ZyLAB and Deloitte
July 21, 2010
The Deloitte Discovery Platform has chosen a partner that well known in the world of e-discovery and information management solutions. With the new partnership with ZyLAB, Deloitte will be able to reduce costs in the critical areas of discovery and compliance for the modern business.
The new collaboration promises to be extremely effective when it comes to the complex searching and review of large amounts of data. The idea behind the partnership according to one official at Deloitte’s Forensic and Dispute Services (FDS) is a better analysis and search capabilities combined.
Deloitte is a well known provider of audit, tax, consulting, and financial advisory services in several different industries. ZyLAB’s modular e-discovery and enterprise information management solutions have been helping a variety of industries for the last 25 years. They also offer multi language support.
The goslings in Harrod’s Creek need a scorecard. Brainware does document management and search. ZyLAB does search and document management. Iron Mountain does everything. EMC is on the law firm horse as well. What’s happened to good old search?
What’s interesting is that law firms are cutting back and other service firms and internal legal departments are the new market. More cracks in the traditional market dividers perhaps?
Rod Starr, July 21, 2010
More Doom and Gloom for Small Business?
July 21, 2010
I know that small business is the engine of growth. I also know that if I were working in a bank, I would not loan money to a small business. I wouldn’t loan money to a rich person wanting to buy an expensive toy. Heck, I wouldn’t loan money to my father, and he was an accountant. Note that, please.
While big businesses like the banks that got us into the economic tailspin that nearly plunked a whole economy into the abyss are set to report strong earnings this week, small business is suffering.
All this according to Philly.com. The write up “Tight $ Means Big Trouble for Small Businesses” says that:
some small business owners need to raid retirement finds just to stay afloat and use credit cards to keep their doors open.
The reason? Big banks aren’t trickling the money down to smaller concerns in the form of loans and that’s a big problem when you consider at least half of American workers are employed by these smaller places.
What does it all mean? Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke will step up pressure on big banks to lend money to smaller firms so they can hire the people who lent the big banks the money in the first place. All to get us out of the tailspin they created.
Small search and processing companies may want to put their heads in the proverbial sand. My thought is that the antics of those ever tricky bankers need to be scrutinized. I have plenty of time waiting in line to explain why someone wrote me a check made out to my Web site ArnoldIT.com. That’s a baffler, isn’t it?
Stephen E Arnold, July 21, 2010
Freebie
World Cup Tries to Score with Semantics
July 21, 2010
No referees to blame for the World Cup’s use of semantic technology. With a spiffed up Web site, the BBC can point to its non-pay wall coverage of the World Cup and especially of the semantic technologies that were used to add value and structure to the 700 pages it presented on a Web site to the world. “BBC World Cup Website Showcases Semantic Technologies” called this innovation to the addled goose’s attention. Here’s a diagram of the Beeb’s system:
There were several noteworthy changes including a far deeper and richer use of the text and other content that was available and horizontal navigation and higher quality video. The semantic technologies that were used work within the framework of automated metadata-driven web pages that automatically render links to stories of interest.
Here’s a diagram from AerospaceWeb about the physics of the Jabulani ball. Also, easy to understand?
Source: http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/aerodynamics/drag/drag-disk.jpg
The semantic technologies that were so useful here did not write the content that football fans saw on the 700 pages of the site. The semantics technologies involved worked with the metadata about the site. Overall, BBC tried to offer a combination of goals, saves and semantic technologies that fans enjoyed thoroughly.
Maybe your team needs to adopt the semantic training regimen? Seems rigorous to me and a step some of the pay wall sites may want to consider if the revenues from their for-fee customers funds this type of innovation, of course. Semantics, like search and analyzing the flight of the World Cup ball, is pretty simple too!
Stephen E Arnold, July 19, 2010
Freebie
Guess Who Is Gunning for the Google?
July 21, 2010
Microsoft and Yahoo?
Yep. Automating search requests seems to be paying off for Yahoo and Microsoft as they gained a little more ground on the industry leader Google in June. However, SFGate.com isn’t exactly optimistic the trailers will catch up to the Google any time soon. Although they might have the top search engine in their crosshairs, a recently published article Yahoo, Microsoft Gain Ground on Google in Search, still states that Google owned 62.6% of the pie all through June.
Granted these numbers are down a bit from the 63.7% they enjoyed the previous month, but in our opinion the real threat to Google supremacy doesn’t come from other search engines at all. When recent polls indicate that people are also using Facebook and Twitter to get to websites on the Internet, the real challenge might come from social media.
Yahoo and Microsoft are shivering with excitement. Google now has a laser target finder on its brow. And with rumors of more turnover in the Microsoft search unit, Microsoft wants to recruit more sharpshooters. Maybe the Microsoft search blogs will get some much needed attention and substance.
Stephen E Arnold, July 20, 2010
Squiz Funnelback Pattern Analyzer
July 21, 2010
If you’re looking to be able to fine tune search rankings and other features then you should be looking to the Funnelback Pattern Analyzer. If this sounds little too good to be true for your business needs than you’ll also be excited to hear about the Web based administration interface that comes with the product.
By looking in the analyze section of the administration interface you’ll see a query spike detector that’s especially useful for alerting you to a change in user patterns or even query spikes.
The interface can even provide the kind of geographic information that you’ll find useful and there’s another report that alerts you and informs you of the size and length of each of the spikes. The analyzer can be set up to inform you via email when these spikes occur or to send a regularly scheduled report.
More information about open source Funnelback is available from the Funnelback Web site. Like other search vendors, Funnelback is holding its first user conference in October in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. That’s a bit far for the ArnoldIT goslings, however.
Stephen E Arnold, July 21, 2010
Freebie
CMS Vendors Face Old Age, Maybe Need HGH?
July 20, 2010
Content management systems and CMS consultants are an interesting mix. On the lower digit end of the CMS spectrum are the lightweight content management systems. Four years ago, the capabilities of even the vaunted Google’s Blogger.com, which seems frozen in time to me, were like Lance Armstrong’s 2010 Tour de France.
On the end of the spectrum where the big numbers are round, the industrial strength records management systems were found. The addled goose honks about IBM, but when properly configured, IBM’s FileNet can perform some nifty CMS tricks.
So the CMS spectrum ran from the citizen journalism functions to the mad scientist mode. The consultants followed suit. I don’t recall getting spam from IBM about FileNet. Sure, IBM – like any $100 billion outfit – has its weak moments, but shoving FileNet at the addled goose has never happened. Probably won’t even happen opine I.
The reason is that when you move to the double digit end of the CMS spectrum you enter a world where a document error can shut down a nuclear power plant after a US government inspection or a really friendly CEO gets to spend time with prisoners in the “yard.” The vast majority of CMS consultants trample around in the lightweight end of the CMS market.
The problem is that the lightweight systems are now looking more sophisticated, and some venture firms and corporations are taking a hard look at these former wimps.
Don’t believe me. Navigate to “Squarespace Gets $38M to Compete With WordPress and Six Apart”. The write up calls attention to three outfits with CMS that can do interesting things and seem to be growing as my son did when he was in the third grade. Every day he needed a new pair of sneakers with the French chicken on them. Le Coq Sportif for those who are not into suburban Maryland fashions. I noted this passage in the write up:
The size of the investment that Squarespace has managed to attract from Accel and Index indicates that these investors see the potential to take the company’s software and services beyond simple blogging and into the broader world of content-management systems. Although some media companies have been experimenting with open-source software such as Drupal and Joomla for web publishing, both of these are fairly complex to manage, and a hosted solution could appeal to publishers such as the Telegraph Group, which is already using a number of cloud-based services.
Squarespace is quite interesting. The company makes it dead simple to create a blog, a photo gallery, even a complete Web site. The user can drag and drop. Sure, SquareSpace allows coders to fiddle, but the company seems to draw the line with some potentially interesting live database action from its pages. Aside from that prudent step, SquareSpace is a CMS for the person or company frustrated with a traditional CMS.
Is the SquareSpace system right for managing nuclear power plant records? Probably, but I wouldn’t use the system for that purpose. Nor would I rely on SquareSpace for information likely to be probed for effective safeguards against spoliation. For other work, SquareSpace looks mighty tasty as it is.
What will happen with $38 million? Traditional content management vendors may want to pay some attention to the fun loving folks at this outfit. Also, the CMS consultants may find themselves having to work much harder to get those high-paying, wild and crazy CMS product reviews. SquareSpace makes it dead simple to play with the system any time, for free, for a couple of weeks.
Times are a’changin’ in CMS and CMS consulting I conclude.
Stephen E Arnold, July 20, 2010
Freebie
Former AOL Top Dog Marks the Territory
July 20, 2010
One week from now it will be a year since AOL changed their CEO giving the new one 100 days to turn things around and restore the tech industry leader to its rightful place at the top. One of the really interesting developments was the fact that during the last 12 months almost every executive left and was replaced with someone who had once worked for Google.
The resulting article in BusinessInsider.com, The Inside Story: An Anonymous Ex-AOL Exec Tells All, does just that. The company was demoralized and its employees down and out before a Google influence injected a new life to the beleaguered firm. It’s an interesting read and one that begs the question if the Googlization of America is something that will work or rather just one of those things we might have to get used to.
Rob Starr, July 20, 2010
Freebie
Tech Bug Bites Aging Readers Digest
July 20, 2010
It’s been happening since that 1990s when newspapers attempted to go viral so it’s no surprise that one of the most popular magazines we all grew up with is adopting an App.
Readers Digest UK is launching an iPad app in concert with YUDU media that will even add video to the digital version of the print magazine everyone remembers.
From the magazine’s standpoint, they are understandably excited. Gill Hudson is the Editor in Chief and she says that the iPad App will help the magazine’s desire to transform and develop. The marketing director for YUDU media is equally excited in the article entitled Reader’s Digest UK Accelerates Digital Transformation with YUDU iPad App.
No wonder. As the population ages, imagine all the crosswords that will be done electronically in Senior’s Centers all across the land? Might be a demographics rift with iPad users here.
Rob Starr, July 20, 2010
Freebie
Big Surprise Department: Adolescent Attention Spans Ding Facebook
July 20, 2010
In the world of high technology and IT, sometimes the obvious gets overlooked for the sophisticated. According to two sources in an article called Why Many Teens Are Moving On From Facebook in emarketer.com, one fifth of the teenagers on the social networking site have lessened their using habits as of April.
That kind of information doesn’t bode well for a large portion of Facebook customers. Still, the ship might be sinking, but a little more slowly than other social media sites. MySpace has reported that 22% of teens had stopped using the service and Utube and Twitter has a 15% abandonment rate to speak of.
Still, this is more bad news for Facebook who have been hit with a series misfortunes lately that included some bad press. However, the experts don’t think all this has anything to do with the privacy issues that were raised in the spring of 2010.
Stephen E Arnold, July 20, 2010
Freebie
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.
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
