Is NASA Technically Savvy?
March 6, 2012
I don’t know about you, but I would think twice about any technology NASA selects. This applies to Windows SharePoint, taxonomy systems, search, and maybe hand sanitizer. Why? I read “NASA Admits to Being Hacked 13 Times Last Year.” If true, not good. How about this passage’s allegation:
The space agency reported to Congress this week that it had been hacked a total of 13 times last year, including one China-based attack that gained complete access and control of mission critical systems as well as employee accounts.
If you want to go into space, NASA is out of the game. Probably a good idea. If I want to search for NASA data, should I use Jike.com?
Stephen E Arnold, March 6, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Yahoo Loses a Wizard: Raghavan Jumps to the GOOG
March 5, 2012
Flash back to 2007. My Google Version 2.0 was in press but BearStearns learned about the study and asked me to create a short version of Ramanathan Guha’s Programmable Search Engine (PSE) chapter in my monograph, Google Version 2.0.
The BearStearns’ document was “Google’s Semantic Web: The Radical change Coming to Search and the Profound Implications to Yahoo! & Microsoft”, published May 16, 2007, by the BearStearns’ equity research unit. Maybe a former BearStearns’ wizard will have a copy of this document. I am not permitted to make mine available, but a single quote seems appropriate. One key point in the Guha semantic write up was:
“For Yahoo!, we believ3e it does not have the balance sheet, technical expertise, or patent availability to copy Google’s moves and is left with three choices: 1) Ignore Google, 2) Partner with a larger tech focused firms, or 3) outsource search to Google.” (Page 1)
As we now know in 2012, Yahoo ignored Google, blew off Microsoft, and began a drift to the margins of the epicenter of online revenue. Forget semantics, Yahoo management between 2007 and the most recent upheaval sort of watched the world go by.
You are affected by the semantic wizards work when you use Google to some degree, but it is a “plumbing” solution. Users don’t see Google semantics and the labors of Drs. Guha, Halevy, and others. Now BearStearns is history, risen the the place in heaven where bridge players and Type A MBAs go when a big US financial ship goes under.
In the New York office in 2007, I participated in a call from a person (Prabhakar Raghavan, whom I knew only from his conference presentations at the late but not lamented Boston Search Engine Meeting.)
When I learned that Dr. Raghavan would be on the “push back” call about the BearStearns’ Guha report and the PSE I flashed back to an April in the late 1980s. There was a downright memorable presentation by a well credential PhD from Verity. The speaker upon whom my lousy memory flashed was Dr. Prabhakar Raghavan. His talk from the late 1980s tickled my hippocampus. At that Search Engine Meeting, he enthusiastically explained how Verity, then an increasingly financially challenged search vendor with out-of-date technology–wanted to charge customers by “cell” of data traversed when performing query processing. The notion of taxi meter approach to enterprise search was unusual and somewhat interesting. Even in the late 1980s, the amount of digital data people wanted to search within an enterprise was growing each month. But variable or taxi meter pricing was going to be a tough sell. I interpreted the idea with this metaphor: an out of balance wheel on a 1985 Crown Victoria taxi. I thought it was more prudent to covert to a limo service with corporate accounts, fixed rates, and a predictable revenue stream.
Now back to 2007 in the Big Apple sitting about the Polycom listening to the ghostly voices in Silicon Valley:
On that Yahoo 2007 call with BearStearns and Dr.Raghavan about my report on the PSE and its possible impact on Google’s position in Web search, I wrote down this note to myself:
Raghavan… “We have semantic technology at Yahoo. Just watch what we do with it.”
This quote was one I tucked away. Frankly there was nothing to watch. But despite his apparent authority, it was far short of his fascinating statement about charging by the cell when a Verity licensee ran a query.
Now Dr. Raghavan has moved to Google. I learned this in the “Exclusive: Yahoo Labs Head Raghavan Departing to Google” write up by Kara Swisher. She reported:
Prabhakar Raghavan, the well-respected head of Yahoo’s Labs unit and also recently its head of strategy, is leaving the company to take a job at Google. The departure comes ahead of possibly deep cuts in his division, which is in charge of long-term research at the Silicon Valley Internet giant, said sources.
Will Dr. Raghavan contribute to semantic activities at Google or will he provide pricing inputs? Yahoo and semantics never buried the needle on my excitement meter. To be fair, semantic technology is a work in progress in my opinion.
The pricing approach, articulated when he was affiliated with Verity, did pique my interest. Worth watching what projects on which he will labor at the GOOG. I hope it is pricing. Dr. Raghavan’s ideas may be exactly what Googzilla needs.
Stephen E Arnold, March 5, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Protected: Look Before You Leap With SharePoint
March 5, 2012
Protected: Collecting SharePoint Metadata about Users
March 5, 2012
Inteltrax: Top Stories, February 27 to March 2
March 5, 2012
Inteltrax, the data fusion and business intelligence information service, captured three key stories germane to search this week, more precisely, a cherry picking of hot topics regarding the world of big data analytics.
In “Big Data Rescues Publishing” we showcase the ways that dashboards and predictive tools can help rescue the siabout teamworknking ships of newspapers and printed books.
This year has been all in big data and “Oracle and Teradata Show Big Partnering Trend” shows how two of the biggest names in the business are shaking hands to get more work accomplished.
However, not all is rosy, as “Unstructured Data Could Cause Intellectual Property Headaches” , especially when dealing with the sticky subject of who owns the rights to much of the unstructured data people are utilizing.
It’s a wide spectrum of excitement and intrigue that big data news is cut from. We’re keeping our ear to the ground in order to cover it all, every day.
Follow the Inteltrax news stream by visiting www.inteltrax.com
Patrick Roland, Editor, Inteltrax, March 5, 2012
Increase SharePoint User Adoption with Mindbreeze
March 5, 2012
SharePoint 2010 is no doubt a ubiquitous content management platform, but not all employees jump on the bandwagon so quickly. Communication experts Sam Marshall and Camilla Herrmann weigh-in on the SharePoint user adoption debate in, “Are Employees Rejecting SharePoint?”
Marshall and Herrmann both point out that SharePoint is a powerful application, but Marshall brings the focus to a uSamp survey released last year that revealed 80 percent of organizations using SharePoint said employees continue to share documents as email attachments.
Harrmann offers this rebuttal:
Perhaps the most collaborative tool in the Swiss Army penknife that makes up SharePoint is the people search. Properly configured, updated and linked to My Site profiles, it’s the way to find the person that you need in a large organization. Once you have tracked them down, however you collaborate after that, SharePoint has done its job.
SharePoint success among your employees may be determined by how you define collaboration and your expectations for the software. Perhaps rating documents for usefulness, people search, and forum comments are all features that can serve as a gateway introduction to the social enterprise arena. But with the core list and library features, SharePoint can, and should, be doing much more for your employees. Marshall argues the user interface is particularly unpleasant and does not charm the lay-user employee that is inclined to modern Web sites that are increasingly informative, aesthetically pleasing, and functioning with real-time data.
To fill in the user-interface gaps in your SharePoint system, consider a third party application. We like the good reviews for the Fabasoft Mindbreeze suite of solutions. With clear navigation and a self-explanatory interface, Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise facilitates findability.
Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise finds every scrap of information within a very short time, whether document, contract, note, e-mail or calendar entry, in intranet or internet, person- or text-related. The software solution finds all required information, regardless of source, for its users. Get a comprehensive overview of corporate knowledge in seconds without redundancy or loss of data.
While debates abound about SharePoint user-adoption, Mindbreeze can save employees time by connecting them to the right information via a user-friendly interface. Navigate to www.mindbreeze.com to read more.
Philip West, March 5, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Siemens and LEGO Join Forces for PLM Solutions
March 5, 2012
Most people either grew up playing with LEGOS or watched their children enjoy the plastic blocks by the hundreds. These seemingly simple toys are moving to the next level in full fashion with the adoption of a complete PLM solution to manage their building block empire. LEGO recently announced at their eleventh annual world fair that they are adopting Siemens technology to further aid in production and management of the growing company’s needs.
In a related blog post on Siemens website, Jerry Safati, Marketing Manager for NX at Siemens, wrote of the announcement:
“Going beyond the physical brick and into augmented reality, video games and mobile applications, Lego is using NX and Teamcenter software to design, control and manage the data that is needed to create new products. More than 40,000 people who attended the show were able to see the technology first hand, which is the result of a 20 year partnership with Lego.”
LEGO’s adoption of complete PLM solutions is proof that PLM has moved beyond the world of manufacturing and packaging industries and is now a necessity in every industry. Leaders in the PLM world offer far more than time-saving measures and are increasingly turning to the cloud for product data access. With more data than ever being shuffled between departments within any given company the need for PLM to effectively and efficiently enable users to find, share and reuse information should be the top priority when choosing a PLM provider.
Catherine Lamsfuss, March 3, 2012
Open Source Projects at GitHub
March 5, 2012
We’ve run across a couple of interesting open source components on the collaboration site GitHub. Founded in 2008, the site hosts over two million code repositories and provides tools with which subscribers can manage their projects. The two we’d like to highlight are the Nutch-Elasticsearch-Indexer and MongoDB.
The Nutch-Elasticsearch-Indexer allows for the indexing of crawl data from the Nutch search system into the ElasticSearch system. The project’s Readme explains:
“This is similar in nature to that of the SolrIndexer that comes with Nutch which let you index directly into Solr. This provides a way directly index data into elasticsearch coming directly from Nutch.
This is just the code necessary to create the solution. You must start by having the Nutch codebase and have it setup in your development environment (Eclipse) see http://wiki.apache.org/nutch/RunNutchInEclipse for how do this. Once you are set up and is working well. You are ready to get started. The following files below are necessary to integrate into the Nutch base and then re-build Nutch.”
Participating developers must have access to the Nutch source and an ElasticSearch environment. See the GitHub project page for further details.
The page on MongoDB is the other project here that sparked our interest. It includes developer details such as related utilities; where to do for info on building a database; how to run Mongo; client drivers; documentation; build notes; and licensing information. We are pleased to see that this page sees a fair amount of activity.
Maybe the search mantra should be, “Go, open source”?
Cynthia Murrell, March 5, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Registration Now Open for AppRapids Conference
March 5, 2012
Beyond Search and AppRapids have announced that registration is open for the first AppRapids Conference in Louisville, Kentucky on March, 28, 2012.
The enterprise information service, AppRapids, is a Monday through Friday service which focuses on app-related issues in the digital world. AppRapids targets important developments in the field and provides critical comments about these developments.
The one-day conference, held at WorkShop, the Creative Workplace, will bring together participants and speakers, allowing everyone to collaborate and share ideas and insights in the field of mobile applications.
The press release, “Apps are Where it’s at: Register Now for AppRapids Conference” tells us more:
“Apps have been integrated into every aspect of life on both personal and professional levels. However, a lack of knowledge, and consequently agency, exists among many app users and potential app creators. Apps have roots in the past, are impacting the present, and will construct the future. Conference sessions will range from planning and development to implementation and business implications. Speakers will provide details of real-life use cases, best practices and lessons learned.”
The conference will include presentations by women and minorities, and discounted rates are available for students and Seed2020 members. Conference sponsors include: Arnold IT, PolySpot, WorkShop, the Creative Workplace, and Interactive Media Lab.
To register and view the schedule and speaker information, head over to http://www.apprapids.com/conference-registration/.
Stephen E Arnold, March 5, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Sales Needs at Accounting Consultancy Accenture?
March 5, 2012
Short honk: I am decades away from the Booz, Allen & Hamilton world. However, I pay attention when senior insiders perform a disappearing act and the top dog talks about the new guy. Navigate to “Accenture Technology Chief in Abrupt Departure.” The factoid (assuming it is accurate, of course) upon which my attention seized was:
Before that he [the new guy] also led sales at Hewitt Associates.
One word fired like a green light laser, “sales.” My view is that experience in benefits consulting is pretty much irrelevant. Accenture wants to ramp up the dough from its technology practice. The old guy may have known bits and bytes, but the new guy has the key qualification—sales. The need for sales reaches to the heights of MBA-land and accounting excitement.
Worth watching. Try searching for these high level partners. Not much there there, is there?
Stephen E Arnold, March 5, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
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