Top Open Source Projects Omit Lucene/Solr
December 29, 2011
Linux Today seems to have left a couple of things out if its list, “The 10 Most Important Open Source Projects of 2011.” Um, aren’t Lucene and Solr from Apache important? Neither of them made the cut. Writer Joe ‘Zonker’ admits that, to get the list down to ten, he had to leave out some key candidates. The article states:
So what do I mean by ‘important,’ anyway? Clearly, it’s not just projects that are widely used. That list would be just too long to even contemplate. . . .So to judge importance, I looked at projects that are influential, gaining in popularity, and/or technical standouts in new areas. In other words, projects that are even more noteworthy than the other noteworthy projects. This means that many projects that are crucial didn’t make the list.
Topping the list is Apache’s Hadoop, which surged this year. The other projects that made the cut are Git; Cassandra; LibreOffice; OpenStack; Nginx; jQuery; Node.js; Puppet; and, of course, Linux itself. See the write up for the reasoning behind each choice.
Maybe it is just us, but we still think Lucene and Solr should have been invited to the party. Maybe next year? With azure chip consultants dissing Autonomy and ignoring open source except for bleats for someone to help explain the mysteries of “community software”, let’s show some love for Lucene and Solr. Give it up.
Cynthia Murrell, December 29, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Playing Hard Ball: Good Business or Bad Numbers
December 28, 2011
Amazon and Google are in the search game. There are some interesting interactions between the companies, and I cover one facet in an upcoming column for Information Today. Think open source, application programming interfaces, and metasearch for data fusion. But I wanted to document what look like two unrelated actions. I find the similarity of user response interesting, but I have been around long enough to know that what we note in Harrod’s Creek means little or nothing where the big boys live, work, and sit in traffic.
First, I noted “buySAFE Sues Google Over Trusted Stores Service, Fears Annihilation.” The main idea of the story is that Google is nosing into a market space where buySAFE has a tent. Here’s the passage I noted, but, alas, I don’t know if the information is spot on. I want to point it out because it suggests a certain spirit, perception, and mindset I find interesting:
[buySAFE] claims that Google may have timed the roll-out of its free Trusted Stores program “so as to impede buySAFE’s effort to raise additional capital”, which it says it requires to expand its business. According to buySAFE, “Google’s acts and practices have a dangerous probability of driving (the company) from the market”. In fact, buySAFE says Google’s actions have “already succeeded in drastically slowing buySAFE’s annual growth rate”. And to think almost no one knows Google Trusted Stores even exists today.
Next, I saw this item about Amazon, an outfit which is losing its “we’re just booksellers” positioning with its spiraling services and products line up. Navigate to “Kindle Case Maker Calls Amazon.com a Corporate Bully in Federal Lawsuit.”
Is Attila’s management method getting more traction than other approaches?
I can’t get excited about Kindle cases because the gizmos lack durability. I have had six, maybe seven, and I have resigned myself to replacing them due to stuck buttons, cracked screens, broken mini USB plugs, and other issues caused because the addled goose still reads books. Here’s the passage I noted with the caveat that I have no idea if the story is accurate. Just read it for positioning:
“This case presents a classic example of unlawful corporate bullying,” according to the suit. “M-Edge developed a very successful product line: personal electronic device jackets with multiple features for the Kindle and other e-readers. Amazon thereafter repeatedly sought to hijack the product through threats, deceit, interference with M-Edge’s customer relationships, and patent infringement.”
On the surface, we have some enthusiastic business managers working to earn their bonus. However, when one thinks about the similarity in services and the companies’ interesting relationship to one another, I had several thoughts.
First, maybe despite the substantial
Quote to Note: Perfect Search Engine
December 28, 2011
I find the search engine optimization blogs entertaining and humorous. The writers go through amazing gyrations, often suggesting that “real” SEO pros should tie clicks to money. Yep, great idea. But the theme that causes me to chortle is the message, “Content is king.” Yep, great idea.
Navigate to “Search & Mobile Marketing Trends: SEO Apocalypse 2012”. You will get a shovel full of SEO goodness. But the point of the write up is secondary to this quote to note. The speaker is top Googler Larry Page. He allegedly said:
“The perfect search engine would understand exactly what you mean and give back exactly what you want,” according to Google CEO Larry Page. Generalized search tactics become even murkier as results become so individualized to time, place, preference, and personal social trends.
Yep, perfection. But what does “perfect” mean? Ad revenue? When SEO fails, there is the life saver of Adwords I believe.
Stephen E Arnold, December 28, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
In-Depth Look at Continuous Integration Benefits in SharePoint 2010
December 28, 2011
We recently wrote about Andrew Connell’s list of suggested resources for your ALM and CI questions. In his post, the first suggestion for a ‘why’ introduction to the topic was Chris O’Brien’s “SharePoint 2010 Continuous Integration – Part 1: Benefits.” O’Brien points out a SharePoint environment adds some additional challenges and involvement to CI implementation contrary to what ease you may find in the .Net world. However, he identifies many benefits and argues that the positive feedback from users is evidence it is worth it. First, he points out where to start with CI:
Let’s be clear though – Continuous Integration (CI) is probably best suited to projects with the following characteristics: Development-oriented – perhaps with more than, say, 3 Visual Studio projects; Multiple developers; Fairly long-running (e.g. > 2-3 months; to give the team a chance to implement CI alongside the actual deliverables)
Some benefits include consistent builds, automated testing, and increased team cohesion through build notifications. The rest of the fairly lengthy article gives a great overview of CI benefits and what an implementation actually looks like. Links are also provided to the subsequent posts in the series which follow up with topics including TFS 2010 Build Processes and Using PowerShell to deploy WSPs from build output.
With ample staffing and ability investments into implementing the CI techniques, you can really make a big difference on SharePoint development projects. However, to add efficiency to your organization without the need for such training and research, consider Fabasoft Mindbreeze. Their out-of-the-box solution gives you mobility and information pairing:
Information pairing unites enterprise information and Cloud information. This results in a complete overview of a company’s knowledge – the basis for your competitive advantage – allowing you to act quickly, reliably, dynamically and profitably in all business matters.
Consider their full suite of products and solutions at Fabasoft Mindbreeze.
Philip West, December 28, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
European PLM Innovation Conference Brings Out the Best Thinkers
December 28, 2011
We stumbled across an announcement about an upcoming event “PLM Innovation 2012” and got a bit excited. This European conference has a line up of 300 plus speakers. And according to the announcement it is a must attend event.
The PLM Innovation Congress is Europe’s only independent and technology agnostic PLM event. Bringing together 300 senior end-users, thought leaders and select PLM vendors, we aim to leverage the collective wealth of knowledge and experience to identify and encourage best practice. The combination of a world class speaker roster, cross-industry case studies, targeted Think-Tanks and pre-qualified networking opportunities make this Europe’s must attend PLM gathering.
Good to know a quick look at the sponsor and speakers and we found our friend Oleg Shilovitsky and we knew it was indeed just what it stated, “a must attend gathering.” We know Oleg is a leader in innovation with PLM so if he’s int he crowd it will be well worth your attention.
Constance Ard, December 28, 2011
SearchBlox Question Brings Silence at QNAP Community Forum
December 28, 2011
Some topics, or maybe some forums, just don’t bring the flood of helpful answers that others do. Poor pablogiganti posted the query “SearchBlox Installation- Apache Lucene- Possible?” at the QNAP NAS Community Forum last month, and received nary a reply.
Fortunately, the original poster eventually got some non-standard help from QNAP’s customer support team, and posted his results for others to learn from. Just in case anyone was interested. Over two weeks later.
The original query reads:
I´m looking into installing a search engine for our NAS and I came across SearchBlox. I´m an absolute beginner and I was wondering if it is possible to run it on my QNAP TS-809U-RP If so, they explain on the following link how to do it but I have no idea where/how to follow these steps. . .
Almost a week later, pablogiganti pleaded, “Can anyone help me please?”
Nope, no one here, anyway.
Cynthia Murrell, December 28, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Google Adds Protein to Its Recommendations
December 28, 2011
Here goes Google, buying rather than innovating. Again. CNET News reports, “Google Gobbles up Restaurant Recommendation App Alfred.” Created by Clever Sense, Alfred was released for the iPhone in July. Google has now released a free version for Android.
The app studies the user’s restaurant choices, then uses online reviews and “other analysis” to recommend similar locations. There’s a cute minute-long video from Clever Sense here. Writer Jay Greene clarifies what makes Alfred special:
“Unlike better-known and more widely used rivals such as Yelp and Urbanspoon, Clever Sense uses artificial intelligence to find customers with similar tastes, then offers recommendations based on their dining choices.
It’s the kind of service–one that relies on complex algorithms to arrive at relevant results–that is right up Google’s alley.
Indeed. And if Google didn’t have to bother developing the software, all the better.
Clever Sense was founded by tech highbrows Babak Pahlavan and Nima Asgharbeygi. The Clever Sense Platform that powers Alfred combines two engines. The Extraction Engine curates unstructured crawled data; from there, it extracts concepts and learns similarities. The Serendipity Engine, though, is at the core; it is the part that learns user preferences. The company assures us that the data used to draw these conclusions is stored securely.
Cynthia Murrell, December 28, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Text Analytics Offers Summit, Podcast
December 28, 2011
Social media has exploded, with billions and billions of pieces of content hitting the Web every day; making sense of it all can be overwhelming. That’s why Text Analytics News is sponsoring the first ever two day conference dedicated solely to social media analytics– the Social Media Analytics Summit in San Francisco next April 17–18. The conference description informs us:
The Social Media Analytics Summit offers unmatchable networking and knowledge sharing opportunities for social media and analytics professionals. The Summit will be a true forum for vendors, end users, and consultants alike to develop long-lasting business relationships. The conference agenda has been designed based on meticulous research with industry experts and is well-rounded with presentations, panels, case studies, and workshops, giving you deep insights into the social analytics industry from many angles.
Social media analytics is only going to keep growing; learning about this key field now is a wise investment. Here’s an inside tip: register with discount code BSEARCHSMA to save $150.
Text Analytics News’ Chief Editor Erza Steinberg also has a podcast available called the “Social Media Analytics Perspectives Panel,” which he recently recorded with professionals from Social Media Today, Radian6, J.D. Power & Associates, and Beyond The Arc. The podcast explores:
- Effective ways for leveraging social media information to gain a competitive advantage
- The cutting edges of social media analytics and sentiment analysis technology
- How to make business sense out of the flood of user-generated content across social media channels
Two sources of important information from Text Analytics News. Here’s hoping you can take advantage of both.
Cynthia Murrell, December 28, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Google Tops Market, Again
December 28, 2011
Search Engine Journal has released its new findings for November 2011. In “Search Engine Market Share, November 2011” there are no surprises here. We learned:
It’s no question that Google is currently the dominant search engine in the U.S. market, although their major competitors turn up the heat, and as Google continues to expand on their many product offerings, two key questions have arisen: Is Google focusing on search the way it has in the past? How much longer will it take the Search Market to stabilize, if ever?
From October thru November the numbers did not fluctuate more than a fraction of a percent up or down. Google is leaps and bounds ahead of nearest competitor Yahoo, it now corners nearly 3/4 of the United States search market.
Though the company seems to have taken a break from its traditional role of simply offering search results to focus on its new endeavors in the tablet and smartphone technology marketplace it is still in no danger of succumbing to any of its competitors in the near future.
Leslie Radcliff, December 28, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Protected: Mondeca Tackles French Electronic Patient Record Database
December 28, 2011
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