Endeca Relaxes at Land O Lakes
March 6, 2011
Endeca will have a small working vacation in the Land O’ Lakes Company with their new partner Winfield Solution. Live PR has the itinerary, “Winfield Solutions, a Land O’Lakes Company, Selects Endeca.” Winfield Solutions will use Endeca Latitude to support an initiative program to give co-op members enhanced insights and analytical capabilities in agricultural markets. Land O’Lakes providers its customers with crop nutrient, seed, and crop protection products. The story said:
“The data from the numerous resources we utilize is too complex to model and maintain in a relational database,” said Mike Macrie, senior director of IT at Land O´Lakes. “In addition, it was impossible to predetermine all the questions or requirements our partners would need to address for their analyses. We needed a solution that could unify disparate and varied data sources while providing an easy-to-use interface for our partners. Endeca addressed the shortcomings associated with traditional data warehousing alternatives.”
Endeca will enable Winfield Solutions to integrate and process its data across multiple systems without having to refer to the IT department. The data streamlining will also speed up departmental decisions. Looks like Endeca has long vacation ahead of itself, hopefully it won’t get sunburned on the lake.
Whitney Grace, March 6, 2011
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Bing Shopping Goes Semantic
March 5, 2011
We think that Microsoft has aced the GOOG in online shopping search. Is the technology under the hood from Powerset or Cognition Technologies? We are not sure. You will want to read “Bing’s Shopping Search Gets Smarter with Natural Language Capabilities”. The idea is that when detail about price is entered into a search query, Microsoft narrows the result set to include objects at or below the specified cost. Google Shopping does not. According to the write up:
What’s even more interesting than the feature itself is that Bing is obviously working on adding improved support for natural language queries to more verticals. As the Bing team notes in today’s announcement, “this is just a small step in our journey to make search friendlier to natural language queries, and help you quickly find what you’re looking for.”
Google has NLP technology too. My research suggests that Google will respond. That’s good. What I find interesting is that Google is taking the role of the follower in some areas of search. In others such as social content, Google’s responses have not narrowed the gaps with some competitors.
Google’s controlled chaos may yield innovations but not the prioritization and filtering that makes a service break new ground. I hope I am wrong. Microsoft hopes Google keeps on its present path, allowing Microsoft to nibble away at Google’s huge search lead a bite at a time.
Stephen E Arnold, March 5, 2011
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YAGG: Google Gmail Pain
March 5, 2011
Short honk: Not much to say as Google emulates Microsoft’s phone bricking update. Navigate to “Google Apps and Gmail Outage Outrage: Problem NOT Resolved.” Computerworld has a pretty good run down. YAGG. Remember? Yet another Google glitch. Yikes. Controlled chaos seems somewhat uncontrolled.
Stephen E Arnold, March 5, 2011
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Funnelback Market Actions
March 5, 2011
We have tracked Squiz’s search product for three or four years. Now there is Funnelback Enterprise, which offers some interesting features such as personalization. The system can search across your Internet sites, databases, and shared content on a network. The company says:
“No matter how large or small your organization, we can tailor a solution to suit your business needs and information architecture.”
The system features contextual navigation. Emulating Oracle’s approach of providing a controlled term list, Funnelback supplies its users with a set of subheads related to their search, by utilizing theses subheads users can refine their queries to create a more efficient, productive search.
If you want to know more about Funnelback, the company has made a video available. You can view it at this link.
You can also attend a Funnelback workshop. For more information, navigate to Bedsmarketing.
Leslie Radcliff, March 5, 2011
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Automated Understanding: Digital Reasoning Cracks the Information Maze
March 4, 2011
I learned from one reader that the presentation by Tim Estes, the founder of Digital Reasoning, caused some positive buzz at a recent conference on the west coast. According to my source, this was a US government sponsored event focused on where content processing was going. The surprise was that as other presenters talked about the future, a company called Digital Reasoning displayed a next generation system. Keep in mind that i2 Ltd. is a solid analyst’s tool with technology roots that stretch back 15 years. (I did some work for the founder of i2 a few years ago and have a great appreciation for the case value of the system for law enforcement.) Palantir has some useful visualization tools, but the company continues to attract attention from litigation and brushes with outfits with some interesting sales practices. Beyond Search covered this story here and here.
ArnoldIT.com sees Digital Reasoning’s Synthesys as solving difficult information puzzles quickly and efficiently because it eliminates most of the false path or trial-and-error of traditional systems. Solving the information maze of real world flows is now possible in our view.
The shift was from semi-useful predictive numerical recipes and overlays or augmented outputs to something quite new and different. The Digital Reasoning presentation focused on real data and what the company called “automated understanding.”
For a few bucks last year, one of my colleagues and I got a look at the automated understanding approach of the Synthesys 3 platform. Tim Estes explained that real data poses major challenges to systems that lack an ability to process large flows, discern nuances, and apply what Mr. Estes described as “entity oriented analytics.”
Our take at ArnoldIT.com is that Digital Reasoning moves “beyond search” in a meaningful way. The key points we recall from our briefing was the a modular approach eliminates the need for a massive infrastructure build and the analytics reflect what is happening in a real time flow of unstructured information. My personal view is that historical research is best served by key word systems. The more advanced methods deliver actionable information and better decisions by focusing on the vast amounts of “now” data. A single Twitter message can be important. A meaningful analysis of a flow of Twitter messages moves insight to the next level.
Attivo Unveils Maturity Model
March 4, 2011
Our aggregators returned this interesting piece to us from PR Newswire: “Attivio Releases Maturity Model for Unified Information Access.” Attivo has released a series of whitepapers detailing the benefits of using unified information access (UIA). The purpose of UIA is to help businesses see how using information access technologies can increase revenue, cut costs, and increase customer satisfaction for long term strategic planning. Using the UIA model, businesses can learn new ways about data integration. Attivio said:
“The objective of the model is to help organizations establish, benchmark, and improve information access and management strategies. According to the report, the first step in developing a plan for implementing UIA is to conduct a self-assessment of current capabilities and needs, then determine the urgency and importance of solving each issue identified. As an organization moves into the next stage, the incremental capabilities and benefits are measured across two vectors – business criticality and information management integration and process improvements.”
The UIA model can be used by any business to improve their information assets and overall practices.
Attivio is a technology firm that offers functions and systems that push beyond keyword search and retrieval.
Whitney Grace, March 4, 2011
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Reasonably Useful List of Search Engines
March 4, 2011
Franklin Manuel at Online Daily has compiled “Google it? Bing it? Endeca it? A List of Search Engines.”
Divided into categories, it could make your search for a search tool easier. Important primary categories include general, enterprise, job, medical, and news.
A second grouping organizes pages by information type, like blog or multimedia.
Thirdly, there’s “question and answer,” which features systems that answer questions instead of generating a laundry list of results.
Finally, Manuel has organized sites by model, with entries like open source, metasearch, and visual search.
While this is not a comprehensive list of search engines, there are some interesting links. It’s worth checking out.
Cynthia Murrell, March 4, 2011
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Fabasoft Mindbreeze Goes Mobile, Again
March 4, 2011
Fabasoft has updated its information about Mindbreeze mobile search. We first reported this story in April 2010 in “Mindbreeze Goes Mobile.”
Fabasoft Mindbreeze asserts this year that smartphones are becoming more ubiquitous each year, and with ever progressing mobile bandwidth capabilities, consumers increasingly demand the ability to efficiently search on-the-go. We agree.
Fabasoft Mindbreeze elaborates on its mobile search in “Mobile Search for your Enterprise.” Says the blog entry:
“Our Mobile Client is specially-tailored for the restricted screen sizes and special haptic requirements of modern touch mobiles (like the iPhone or Android based mobiles). This empowers you to access information anytime from anywhere without any hassle.”
The company also offers a version for the iPad. We think the iPad version is the news. The mobile information is a gentle recycle in our opinion. Mobile devices continue to outsell desktop boat anchor computers, so the new device trend is documented and widely known.
Cynthia Murrell March 4, 2011
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Another Explanation of Microsoft Fast
March 4, 2011
IceCream has posted “Microsoft FAST Search Server 2010 for Sharepointx64.” This write-up summarizes the product and its capabilities; for example:
“Customers have historically been forced to choose between powerful, high-end search platforms or more mainstream, out-of the-box infrastructure solutions. FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint Beta provides a new choice: powerful high-end search delivered through SharePoint.”
If you’re still in the dark about Microsoft FAST Search Server 2010, give this page a whirl. With so many explanations of Microsoft Fast available, there is an appetite for information. The duplication of the information, however, suggests that the basics are not getting through. More substantive information, in our opinion, remains difficult to locate.
Stephen E Arnold’s new book about flagship vendors for enterprise search includes an insightful discussion of Microsoft Fast Search Server. The new study will be available in mid 2011 from Pandia.com, publisher of the analysis of enterprise search vendors.
Cynthia Murrell, March 4, 2011
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Protected: SharePoint User Experience Survey
March 4, 2011
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