Controlling SharePoint Craziness
November 28, 2010
Windows IT Pro’s article “When and How to Include End Users in SharePoint Migration Planning” explains that SharePoint end users avoid the program because their input is ignored by developers. The article says,
The problem with this view is that your end users know their requirements, essential business processes, and data better than you do. Input from the staff and managers who are responsible for the artifacts managed within SharePoint is a critical factor for a successful migration.
You can learn a bit about how to use a migration plan to integrate end user feedback into SharePoint. The Rational Unified Process is recommended to guide the process. It is initiated by gathering feedback from end users. After the feedback is gathered, the mitigation team needs to document all aspects of the system to understand its current state. Use cases are then created to evaluate new ideas and determine what will work best for the future-state environment. To guarantee a successful SharePoint migration, prototypes and testing are necessary. The most important aspect is to include the end user at every part of the process, otherwise the migration plan won’t work.
I like the “won’t work” part. Exclusion of end users is a common practice, particularly with regards to search and content processing. End users are so annoying and some complain about SharePoint too.
Whitney Grace, November 28, 2010
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Facebook Flexes its Facial Muscles
November 27, 2010
“Facebook Comprises Nearly 25% of Page Views in the US” reports Read Write Web, a rather shocking figure. The article states: “According to Hitwise stats, for the week ending November 13, 24.27 percent of page views were to Facebook, almost four times the volume of the site ranked number two – YouTube, with “only” 6.93 percent of all page views. Even YouTube plus Google’s search combined only comprise around 12 percent of page views.” Of course, counting page views is not quite the same as counting unique visitors and mobile views weren’t counted at all. Still, this is one more piece of evidence that Facebook continues to dominate the web, with no end in sight.
Alice Wasielewski, November 27, 2010
Indexing and Content Superficialities
November 27, 2010
“Understanding Content Collection and Indexing” provides a collection of definitions and generalizations which makes clear why so many indexing efforts by eager twenty-somethings with degrees in Home Economics and Eighteenth Century Literature go off the rails: it takes more than learning a list of definitions to create a truly useful indexing system. In our opinion, the process should be about solving problems. As the article states:
The ability to find information is important for myriad reasons. Spending too much time looking for information means we’re unable to spend time on other tasks. An inability to find information might force us to make an uninformed or incorrect decision. In worse scenarios, inability to locate can cause regulatory problems, or, in in a hospital, lead to a fatal mistake.
This list is a place to start. It does describe the very basics of content collection, indexing, language processing, classification, metasearch, and document warehousing. We have to ask, though- is this analysis inspired by Associated Content or Demand Media?
For the real deal on indexing, navigate to www.taxodiary.com.
Cynthia Murrell, November 27, 2010
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Another Band-aid for SharePoint?
November 26, 2010
PR-inside.com has published an announcement of Metalogix and Microsoft’s team effort in the production and release of a free migration accelerating tool dubbed “Search First”. This application will aid organizations in unlocking some new SharePoint 2010 tricks within their existing SharePoint 2007 systems including more accurate and relevant search results, improved performance and increased customization.
Per the referenced post, says Metalogix CTO Julien Sellgren:
Metalogix prides itself on providing easy to use tools and solutions for customers to leverage the robust features SharePoint has to offer. We were thrilled at the opportunity to work with Microsoft and help existing SharePoint 2007 customers to leverage new SharePoint 2010 search capabilities. This will help them better manage their SharePoint data and prepare for a move to SharePoint 2010 in the future.
Sounds good, right? Perhaps, but several things strike me about this passage. Forgive me, but I’m all questions. Isn’t it troubling that one cannot leverage SharePoint’s robust features with SharePoint alone? No offense to Metalogix, but rather than ensure SharePoint is itself fully functional, Microsoft instead endorses a third party to do the job for them? And, Microsoft can’t help users with the transition from the 2007 to the 2010 versions of its own product within its own product?
Most responsible consumers learn early on that free products are generally too good to be true. Based on the v2010 features that are being extended to v2007, is there an ulterior motive to this complimentary offering? It sounds as though the real function of Search First is to patch the sub-par features of SharePoint 2007 without divulging to existing users that Microsoft’s software had some issues.
Sarah Rogers, November 26, 2010
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Which Is Better? Abstract or Full Text Search?
November 26, 2010
Please bear with us while we present a short lesson in the obvious: “Users searching full text are more likely to find relevant articles than searching only abstracts.” A recent BMC Bioinformatics research article written by Jimmy Lin titled “Is Searching Full Text More Effective than Searching Abstracts?” explores exactly that.
So maybe we opened with the conclusion, but here is some background information. Since it is no longer an anomaly to view a full-text article online, the author set out to determine if it would be more effective to search full-text versus only the short but direct text of an abstract. The results:
“Experiments show that treating an entire article as an indexing unit does not consistently yield higher effectiveness compared to abstract-only search. However, retrieval based on spans, or paragraphs-sized segments of full-text articles, consistently outperforms abstract-only search. Results suggest that highest overall effectiveness may be achieved by combining evidence from spans and full articles.”
Yep, at the end of the day, searching from a bank of more words will in fact increase your likeliness of a hit. The extension here is the future must bring with it some solutions. Due to the longer length of the full-text articles and the growing digital archive waiting to be tamed, Lin predicts that multiple machines in a cluster as well as distributed text retrieval algorithms will be necessary to effectively handle the search requirements. Wonder who will be first in line to provide these services…
Sarah Rogers, November 26, 2010
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Search Hooks for Shopping Tuna
November 26, 2010
The outcome of a new survey presented in “More than half of top e-retailers personalize search results” details that 55% of the top e-retailers polled use technologies such as natural language processing, web analytics, mixed media searches, relevance ranking and segmentation tools to provide customers with more relevant search results. These e-retailers are dubbed ‘best-in-class’ in contrast to their peers, who fall into either an ‘average’ or ‘laggard’ category based on key performance indicators like net profit margin.
It isn’t headline news that employing more advanced search functions will aid in increased business. Notice that while 55 percent of the top e-retailers are using said technologies, the survey also shows that “44 percent of average performers and 15 percent of laggards personalize search results based on customer or customer segment purchase history.” With only a 10 percent difference between the top and average performers, could there be a stronger relationship in the results?
The article goes on to say:
“Top-performing e-retailers also do more with the search information they get. 73% have a process to disseminate results from search to relevant departments throughout the organization, such as marketing and merchandising. 32% of all other retailers surveyed had such a process in place.”
I’m inclined to believe that while offering a satisfactory shopping experience chock full of search bells-and-whistles will never hurt, the stats allude to a win for the marketing department, not the IT department.
Sarah Rogers, November 26, 2010
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Extractiv Rolls Out New Release
November 25, 2010
Extractiv, a joint venture between 80legs and Language Computer Corporation, announced Monday they would be taking their Semantic Web Crawling and On-Demand Document Conversion software public. What will the combination of high-powered web crawling and natural language processing technologies mean for consumers in search of gross information analysis? The claim is the service will allow straightforward access to millions of web pages and the subsequent conversion of unstructured content into semantic data, all at affordable prices.
In an article published on Benzinga.com, Extractiv CEO Shion Deysarkar said “Extractiv will be where the semantic web begins.” The company offers three account styles, beginning with free trial access through Extractiv Basic. Customers will find increased capacity for analysis and connection to APIs for $99 a month in Extractiv Plus. At $299, the Premium plan boasts up to 10,000,000 URLs per web crawl, excess job queuing and 14 day storage of the fruits of its labors.
Sarah Rogers, November 25, 2010
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Novell in Open Source Squeeze Play?
November 25, 2010
I don’t know much about open source. I know that quite a few developers are excited about various open source systems and software. “Microsoft’s Hand in Novell Deal Bodes Ill for Linux” struck me as jarring. Network World has been covering open source, but this write up seemed to be a warning flare. Here’s one of the passages that caught my attention:
…what better solution for Microsoft than to buy up a bunch of Novell’s assets instead? More ominously, what better tool to begin making Linux vendors an offer they can’t refuse? This seems an especially likely scenario in light of Linux’s new prominence and Windows’ shrinking role in large companies’ purchasing plans. ‘Embrace, Extend, Extinguish’ Microsoft is infamous for its tendency to embrace open source software with one hand while bashing it with the other- -witness its latest FUD video targeting OpenOffice.org, for example. So if it does end up with some of Novell’s Linux assets, it’s not going to be a good thing. No matter what it might say, Microsoft’s history of patent litigation and its repeatedly used “embrace, extend and extinguish” strategy proves that it is no friend of open source software.
Oracle is showing some hostility toward open source in my opinion. IBM makes a big deal about its open source approach, but I heard some rumblings about Eclipse, at which IBM has blown kisses in the past. Now Novell’s acquisition may allow the lads in Redmond to make life interesting for the “community”.
Worth monitoring.
Stephen E Arnold, November 25, 2010
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How Search Derails IT Immutable Laws
November 25, 2010
Immutable. Milton went down this path in Paradise Lost, and know that worked out for Beelzebub and his boss Lucifer, whom by his street name is known as Satan. Remember this:
That practis’d falsehood under saintly shew,
Deep malice to conceal, couch’d with revenge. IV, 22
Navigate to “The Six Immutable Laws for Troubleshooting IT.” Read the original. Here’s how search and content processing vendors react: “Long is the way / And hard, that out of hell leads up to light.” II, 432.
The write up says in column A and vendors deliver in column B:
| 1 | Modify other machines | Undocumented dependencies will bite you every time |
| 2 | Have a way back | Forced upgrades may offer no way back. Reinstall and reindex |
| 3 | Document | Sounds good but you don’t know what happened |
| 4 | Luck | Not in restoring indexes. Reindex, gentle reader. Reindex. |
| 5 | Back up config files | If you can locate them |
| 6 | Monitor | Tough to monitor what the vendor does not disclose |
Search is different.Immutable laws are easy to articulate. Just keep Satan in mind.
Stephen E Arnold, November 25, 2010
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Smartlogic: Grabbing a Handle on the Open Source Bandwagon
November 24, 2010
Smartlogic Announce the Release of Their Open Semantic Platform That Adds Semantic Abilities to Apache SOLR for Better Information Management tells us that after a thorough round of beta testing, Semaphore 3.2 is open for business. (The headline also tells us about writing for search engine optimization. Smile.) The story asserted:
Semaphore 3.2 sees significant improvements in its faceted search and navigation features for the Google Search Appliance, tighter integration with SharePoint, new support for Apache SOLR – or any other third party search engine or information management system.
Among its many features, Smartlogic’s flagship semantic platform has the ability to build taxonomies more quickly with a Semaphore Text Miner and add quality metadata terms to SharePoint content.
Smartlogic’s forte includes “adding semantic search capabilities to any system that requires it”. By using controlled vocabularies and ontologies, Smartlogic software can force classification of information resulting in a higher and more accurate level of information retrieval.
Smartlogic, a Google Enterprise partner, is based in the USA and UK and touts a wide and lucrative client list including companies throughout Europe, the Americas and the Middle East.
Sarah Rogers, November 24, 2010
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