Managing an Online Reputation
February 10, 2012
Zimbio calls our attention to the judgment of the Web with “Monitoring Tools for Management Reputation Online.” (As evident in the title, the piece seems to have originally been written in a language besides English, one in which the adjectives come after the nouns. Keep that in mind when reading it.)
The freewheeling nature of the Internet, at least for now, means that anyone can go online and say anything about any person or company. It is the wise business that monitors and manages its online reputation. Besides working to remove or bury negative information, companies should make the effort to promote their brands online in a positive light.
The write up asserts:
Thus management reputation Internet, reputation web or reputation online with the help of e-reputation enterprise and cleaner nets not only saves the name from being violated on the Internet but also has the tendency to create business for those who have their e-reputation handled very carefully.
This is a very brief piece, with imbedded links that point to French online reputation management company Zen-Reputation. (Ah ha, French! That explains the sentence construction.) Whether through this company or a competitor, though, paying attention to their Internet image is a good idea for many companies. What happens if someone posts something unfavorable and links aggressively to that write up? Good question.
Cynthia Murrell, February 10, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Lucid Imagination Dives into the Cloud
February 9, 2012
Continuing to reap the benefits of investment in open source, Lucid Imagination has just launched its cloud contender. Marketwire reports, “Lucid Imagination ‘Search-as-a-Service’ Powers Flexible, Cost-Effective Enterprise-Wide Data Discovery.” Like the company’s enterprise version of LucidWorks 2.0, the cloud-based version builds on Apache Lucene/Solr. The write up explains:
“LucidWorks Cloud helps businesses of all sizes conquer even the most daunting data and business quandaries by rapidly firing up cost-effective, flexible, and scalable enterprise search applications that help users find the information they need, when they need it. More than 30 companies used the pre-release version of LucidWorks Cloud, shaping the new product to meet even the most rigorous demands of cloud-based enterprise search.”
Both versions of LucidWorks add a lot of features to their open source foundations, like an improved user interface, monitoring and reporting tools, and an open connector framework that bridges to alternative data sources.
Founded in 2007, Lucid Imagination focuses exclusively on Apache Lucene/Solr search technology. Eight out of the 30 core committers to that open source project work for Lucid. The company also offers free developer software. Many of its clients around the world are huge household names, like AT&T, Ford, and The Smithsonian, to name just a few.
Cynthia Murrell, February 9, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Bing on Social Search Controversy between GOOG and Facebook
February 9, 2012
Bing finally speaks up about its social search advantage; surprising, since the company has somehow been flying under the radar recently with the controversy surrounding Google privacy and social networking.
Liz Gannes from AllThingsD.com interviewed Bing Search director Stefan Weitz regarding social data and search results in the article, “Bing–Which Has Deals With Facebook and Twitter–Finally Speaks on Social Search Controversy.” In the interview, Weitz states that social search has positively impacted the Bing experience and attributes that impact to the company’s attention to people. Weitz also comments on capitalizing on the debate around Google’s privacy and social settings. The article states:
“They [Google] are doing a nice job on their own of handling this problem. But they are learning just like we are. They did what we didn’t want to do, which was make the user experience peppered with this stuff, with +1s everywhere, the Google+ content in the top corner. I think [Google] realized we were ahead and they overextended. But I know a ton of guys there and they’re smart and they’re reacting to what has been said.”
I struggle to see exactly how Microsoft is different than Google on this issue. Instead of pressing the company’s own network (like Google using Google+,) Microsoft is using Facebook and Twitter in the same regard. Bing has just been a little slower about incorporating social data into its search results—according to Weitz, this is because making sense of social signals is complex.
I think making sense of this social search contention is possibly even more complex. Is there too much ego and testosterone in the social locker room?
Andrea Hayden, February 8, 2012
Numbers Show Increase in Cloud-Based PLM Usage
February 9, 2012
Although everyone working with product lifecycle management (PLM) suspected the numbers for 2011 would show a definite shift toward the cloud and new PLM solutions the numbers are finally proving it. A recent press release titled, Arena Grows New Business 19% in 2011, on Marketwatch, tells of how a leader in cloud based services for small to mid-sized businesses exploded in growth due to the release of their latest creation, PDXViewer, cloud based app for viewing PDX files.
To explain the 19% growth the press release said,
“Helping drive that growth were increases in annuity bookings — up nearly 15% for the year — and an increase in subscriptions coming from new strategic partnerships. New customers were up 18% for the quarter compared to the same quarter in 2010. In addition to 2011’s strong subscription and renewal numbers, Arena fulfilled its commitment to expand the company by building out its software, infrastructure and partner community.”
What these numbers signify is that there is a new trend for companies to move to cloud based PLM solutions. As data continues to grow, expenses continue to be cut and a new technologically savvy workforce demands the latest in cloud technology and access to company data companies of all sizes are turning to new data management solutions.
As Arena is proving with their impressive numbers companies of all sizes are looking to unify departments by making data accessible and manageable by all. This unification in the form of cloud based PLM not only reduces overlap between design and production but eliminates redundancies that only serves to cost more money.
Catherine Lamsfuss, February 9, 2012
Enterprise Search Meets the Cloud in 2012
February 9, 2012
In “2012 – Ready or Not,” Mike Alsup, Senior Vice President at Gimmal Group, lays out a summary of 2011 and speculates on 2012 in the world of SharePoint and content management. Of course, 2011 was another growth year for the ubiquitous SharePoint platform. One estimate puts SharePoint users at 125,000,000 and counting. Although, Alsup says, many of these SharePoint sites are collaboration sites, intranet, and other lightweight knowledge management, meaning lots of room to grow and innovate among the users.
Otherwise, 2011 is noted for lots of infrastructure consolidation and lots of waiting to see what happens with SharePoint Records Management. And for 2012? Alsup gives somewhat lengthy explanations on Records Management 2.0 and content enabled vertical applications. Of course, 2012 speculations are not complete without mention of the Cloud. Here’s what Alsup says,
In the world of SharePoint, the product is different in the cloud and on premise because of limitations on what can be deployed in the cloud and how it needs to be deployed. There are many SharePoint applications that provide great value that can’t be deployed in the Microsoft Clouds (Microsoft private cloud solutions, Windows Azure, Office 365) because of product limitations. If Microsoft enabled these applications to be more easily deployed in their clouds, and their customers could deploy their SharePoint applications similarly in each of the three environments, then the decisions on how and where to host would be based on economics and deployment strategy instead of the limitations of SharePoint in the clouds.
While SharePoint is a powerful and complex system, we know there are limitations when the Cloud is introduced. For a Cloud solution in your SharePoint environment, check out Fabasoft Mindbreeze. Here you can read about the power of information pairing.
Fabasoft Mindbreeze . . .
smoothly integrates itself into your website so that the user doesn’t even realize that Cloud services are working in the background. Furthermore, InSite always knows what a user is interested in. Navigation behavior on the website serves as the basis for recognizing their interests. If the user finds themselves on one of your sub-pages on the topic mobility, for example, even at this level Fabasoft Mindbreeze InSite still displays further information such as blogs, news, Wikipedia etc. on the relevant topic.
Check out the full suite of solutions at Mindbreeze to see what works for you.
Philip West, February 9, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Social Networking and Ad Revenue: Trending Down
February 9, 2012
Google Plus or Google+ (yikes, a name with a reserved character) is supposed to be the new Google. Well, Google depends on ad revenue. Some Googlers will insist that the 95 percent of the revenue is NOT from advertising, but I don’t believe them. Sorry.
Social networking accounts for one of every five minutes spent online, making it the most popular online activity worldwide. Media Post recently reported on the financial impact that social media is having on ad spending in the article “Social Networking Lags in Capturing Ad Spend.”
According to the article, a new report from comScore found that social networking sites lead all content categories in the number of display ads delivered, accounting for more than 1 in 4 U.S. display ad impressions. Despite this fact, it is not attracting ad dollars.
The article states:
The 17% of time spent online using social media is roughly comparable to the 15% share of display ad dollars. Furthermore, much of the marketing on Facebook comes in the form of earned or owned media via brand pages and apps, rather than through paid advertising. Much of the paid advertising on Facebook is small, low-cost ads from long-tail marketers rather than high-cost campaigns from big brands.
Facebook and Twitter are the leading social networking sites and they are becoming internationally popular and a phenomenon that is enjoyed by all age groups. If this report is correct, then the ad industry should strike while the iron is still hot. If social ad revenue does not hit the lofty targets required to keep billion dollar babies in diapers, trouble may arrive quickly.
Jasmine Ashton, February 9, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Linguamatics Embraces Informatics
February 9, 2012
Fierce Biotech IT announces, “EU Program Backs Linguamatics and ChemAxon’s Informatics Work.” The European Union’s Eurostars Program grants research and development funding to small and medium companies.
The project being funded is, according to the companies, the first interactive text-mining system specifically for chemistry research. Writer Ryan McBride elaborates:
The companies say that pharma and biotech outfits are expected to be the main customers for the technology. With this tool, ChemAxon and Linguamatics want drug companies or other users to be able to do chemical evaluations, hunt for new chemicals, get structure visualizations in searches and ‘explore image to structure conversion,’ according to the companies’ press release.
More personalized medical research is expected to be one application of the system. That sounds promising.
ChemAxon serves the biotechnology and pharmaceutical fields worldwide, providing chemical software development platforms as well as desktop applications.
Linguamatics bases its data management solutions on natural language processing technology. I2E is the company’s flagship text mining software, also available in the cloud as I2E OnDemand.
Cynthia Murrell, February 9, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
River Logic: Integrated Information
February 9, 2012
Founded in 2000 as iNetze.com by chief research officer and director Robert Whitehair, River Logic Inc. has developed into an integrated business planning and modeling solution provider. Its applications are used to plan, track, forecast, and optimize budgets, costs, profits, and cash flow across suppliers, customers, and product lines. The company was one of six on IDC’s “2011 Innovative Business Analytics Companies Under $100M to Watch” list.
The company’s core application, Enterprise Optimizer, was developed in collaboration with the Russian Academy of Sciences and mathematicians at the University of Massachusetts. The program’s roots go back 15 years to the early 1990s, when Whitehair and other UMass mathematicians began developing a modeling program using artificial intelligence. Formally launched in 2005, EO is designed to manage cross-functional decisions at strategic, tactical, and policy levels considering all the elements and consequences of those decisions. The models allow the user to see the financial and operational impact of those decisions and then optimize them.
The product itself has a simple diagram style interface used to create the business processes that drive value in an organization. These diagrams model the supply chain and show how things like trade promotions impact volume, distribution and financial performance.
Named to the 2010 “Supply Chain & Demand Executive” 100 list, River Logic is focused on delivering EO-based solutions in a couple of areas, especially consumer packaged goods with healthcare as a secondary market. River Logic’s hospital performance management solution, Integrated Delivery System Planner,enables physician-centric coordination, where costs, resources, and activities are tracked and assessed in terms of the workflow of the entire, integrated system. A Synetics Group-River Logic alliance delivers Trade Promotion Optimization Planner, which helps enterprises plan, evaluate, and optimize promotions to increase the return on trade spending.
The company’s client list includes consultants such as Barloworld Logistics and manufacturers Nampak Tissue and Bolthouse Farms. Competitors are SAP, IBM, and Oracle.
Rita Safranek, February 9, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Expert System Italy
February 9, 2012
In 1989, Marco Varone, along with Stefano Spaggiari and Paolo Lombardi, founded Expert System Italy. The three wanted to develop semantic software to extract knowledge from text by replicating human processes. Varone is the father of the company’s Cogito technology.
Unlike traditional technologies based on keyword and statistics that can only guess the content of a text, Cogito reads and interprets knowledge trapped in unstructured text, finding hidden relationships, trends, and events. It relies on deep linguistic analysis and semantic disambiguation of text to ensure a complete understanding of a text. The technology can be used on files, e-mails, articles, reports, and Web pages.
After developing Cogito, Expert System partnered with Microsoft and integrated the linguistic and semantic technologies into Microsoft Office. The Cogito Categorizer is also integrated to the SharePartXXL Taxonomy Extension for Microsoft SharePointby the SharePartXXL Cogito Connector. In April 2011, the company was awarded a US patent for the Cogito semantic platform.
Products include Cogito Semantic Search, Cogito semantic Advertiser, and Cogito Answers, and Cogito Intelligence Platform. Expert System positions Cogito Semantic Advertiser as an alternative to Google’s AdSense search keyword ad management tool. The company applies semantic technologies to its contextual ad formula, discerning greater meaning from the text in an article to provide more relevant ads. Cogito Answers can be used to improve customer service, combining semantic analysis of sentiment and customer satisfaction monitoring with advanced natural language customer interaction features.
Profitable from the start and with recent growth at a compound annual growth rate of 50%, Expert System has a client list that encompasses a variety of industries. Customers include Vodafone, Eni Group, Pirelli, Telecom Italia, the Italian Ministry of Defense, RIM and CVS Pharmacy. Competitors are Google, Cisco, Flurry, Nuance Communications, and RAMP. Expert System has a strong following in the mobile search space.
Rita Safranek, February 9, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
New Google Lawsuit Targets Google Tags
February 9, 2012
More legal hassles for Google, this time over little flags for maps. Couldn’t this one have been handled with a couple of phone calls? Online Media Daily reports, “Google Sued Over Defunct ‘Tags’ Program.”
The Google Tags program gave business owners the change to attach photos, coupons, and other information to their local listings. Rachel Frezza and Mauro Rodriguez, owners of two separate North Carolina businesses, have filed suit after participating in a free one-month trial. It seems they found some unexpected Googley charges on their credit cards. I submit that most of us have experience with “free trials” that resulted in errant charges. I never considered suing over them. Well, not seriously.
Suing Google is a popular move right now, though, and I suppose Frezza and Rodriguez couldn’t resist. The case could turn into a class-action suit. How far will it go?
Besides billing mishaps, the article states,
Both entrepreneurs allege in their complaint that the company refused to delete their billing information. They argue that California law requires merchants to delete financial data upon request when it’s no longer needed. They also allege that Google’s retention of the data places them ‘at a heightened risk of identity theft, fraud and catastrophic financial loss.’
Yeah, them and anyone else who has ever entered account information at a merchant site. If you want to protect your sensitive info, keep it off the Internet. Ever heard of a prepaid debit card? Problem solved.
Cynthia Murrell, February 9, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
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