Endeca Pursues Customer Support
June 20, 2011
Always striving to stay abreast of trends, we found this post at CMSWire “Endeca Spotlights Customer Experience Mgmt with Infront” quite interesting. It is no secret that the search landscape has changed. Traditional vendors of “findability” solutions have put on their thinking caps in order to find ways to pump up revenue in a tough economic climate.
Endeca is pushing its technology’s applicability to customer support. Endeca’s InFront suite of products offers a solution to certain customer support information challenges. Endeca’s system does search and Guided Navigation. It also ads support for search engine optimization, social content, and mobile media support. Endeca asserts:
InFront allows businesses to create greater customer engagement with richer content and promotions,” explained Jason Purcell, General Manager, eBusiness, Endeca. “With integrated analytics and agile business user tools, InFront adapts to changing market needs, influences customer behavior across channels, and scales a relevant, personalized experience for every customer, every time.
Which search vendor will emerge as the victor in the pursuit of customer support license revenue? There are a number of search horses in the race, but there are incumbents. The race is difficult to call.
Micheal Cory, June 20, 2011
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, the resource for enterprise search information and current news about data fusion
Big Data Inhabits New Space in the Virtual Market
June 20, 2011
We noticed this press release, “Big Data Mall Opens on the Informatica Marketplace” which was picked up by GlobeNewswire.
Big data is the buzzword du jour to describe large amounts of structured and unstructured information. The idea is that there is so much data to process that traditional methods fall short of delivering useful results at a reasonable cost in the time available for a 30 something decision maker to fill his or her role as a “decider.”
Companies like Informatica are making tackling this contemporary challenge a priority, and continue to lead the way in terms of data management solutions. Concurrent with the release of their Informatica 9.1 Platform, consumers now have access to the recent addition to the Informatica Marketplace, the Big Data Mall.
The Marketplace allows both customer and vendor to collaborate in an effort to better manage the goals of modern commerce. The methods arrived at are what is referred to within the Marketplace as blocks. Specific blocks are then collected into sections known as malls. The release provides an explanation of this new section:
“The Big Data Mall is a focal point for the industry in addressing the challenges and opportunities in Big Data,” said Tony Young, chief information officer, Informatica. “The new Mall debuts with 40 Blocks from Informatica and other leading vendors that map to the three major technology trends that define Big Data – Big Transaction Data, Big Interaction Data and Big Data Processing. New Blocks will be added going forward, as more and more innovative solutions emerge from the industry around Big Data.”
Will big data become the next frontier for findability or will predictive analytics become the next big thing?
Micheal Cory, June 20, 2011
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, the resource for enterprise search information and current news about data fusion
Nifty New Mobile Search App
June 20, 2011
Mashable reports, “Mobile Search Startup Do@ Queries Apps Instead of the Web.” Is this the beginning of the end for AltaVista.com style search? Perhaps, especially as PCs go the way of the VCR.
Here’s how Do@ works:
[On one’s mobile device,] the user types in a keyword, subject or topic, including movies, music, foods, products and more. The app then recognizes what categories the keyword fits into. . . . Once you tap the query that fits your needs, Do@ loads your results, which will appear as mobile web apps from a carefully curated selection of the best publishers and app developers. You can quickly swipe from one app with relevant content to the next until you spot the exact tidbit of information or functionality you seek. In addition to predictable categories like movies, news, and shopping, Do@ is introducing some innovative classifications of their own, like @near.me and @play.online.
In my opinion, this type of system simplify the search process. Instead of wrestling with quotes, plus and minus signs, and exacting turns of phrase, you just type the most basic of subjects and select the appropriate realm. Very convenient. Both the article and the Do@ site contain a demonstration video that illustrates the process well.
My only concern: what will we lose as we move away from the (comparatively) free-flowing Web-wide search to a “curated” set of options?
Cynthia Murrell June 20, 2011
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, the resource for enterprise search information and current news about data fusion
Inteltrax: Top Stories, June 10 to June 16 2011
June 20, 2011
For readers of Beyond Search who have an interest in data fusion and analytics, the editor of Inteltrax.com, our Web log tracking this market, provided us with a run down of last week’s top stories.—Stephen E Arnold
Inteltrax, the data fusion and business intelligence information service, captured four key stories germane to search this week.
First, “Analytics for Cities” points out the many ways companies like IBM are strengthening search for city governments to run smoother using business intelligence and analytics.
Second, “Don’t Forget India When Pushing Analytic Chips Toward China” takes an in-depth look at the burgeoning Chinese analytic and search market. However, those betting heavily on China are doing a disservice overlooking India.
Third, “South Africa Ready to Join Analytics Boom” shows how some are declaring South Africa dead when it comes to using analytic search, however, a recent economic boom suggests otherwise.
Fourth, “The Rising Tide of Unstructured Data” http://inteltrax.com/2011/06/the-rising-tide-of-unstructured-data warns how unstructured data is a growing thread to the analytics and search communities alike.
Clearly, search professionals are being transformed by developments in predictive analytics, whether it is as far away as Africa or China, in their own city or even in their own business’ mounting pile of info. These are subjects that effect our global business world on almost every level and deserve our attention.
Follow the Inteltrax news stream by visiting www.inteltrax.com
Patrick Roland, Editor, Inteltrax June 20, 2011
Thanks to Digital Reasoning, a sponsor of Beyond Search
Protected: SurfRay Improving SharePoint
June 20, 2011
More Pandemonium Courtesy of Google
June 19, 2011
Wading thru search results can be a trying task, particularly the keyword gibberish hits that somehow sneak their way onto the results listings. “The Panda Enigma: An Overview of Major SEO Factors” covers the chaos ensuing with the Web community over Google’s latest overhaul. A brief description of and an argument for the new algorithm per the article:
“Panda is an evolution beyond sole focus on the PageRank model. Together with user metrics and social data, Google can rank websites based on a whole slew of scoring criteria beyond just the link graph and SEO 101 on-page factors (which remain important). Content integrity, usability, even aesthetics are all now potentially in the realm of SEO.”
Who could blame Google for attempting to step up the search game by promoting content over SEO finagling? Actually, there is a line of dissenters thousands deep, namely those whose rankings have been demoted and are pleading suffering as a consequence. The solution, they say, are new tricks to optimize for Panda.
It seems our collective minds may have been erased. So say a site is upgraded to catch and hold Panda’s eye. What happens when Panda goes the way of… oh I don’t know… say AltaVista? AltaVista ranked with eerily similar methods and was a respected search engine in its time. As a matter of fact, in 2007 if “search engine” was typed into Google, AltaVista was the top result. But where is AltaVista now? Begrudgingly, I must tell you to ask Yahoo and then retire to the nearest corner to sulk.
For the Web sites in trouble, perhaps rather than catering to the whims of the hand that feeds you it would be in your best interest merely to make as delicious a dish as possible based on some generally accepted guidelines.
As organic search becomes less viable, what’s the option? Adwords?
Sarah Rogers, June 19, 2011
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, the resource for enterprise search information and current news about data fusion
Semagix: Off the Semantic Radar?
June 19, 2011
A reader sent us a question about Semagix, a semantic search engine. Here’s what we’ve found.
One of the founders was Amit Sheth, whose bio reads:
“Amit Sheth is a Professor at the University of Georgia and CTO of Semagix, Inc. He started the LSDIS lab at Georgia in 1994. Earlier he served in R&D groups at Bellcore, Unisys, and Honeywell. He founded his second company, Taalee, in 1999 based on technology developed at the LSDIS lab, and managed it as CEO until June 2001. Following Taalee’s acquisition/merger, he currently serves as CTO and a co-founder of Semagix, Inc. His research has led to three significant commercial products, several deployed applications and over 150 publications”
According to Bloomberg Businessweek, the company is alive and kicking:
“As of June 28, 2006, Semagix, Inc. was acquired by Fortent, Inc. Semagix, Inc. provides semantic metadata management solutions to enterprises and government institutions. It provides know your customer and due diligence products. The company’s know your customer solution allows financial institutions in identify, verify, and enhance due diligence processes. It has offices in the United States and Europe. Semagix was founded in 1996 as Protégé, Ltd. and changed its name to Semagix, Inc. in 2002.”
The company’s Web site is at www.semagix.com .
If anyone has more info, please use the comments section of this blog to amplify these sparse findings.
Cynthia Murrell, June 19, 2011
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, the resource for enterprise search information and current news about data fusion
Google and the Monetization Imperative
June 18, 2011
I found “Google Testing Yet Another Redesign, Kills I’m Feeling Lucky” another instance of “Wow, how can Google do that.” The write up reports a Google watcher spotting a page with no one click access to the top hit in a Google results list. The article told me:
Google Operating System has uncovered the image of Google’s Finnish site below and notes that the new redesign also kills the I’m Feeling Lucky button. Be honest – when was the last time you used it? Still – that button was one feature that helped make Google stand out from other late-90s search engines when it first launched.
I don’t think it is a matter of who used the “I’m feeling lucky” feature. The top hit displayed may no longer be the most relevant hit if it ever was. In the good old days of 1999, it was often a heck of a lot better than what I saw on the Lycos.com results list as I recall.
Source: http://sirkfnv3.narod.ru/im-feeling-lucky.html
What the write up did not focus on was money. I look at moves like Google’s as a trigger to think about money, revenue, monetization, and related concepts.
And my working notion is that after slogging through usage reports from a number of vendors, traffic seems to be quite soft across many Web sites. Seasonality is expected in usage. Human behavior is wonderfully predictable in some interesting ways; for example, daily usage logs reflect similar patterns for each day of the week. The patterning is important, so if one knows what the patterns at each level are, one can maximize resources and figure out ways to monetize those behaviors. But the SEO poobahs are going to have to work overtime to pump up traffic, and I think that quite a few of these gurus and guruettes will be looking for their future elsewhere when the CFO blows the whistle on the financial impact of doing SEO when online ROI is cratering across a large number of Web sites.
The “I’m feeling lucky” button is one more artifact of the AltaVista.com style search that made Google the giant it is. However, Google is beavering away or Godzilla-ing away at the 1998 Cirripedia. The reasons, which I have in my List of Google Hypotheses for the Amappface Era (Amazon, Apple, and Facebook challenges) include:
- Google wants to maximize ad opportunities. Why send someone to another site when you can slap up an intermediate step and monetize that? As I noted in one of my really old Google studies, Google has methods to display another page whilst the user is still “on Google”, but those are most patent application confections, not the stuff of too much real world activity.
- The amount of time people spend on Facebook as compared to the amount of time people sp9end on Google favors Facebook. Why not choke off that one click thing which despite lower usage from users does erode “sticky time”?
- Google wants a new world now with mobile search as its key driver. There is a brave new world coming in which key word search is going to be moving from first class to the chicken-carting class on a railroad in some interesting area like the DC to NY run on Amtrak. Never seen a chicken on a train? Well, you will get the digital version in search pretty soon so you can make up for lost time. The new stuff positions Google for next generation search which is not the desktop, key word AltaVista stuff from 1996 and earlier. Voice, images, rich media—that’s a different kettle of monetizing opportunities. Who will pay for phone real time translation services? Answer: Lots of people.
Will Technology Actually Revolutionize News Gathering
June 18, 2011
One of my for fee columns for July 2011 focuses on AOL Patch.com. One could make the case that Patch.com is one of the efforts underway to revolutionize news.
Information, particularly news, is in one of those “best of times, worst of times” moments. Shocking event follows shocking story the way a ballpark wiener requires a white bread roll.
Some major formats, channels, and companies are failing. The content is not hot or not relevant. The price is too high for the perceived value or the hassle is too great for the payback.
We found Ushahid.com’s “’What Really Happened?’: Using SwiftRiver to Help Confirm Newstips” thought provoking. The story discusses the current failings of news outlets and the increasing efforts to use technological innovations to usher in a new era of reporting. The piece highlights the use of SwiftRiver, described on its site as:
” … a free an open-source suite of tools for managing excessive amounts of real-time data. Our architecture allows users to mashup real-time data from disparate media channels (Twitter, Email, SMS, JSON, XML or RSS/Atom), structures it, then offers methods for using the output.”
Being someone who can easily lose hours poring over articles and posts from a host of media outlets, most of which originate beyond our borders, the drive the author speaks of to rise above the idiocy of modern news media resonated with me. I found this passage somewhat encouraging:
“Can we get a ‘people’s newswire’ based on eyewitness reports of newsworthy events? I believe we can – if we combine the automation of systems like Swiftriver, the data visualization possibilities of tools like Ushahidi, and the insight of trained reporters who can follow up on potential leads.”
We remain open minded. However, will technology replace the traditional approach to identifying a story, researching it, and then putting the write up through a process of nit-picking by colleagues and bosses? We don’t think so, but will it matter to those raised with smartphones and persistent distraction?
Stephen E Arnold, June 18, 2011
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, the resource for enterprise search information and current news about data fusion
Need Your Own Mini Watson?
June 18, 2011
Tony Pearson at IBM’s developerWorks explains “IBM Watson—How to Build Your Own ‘Watson Jr.’ in Your Basement.” Well, if we can build Watson in our basement, why do we need IBM?
This famous innovation is uniquely positioned for copying. Unlike many other prototypes in the tech universe, Watson:
. . . was made mostly from commercially available hardware, software and information resources. As several have noted, the 1TB of data used to search for answers could fit on a single USB drive that you buy at your local computer store.
Pearson actually describes how to build what he calls “Watson Jr.”, a scaled down version of the Jeopardy-winning A.I. The servers for the original, though as efficient as possible, require a LOT of electricity. To make the project more manageable for hobbyists, this version sacrifices game strategy and search optimization and makes speech synthesis optional.
Step-by-step directions describe exactly how to develop your own little answer machine. You can put it right next to that Zenith STOL CH 801 airplane you built and could not get out of your workshop.
Cynthia Murrell June 18, 2011
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, the resource for enterprise search information and current news about data fusion
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