Collecta to Reconfigure
February 2, 2011
Collecta has totally changed directions, says Mashable.com in the article, “Startup Collecta Shuts Down Its Product, Working on a New One.” The real-time search engine that launched in 2009 has been closed and the company has decided to concentrate their efforts on new ideas. Most of Collecta’s money is still in the bank and their retaining many of their original employees.
Gerry Campbell, the CEO, states that while running the real-time search engine they learned three lessons: there’s a huge need for real-time information, a destination site is not the way to reach people, and new trends, i.e. Facebook, are growing.
“It’s interesting to note that Collecta’s major rival in the real-time search space, OneRiot, also completely changed product directions this year, dumping its search engine and moving into the online ad game.”
Everyone appears to be switching to the real-time market. While this is where the money appears to be going at the moment, I wonder who will foot the bill? Is this a pivot point for social content search engines? Could be.
Whitney Grace, February 2, 2011
Freebie
Protected: Making Microsoft Duet into a Trio
February 1, 2011
The Visual Study of Google and Bing
February 1, 2011
WebProNews caught our attention. We have been looking at screenshots of Fast ESP Version 5.x circa 2007 and the screenshots for the Microsoft Fast Search Server. Even the goslings see some big similarities. We even asked, “What happened to Mars, the Java based replacement for Fast 5.x?” Might be still there, lurking under the UX or user experience.
“Google Edges Bing For Visual Attention” explains a study conducted by User Centric. The research firm compared the two search giants to examine how long users viewed each part of the search results page. The top three paid links on Google’s website attract more attention than Bing’s and users spent more time reading Google’s basic search results than on Bing.
“Taking longer to make a decision and scanning more results may suggest lower perceived search results relevancy on Google. According to past research, users tend to scan search results until they find the first suitable link to click, so more time spent on Google could mean it took longer to find a link worth clicking.”
Are search engine designers more interested in how the results are displayed than actual relevancy? While user experience is important, it accounts for nothing if returned results do not have the appropriate information. Precision and recall are the best ways for any search engine to operate.
We think that precision and recall are important. Slapping a fancy face on any system—Bing, Google, whatever—is secondary to the quality of the search results.
Whitney Grace, February 1, 2011
Freebie
LinkedIn Phrases: Help or Spam?
February 1, 2011
LinkedIn is the professional equivalent of Facebook. Many potential employers are searching for new workers on the website, but they will avoid resumes that use clichéd terms and phrases. Xscion Solutions has a piece titled, “Top 10 Overused Phrases on LinkedIn.” If you think about it, it is practical knowledge to not do what everyone else is doing. Following the crowd usually doesn’t have rewards.
“Even though some of these terms might confirm to be true, they wont stick out to any employer for the simple fact that they see these same phrases on 99% of all resumes. Tell them something that will get their attention and make you memorable.”
When I read articles like this, I find that Linked In and its phrases are the ideal source of professional word seeding. Is it possible that this is a SEO ploy or spam? LinkedIn frequently pumps out content that seems more suited to Monster.com. I know that some folks need work, but I find content, interesting viewpoints, and critical commentary more useful than “help wanted” or “we need a person with Lucene experience right away” more like a rice cake than a chunk of cheddar.
Whitney Grace, February 1, 2011
Freebie
Autonomy: Big Cloud Announcement
February 1, 2011
Check out “Autonomy Unveils Cloud-Based Information Management Platform for Legal Market” at PR Newswire. This offering marks an important advance in the world of cloud-based information. The article explains:
“Autonomy’s cloud-based Information Management platform leverages Autonomy’s private cloud, the world’s largest private cloud with more than 17 petabytes of data. . . . The platform allows inside counsel and outside counsel, as well as service providers to collaborate on a single set of data in the cloud, eliminating the need to proliferate multiple copies of content and information handoffs across disparate networks. This unique legal chaining capability enables rapid deployment, enhanced collaboration, on-demand scalability, tighter security, and lower total cost of ownership for all parties involved.”
See the article for specifics on the platform’s modules: Work Site, Records Manager, Universal Search, Process Automation, and Conflicts Manager.
Visit here to find out more about Autonomy. The scale and integration of this SaaS product is a huge. Not only should it become a vital tool for the legal field, but it might presage similar offerings for other industries. We expect other announcements from the legal technology square dance this week in Manhattan, roost of the legal eagles.
Cynthia Murrell February 1, 2011
Juru, Watson, I Say, Juru!
February 1, 2011
Quite a heated discussion at lunch today. One of the goslings was raving about Watson. The Jeopardy demo convinced the engineer that IBM had the next big thing in search. A person can ask a question and right away get the answer. Wow. I thought that type of computer system only worked under carefully controlled conditions, in demos, or in motion pictures.
That’s why the goslings were agitated when I said, “It is TV. TV does almost anything—well, anything—for money.” I pointed out that the game shows 21 and the $64,000 Question took some liberties to boost ratings. Have TV times changed that much? I said, “I don’t think so.”
I supported my argument by mentioning Juru. Do you remember that gem from IBM. Here’s what my Overflight system spit out.
Juru is / was a full text search “library” that would make short work of “small and mid-sized corpuses.” Of course, “small” and “mid-sized” are rarely defined either by IBM or other search researchers. The idea was that Java made it easy to run Juru on any platform. Of course, today, I don’t think Juru would work in the Android or IOS environment, but some day maybe.
Juru asserted that the system would:
- Support different document types
- Make use of links just like our every tweakable PageRank-type systems
- On the fly summaries of documents
- Clustering
- Nifty ways to keep the indexes small and, therefore, zippy.
You can get some info at this link. There is some additional color here:
- http://www.itl.nist.gov/iaui/894.01/tests/std/2006/pubdata/pres/IBM-STD-system.ppt
- http://researchweb.watson.ibm.com/haifa/projects/imt/juru/index.html
- http://wiki.apache.org/lucene-java/TREC_2007_Million_Queries_Track_-_IBM_Haifa_Team
I reminded the goslings that IBM rolls out search solutions as part of its global marketing efforts. More to the point, I asked the goslings which vendors’ search systems IBM resells. I did not hear the magic words Autonomy or Endeca. IBM once loved Fast ESP.
If you want search from IBM, what do you get today? A version of the open source search solution Lucene. Why? It works pretty well. Juru, Watson, Web Fountain, et al? Well, make up your own mind with some head to head testing. I won the argument and still had to pay for lunch. Honk.
Stephen E Arnold, February 1, 2011
Freebie
Exclusive Interview: The Kochs of Pandia.com
February 1, 2011
Many professionals in search and content processing read the information produced by Pandia.com. I talked with Susanne Koch at the International Online Show in London in December 2010. I followed up last month. You can read the full text of my conversation with Per and Susanne Koch in the Search Wizards Speak feature about Pandia.
Pandia’s Search Central contains a weal of information. The company also provides a round up of search engine news and provides a number of useful search tools. I was curious about the wide range of content available on the Pandia.com Web site. Per Koch said:
My background is from the humanities. Therefore the social transformative power of search interests me. Technology is often seen as something different than social processes. For me technical change and social/cultural change are two sides of the same coin. Google is an end product of a social revolution, including – for instance – the hippie inspired gospel of open access, as well as new technological possibilities grown out of ICT. A particularly interesting side to using web search in marketing is the social aspect of it all. There was a time when search engine marketers believed they could find the recipe for successful online marketing by reverse engineering the search engine algorithm. Now you really need to develop a feeling for useful communication, relevant content generation and the social and cultural rules of social media.
Susanne added:
We do follow enterprise search to a certain extent, but we readily admit that our main focus has been on web search. Pandia is a two person part time exercise, and there are limits to what we have been able to do. Enterprise search is very interesting, though. These companies face challenges that the web search companies do not, including – for instance – access to a limited amount of data and interlinkages. Enterprise search companies may also bring out new innovations that can enrich web searching.
Over the course of our conversations, ArnoldIT and Pandia discovered three areas of interest:
First, the world of search is touching many disciplines, software applications, and many different social activities.
Second, we learned that although we don’t agree on every point in the volatile world of search and content processing, we enjoy discussing, dissecting ideas, and learning new things.
Third, we believe we can collaborate to bring to our respective audiences a new type of “landscape” view of search and content processing. We now have a new monograph in the works, and we will be announcing the details of that writing project, what the monograph will cover, and how you can reserve a copy in the next two or three weeks.
To learn more about Pandia, point your browser to www.pandia.com. We visit the site on a regular basis and we strongly suggest that you give it a look as well.
Stephen E Arnold, February 1, 2011
Freebie but the Oslo-Kentucky connection will produce more than digital herring.
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
