Exclusive Interview: Mike Horowitz, Fetch Technologies
July 20, 2010
Savvy content processing vendors have found business opportunities where others did not. One example is Fetch Technologies, based in El Segundo, California. The company was founded by professors at the University of Southern California’s Information Sciences Institute. Since the firm’s doors opened in the late 1990s, Fetch has developed a solid clientele and a reputation for cracking some of the most challenging problems in information processing. You can read an in-depth explanation of the Fetch system in the Search Wizards Speak’s interview with Mike Horowitz.
The Fetch solution uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to intelligently navigate and extract specific data from user specified Web sites. Users create “Web agents” that accurately and precisely extract specific data from Web pages. Fetch agents are unique in that they can navigate through form fields on Web sites, allowing access to data in the Deep Web, which search engines generally miss.
You can learn more about the company and its capabilities in an exclusive interview with Mike Horowitz, Fetch’s chief product officer. Mr. Horowitz joined Fetch after a stint at Googler.
In the lengthy discussion with Mr. Horowitz, he told me about the firm’s product line up:
Fetch currently offers Fetch Live Access as an enterprise software solution or as a fully hosted SaaS option. All of our clients have one thing in common, and that is their awareness of data opportunities on the Web. The Internet is a growing source of business-critical information, with data embedded in millions of different Web sites – product information and prices, people data, news, blogs, events, and more – being published each minute. Fetch technology allows organizations to access this dynamic data source by connecting directly to Web sites and extracting the precise data they need, turning Web sites into data sources.
The company’s systems and methods make use of proprietary numerical recipes. Licensees, however, can program the Fetch system using the firm’s innovative drag-and-drop programming tools. One of the interesting insights Mr. Horowitz gave me is that Fetch’s technology can be configured and deployed quickly. This agility is one reason why the firm has such a strong following in the business and military intelligence markets.
He said:
Fetch allows users to access the data they need for reports, mashups, competitive insight, whatever. The exponential growth of the Internet has produced a near-limitless set of raw and constantly changing data, on almost any subject, but the lack of consistent markup and data access has limited its availability and effectiveness. The rise of data APIs and the success of Google Maps has shown that there are is an insatiable appetite for the recombination and usage of this data, but we are only at the early stages of this trend.
The interview provides useful insights into Fetch and includes Mr. Horowitz’s views about the major trends in information retrieval for the last half of 2010 and early 2011.
Now, go Fetch.
Stephen E Arnold, July 20, 2010
Freebie. I wanted money, but Mr. Horowitz provided exclusive screen shots for my lectures at the Special Library Association lecture in June and then my briefings in Madrid for the Department of State. Sigh. No dough, but I learned a lot.
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