by one of my two or three readers. The story “Coveo Launches Coveo Expresso 2.0 Beta” stated:
At no cost, Coveo Expresso offers enterprise-class, advanced information access for small- and medium-sized businesses or corporate departments, for up to 50 users, 1 million email items and 100,000 documents. Coveo Expresso is easily expandable to accommodate a larger number of users, at a price point significantly lower than any other enterprise search platform on the market, including appliances, and with far superior functionality. Coveo Expresso has already been downloaded by hundreds of organizations at www.coveo.com/expresso.
Expresso includes expanded access to enterprise information including desktop content, SharePoint files, and file shares, through the Coveo Outlook Sidebar. Users can search across enterprise systems without leaving Outlook, allowing them to "search where they work."
One interesting innovation is what the company calls its “Outlook Sidebar.” This is an enterprise search Outlook plug-in, also includes conversation folding, related conversations, related people, and related attachments, as well as faceted search, allowing users to more quickly find information, helping to speed productivity. We look at a large number of search systems and cannot recall having seen this approach before.
More information about Coveo is available from www.coveo.com.
Stephen E Arnold, June 3, 2010
Freebie
The Lucene Revolution: An Interview with Michael Bohlig of Lucid Imagination
June 3, 2010
Editor’s Note: Lucid Imagination held a Lucene / Solr conference in Prague in May 2010. More than 150 developers and business professionals attended the event. Beyond Search spoke with Michael Bohlig, a senior Lucid Imagination executive about the conference, open source search, and the company’s plans to expand the “Lucene Revolution.”
What was the impetus for the Lucene Solr conference in Prague?
A number of factors led us to host the conference. We were seeing a big increase in interest in Lucene/Solr in Europe. As in other parts of the world, European companies have been looking for alternatives to expensive and inflexible proprietary legacy search solutions. Europe has been a driving force in IT innovation and open source adoption. Finally, there is a large and active Lucene/Solr community in Europe and we wanted to help provide a venue to bring together. developers, users, and the ecosystem.
Can you give me some background for the conference? What was the focus of the event?
We offered two days of in-depth training, followed by a two day conference with a variety of keynotes, technical sessions, tutorials, and lighting talks. The conference was run on a not-for-profit basis with net proceeds contributed to the Apache Software Foundation. The focus for the conference was the disruptive power of open source enterprise search, and how companies are using Lucene/Solr search to develop new innovative ways to tap into big, and increasingly diverse, data.
How many people attended?
More than 160 people attended from all over the world – we had attendees from almost ever country in Europe plus Japan and the US.
What were the topics that generated the most buzz at the conference?
Stephen Dunn of The Guardian did a great talk on how they are using Solr in their Open Platform content sharing service – and how they are working with Lucid Imagination to deploy this new way to unlock their content database and create an innovative business model. Zack Urlocker spoke about the disruptive power of open source and how it is changing the entire enterprise software space – including enterprise search. He used his experience with MySQL as a model, but also looked at a variety of other cases and markets as well, showing how big incumbent vendors get bogged down and find it difficult to innovate, while new open source players can change the game and come up with innovative new solutions and go after under-served markets. He pointed out that the next wave of Web, cloud, and SaaS players have been based on open source, and that in the future making sense of big data will be a killer app. “Solr In The Cloud” by Mark Miller also generated a lot of buzz, describing how Solr’s current and future features will ease the deployment of Solr into large scale, distributed environments at massive scale.
To submit a proposal for a talk, click the graphic.
This sounds like Kool Aid drinking. What were the substantive business payoffs from the use of open source search technology?
Glad to. One good example is The Guardian harnessing content in a new way to re-invent their business model, generate new sources of revenue, and challenge other newspaper and media companies with an open approach. Another is Nordjyske Medier – a Danish media company – that got a big payoff from Solr when their online Yellow and White Pages failed with Google Search Appliance and Microsoft SQL Server.
Can you give me a use case where open source search has bested a commercial search solution such as Autonomy’s or Endeca’s?
There are many examples. Just at the conference we heard from Nordjyske Medier moving off of GSA.
The Guardian was formerly an Endeca user. Also, in one of the sessions at the conference (all are posted at: http://lucene-eurocon.org/agenda.html by the way), Jan Høydahl from Cominvent talked about how to migrate from Microsoft FAST to Solr – and indicated he personally already moved four customers off of FAST to Solr. Of course there are many more cases in the US. One example is Dollar Days, a discount e-tailer which moved off of Endeca to Solr. You can check out the case study on our Web site.
Spindex Revealed
June 2, 2010
Microsoft’s Spindex is likely to add some useful functions to social media access. “Microsoft launches its Impossible Project: Spindex” provides a good description of smart software performing “personal indexing.” The idea is that a user’s social information allows Microsoft software to filter information. Only information pertinent to the user is available. When the source is a stream of Twitter messages, the Spindex system converts the noise in tweets to information related to a user’s interests. For me, the most interesting passage in the write up was:
Spindex is a way of surfacing the most shared or popular items that come through your personal news feeds on social networks like Twitter. Microsoft’s project is part of a wave of similar projects like The Cadmus, Feedera and Knowmore that try and synthesize trends and news streams from personal social networks. “Most people don’t really care about what’s trending on Twitter. They care about what’s trending in your own personal index. They want something that’s private, but that you can possibly make public and share with friends,” said Lili Cheng, who is general manager of the lab.
Objectively the service appears to be useful. Subjectively Microsoft will have to make certain that privacy centric users feel comfortable with the system.
Stephen E Arnold, June 2, 2010
Freebie
FTC Reports, Mavens Squabble about Future and Past of Journalism
June 2, 2010
The addled goose does not want to get embroiled in a dust up between mavens. You may want to take sides. To get in the fray, first read “FTC Considers Publishing Public Data Online to Support the Future of Journalism.” The download the Federal Trade Commission’s report “Potential Policy Recommendations to Support the Reinvention of Journalism” from this link. Two experts discuss the report. But I shiver when a government agency opines about the reinvention of anything. The notion that journalism is in need of reinvention strikes me as somewhat novel. I do not perceive a lack of information. The term “journalism” strikes me as a simple way of addressing the financial problems of certain companies. Does the dust up impair the vision of tax payers who may be asked to fund journalism? Does the dust up cater to the needs of a certain large outfit in Mountain View? You make up your own mind.
Stephen E Arnold, June 2, 2010
Freebie
Zoho Adds Search Function
June 2, 2010
Zoho offers a useful cloud service that delivers word processing, spreadsheet, and other business applications. If you are not familiar with Zoho, navigate to www.zoho.com and explore the service. You can sign up for free services and upgrade if you need additional features.
“Zoho Launches Zoho Search” caught our attention. Zoho has lacked a search service although there were work arounds. We would load a document and search for a string via the Firefox search function. Tedious, but it worked because we did not have many documents stored in the Zoho cloud.
According to the write up:
Zoho Search can search across user content in Zoho Mail, Zoho Docs, Zoho Writer, Zoho Sheet, Zoho Show, Zoho Notebook, Zoho Discussions and Zoho Accounts. Eventually, Zoho Search will let users search all Zoho applications. Zoho Search displays results from all applications in a single screen, grouped together based on their associated application. Users can view additional results from each application category. Zoho Search also categorizes the results based on commonly used or known facets — termed as “Guided Navigation” or “Faceted Search” — such as application name, document type, author, etc., enabling users to easily and quickly navigate to the exact result they are looking for. The results reflect Zoho Search’s deep knowledge of the applications searched. For instance, search results that include an email from Zoho Mail will include the email folder, date sent, sender information, etc. (Zoho Search lets users search multiple mail accounts, including POP accounts.) Zoho Search will also know if the sender is on the user’s buddy list and, if so, online and available to chat via Zoho Chat. Zoho Search completely understands the permissions and privileges that users have in each of the Zoho applications while searching. For example, documents shared with or by the user, forums the user belongs to, groups/organizations the user is a part of, and access rights to documents (i.e. read-only, read-write). This ensures only relevant data is shown to the user.
No word on whether the system is home grown, open source, or based on commercial software. As information becomes available, we will pass it along. One phrase suggests that Endeca may be involved. The phrase “Guided Navigation” is fiercely protected by Endeca’s legal eagles. Its use in a news story provides some food for thought. Either Zoho is using the phrase without permission, or Endeca is the third party provider.
Stephen E Arnold, June 2, 2010
Freebie
What Makes Google Feel Good?
June 2, 2010
Quote to note: The Financial Times ran a story about Google’s choice of operating systems for its employees. No big surprise that the Google loves Linux, feels okay about OSX, and is falling in love with its own operating system. Tucked in the write up was a quote to note; to wit:
Linux is open source and we feel good about it. Microsoft we don’t feel so good about.
A keeper.
Stephen E Arnold, June 2, 2010
Freebie
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