More Semantic Action: Topicmarks
March 21, 2011
“Mint Founder Invests in Semantic Text Startup” asserts some interesting semantic activity. Mashable.com reports that the company in question, Topicmarks, is raising a healthy bankroll from qualified investors with the help of the man behind Mint.com, Aaron Patzer.
Mr. Patzer certainly knows what a successful startup looks like, having sold his own creation for $170 million last year. Patzer on Topicmarks:
These guys have tech developed over the last three years, a team of strong engineers, deals in place with Evernote and ShareVault already. Also, I’ve done a dive into the algorithms behind the system, which are impressive and being patented.
What Topicmarks has managed to put together is a semantic tool that can read, analyze and summarize uploaded documents. It can quickly process hundreds of pages and distill the content into a manageable ten minute or less read. The company itself likens the technology to a personalized version of CliffsNotes for the text of one’s choosing. Not surprisingly, this is already becoming a favorite among students, but not so much teachers.
The product is also being laced together with popular cloud services such as DropBox for added functionality. Besides the numerous uses already in play, it’s easy to see the future applications of Topicmarks considering its ability to read varied formats. Need the key points from an RSS feed? Burdened with an overflowing email inbox? These are soon to be problems of the past.
If you want to see the technology firsthand, visit the Topicmarks Web site link above. Currently, the beta version is free to run and it is ridiculously easy. I uploaded a 111-page .pdf as a test, receiving pretty good results in a matter of minutes. My only question is: am I qualified to be an investor?
Sarah Rogers, March 21, 2011
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Thunderstone Texis Version 6 Released
March 21, 2011
Thunderstone details important changes to Texis in Version 6 in “Texis Version 6 Features and Changes:”
“Texis version 6 introduced many new features and enhancements. Some existing features were also modified to have different behavior. The following is a discussion of changes from Texis version 5 to 6, starting with a general overview of important changes, loosely grouped by functionality. All changes are then discussed in more detail in the sections that follow.”
Check this list before you upgrade in order to ensure a smooth transition. Keep in mind that the name Thunderstone is shared with a band. You may encounter some false drops when you run a query for the word “Thunderstone” without additional search terms. We recommend using the phrase “Thunderstone Texis.”
Cynthia Murrell, March 21, 2011
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Protected: New SharePoint Outlook Function
March 21, 2011
Consultant Asserts the Obvious
March 20, 2011
Years ago, I worked at the former blue chip consulting firm Booz, Allen & Hamilton. At that time, the firm was generating studies of world economic change, updates to the definitive discussion of new product development, and ground breaking studies in technical innovation methods. Now we learn that executives are distracted. Okay.
I learned about this obvious statement in “Executives Say They’re Pulled in Too Many Directions, According to Booz & Co. Survey.” According to the write up:
“The survey results tell us that deciding on priorities is a huge issue for companies – and that actually linking priorities to decisions is a hurdle that few companies get past. We see this ‘incoherent’ operating environment across industries and geographies, among all types of companies. It’s draining – and forcing companies to pay a significant penalty. We call it the incoherence penalty,” said Paul Leinwand, co-author of the just-released book “The Essential Advantage: How to Win with a Capabilities-Driven Strategy” (Harvard Business Review Press, December 2010).
When I read this, I thought about the type of research and marketing that consulting firms are forced to do to maintain their revenues. Some firms have become more like boutique marketing shops. Others are emulating PageRank and looking for topics that generate clicks. Booz seems to be blazing a path by putting numbers behind what most business professionals know. In a meeting, no one pays much attention. Distractions are the name of the game. People come and go, and most don’t know anything about Michelangelo.
I relate almost every thing I read to search and information access. I wonder how distracted executives can make good decisions. I thought about consulting firms trying to sell obvious generalizations to procurement teams more interested in fiddling with iPhones than figuring out whether the technical explanations were on point or even accurate.
The Booz study offers some evidence that we live in a PageRank world. No wonder it is hard to find valid, useful, substantive, actionable information.
Stephen E Arnold, March 20, 2011
Access Innovations and IEEE Team Up
March 20, 2011
Access Innovations has cultivated a solid relationship with the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the foundation of which seems to be their Data Harmony software series.
Access Innovations is one of the leaders in indexing, controlled vocabulary development, and taxonomies. For IEEE Access Innovations has a long, successful track record in helping organizations develop thesauri and controlled vocabularies. The company also has proprietary software which can perform automatic content tagging.
IEEE is responsible for close to a third of the technical publications circulated around the globe, has now sought the firm’s help in revamping how their Xplore library catalogues the massive amounts of data stored within.
Access Innovations said:
To complete the latest project, Access Innovations used an implementation of Data Harmony Metadata Extractor to determine the article’s content type and then built an improved rules base to identify content types in order for each type to be indexed in a specific way using the IEEE Thesaurus.”
Access Innovation’s system provides users the ability to outline and remove information from the source, compiling a fresh record in the process. This marks yet another lucrative venture for the 33 year old company, which services a variety of academic institutions and government agencies.
Micheal Cory, March 20, 2011
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IBM OminiFind Fix Pack Failure
March 19, 2011
Shades of Microsoft’s Windows 7 phone update. Big companies seem to have some issues with details. The Apple method obviously does not have much of an impact on some big outfits.
If you are having problems with the OmniFind Enterprise Edition Fix Pack, Here’s help.
IBM provides the solution: “Starting Stellent Session Fails with rc=251658477 after Fix Pack Is Applied.” The error message appears in the CCL’s log and the Stellent session does not start with the esadmin check command.
The following message occurs:
- com.ibm.es.ccl.server.responders.sys.SessionAttachMessageHandler doMessage
- SEVERE: Attaching session “col1.Stellent” failed because of there are no message handlers for that session.
IBM offers this additional information:
“Other sessions are getting started but Stellent session fails. Thus you can still crawl files and might be able to parse some file types (such as html, text, etc) but you can not parse/index binary files such as PDF, Microsoft Office related files that goes through Stellent session.”
The articles does offer a workable solution. Haste creates work and, of course, generates consulting revenues. IBM professionals are very, very busy.
Whitney Grace, March 19, 2011
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Netflix Flexes Flicks and Feels Flak
March 19, 2011
I am sitting on a manuscript that describes Google’s video technology. I am not sure I will do much with it. I am wrapping up a look at the big six in enterprise search. Companies other than Google are showing their guns in streaming rich media. (A “gun” one of my young tech goslings told me is the new term for bicep. Ah, sort of like “governance” or “business intelligence”. Slang. Got it.
My own approach to slang is “Netflix Flexes Flicks”, but it lacks the euphony of “House of Cards.” I am not a streaming media fan. Heck, I don’t care much about feature films. After the popcorn, I go to sleep. Netflix seems to be a force in the rich media niche and the company is getting into original programming. Netflix is, despite my inattention, like one of the people on the cover of a muscle magazine. Netflix is not someone I would taunt by kicking sand it its face.
Several observations.
First, Netflix, maybe more than Amazon, has already gone where Google’s patent applications described. Maybe Google can blow past Netflix and marginalize Amazon? Maybe not? Netflix, which someone told me taps into Amazon’s cloud services, is out lifting Amazon and Amazon knows what Netflix is up to. Even with that knowledge it is the Netflix news that lights up the rich media consumer.
Second, Netflix seems to be positioning itself where cable companies want to be or hope to stay. Darned surprising is that. I am not sure that the cable companies, despite their wires to the domicile and the other valuation boosters, can respond in a satisfactory manner. Netflix is just more technically adept for the rich media crowd. Not even Apple is able to hide Netflix’s gym locker key.
Third, the networks may want to pay more attention to Netflix. I don’t know much about Hulu, but Netflix could make life interesting for Hulu. Internecine warfare can distract folks from a more serious threat in my experience.
Two other issues warrant a quick comment.
- Netflix may feel more legal heat.
- Netflix may be chasing some Facebook love.
Bottomline: I may have to gear up to pay attention to Netflix, its open source search system, and its ability to disrupt. And Google? Well, not so interesting in the rich media space at the moment. But those patent applications make useful reading because the background sections of some of these open source Google documents explain market opportunities companies like Netflix are just grabbing.
Stephen E Arnold, March 19, 2011
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Microsoft and Its Struggles with the Language of Search
March 19, 2011
I struggle with the language used to describe the language of search. So if my interpretation of “Cognition with Semantic Technology to Microsoft’s Bing” is correct, it seems Microsoft has decided to supplement or even step away from Powerset. Microsoft paid about $100 million for this natural language processing and semantic system in 2008.
After a bit of sleuthing I learned of the cessation of the Powerset toolbar’s Wikipedia function.
My attempts to access the engine’s homepage pointed to Bing.com, which is not all that unusual after a big company gobbles a small one. According to the story in the somewhat erratic Search Engine Optimization GB write up, I learned:
The non-exclusive license agreement allows Microsoft to embed elements of the semantic technologies cognition is in any Microsoft application that would benefit from an “understanding” of the English language. First, it is used to the user experience in Google, to improve Microsoft’s online decision engine.
Is this old news or new news? We noted one deal between Cognition and Microsoft in our May 2010 story “Cognition and Bing.”
We are not sure if this is the same deal or the old deal recycled as a new deal. No wonder Microsoft struggles with the language of search. We struggle to understand the semantic technologies Microsoft employs in Bing.com and Fast Search.
Micheal Cory, March 19, 2011
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When Search Fails: Use Insider Info
March 18, 2011
Why not look up what one needs on Bing or Google? Well, for some questions those services are clueless. What’s the fix? Just ask someone who knows. We are getting more interested in this blue chip, white collar information centric approach.
We just couldn’t pass this story up: Indianexpress.com reveals that “Raj Rajaratnam Got ‘Red Hot’ Info”. We quite like the “red hot” part.
At the heart of the matter is the alleged insider trading and the legal procedure involving Raj Rajaratnam. He is accused of using proprietary information on AMD to rake in illicit loot. Rajaratnam has pleaded not guilty, but recordings and recollections of colleagues who have already pleaded guilty, indicate otherwise.
The article includes juicy details on secrets, payments,promises, and even a supposed “intimate relationship.” Naturally, a scandal isn’t complete until someone brings up an intimate relationship.
Just to quote one passage:
” ‘We have to keep radio silence on this. OK?’ Rajaratnam tells Chiesi on one call, and Chiesi responds, ‘Oh, Please. That is my pleasure.’ Rajaratnam says, ‘not even to your little boyfriends you know?’ “
Ah, so it looks like he’s not just a person who knows how to work around the weaknesses of free Web search systems, but he also appears to have what might be described a “condescending manner. Let’s see what happens in the end…. The outcome of the legal matter will be searchable in Bing and Google. What do you think?
Cynthia Murrell, March 18, 2011
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TERIS and Clearwell Announce New eDiscovery Tool
March 18, 2011
TERIS is a fifteen year old, national eDiscovery software manufacturer who partnered with Clearwell Systems in 2010. Acquiring a gold level of certification thru Microsoft, TERIS has since worked to expand the Clearwell platform with the additions of its own series of review software.
In a repost in the SF Chronicles Web site titled “TERIS Enhances Service Offering With Latest Release of the Clearwell eDiscovery Platform“, their current endeavor is detailed. Version 6.1 gives clients the means to tenably gather information from the Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS)/MO 365. We felt this passage summarizes the product’s aims:
With this new capability, TERIS’s clients can quickly identify and collect data from Microsoft Exchange Online and Microsoft SharePoint Online for e-discovery requests in response to litigation, regulatory inquiries and internal investigations. Once collected, the data from the cloud is immediately available for downstream e-discovery phases such as processing, analysis, review and production. As a result, the Clearwell E-Discovery Platform frees TERIS’s clients to reap the benefits of cloud computing while still fulfilling their legal and compliance requirements related to e-discovery.
This new version also plays well with SharePoint Online, going so far as to offer auto-detection for its sites within the cloud. Reference the article for a complete listing of the support features connected to Microsoft BPOS which is, repeat three times, Microsoft Business Productivity Online Standard Suite.
Sarah Rogers, March 18, 2011
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