Google Filtering Tool Ushers YouTube into Classrooms
March 23, 2012
Good filtering makes for good teaching? Perhaps, as the New York Times suggests in “YouTube Subtracts Racy and Raucous to Add a Teaching Tool.” Primary and secondary schools have long been hesitant to tap into YouTube’s free and often quality educational videos, afraid of what other content their students might encounter along the way. Last December, though, YouTube owner Google provided a portal to content that has been vetted for student use and scrubbed of their unpredictable comments sections. Teachers and school officials seem pleased at the development. Journalist Stephanie Strom writes:
At a time when financially ailing states are slashing public education budgets and there is mounting evidence of a widening achievement gap between rich and poor students, schools can ill afford to turn off a free source of credible, often premium, educational tools. Robert Gulick, director of technology in the Washington Local Schools in Toledo, Ohio, said, ‘If we didn’t have a system for filtering it, we couldn’t partake, but we do now, and at a time of declining resources, it is a great way to find additional materials.’
That may be, but is this sophisticated censorship really the way to go? Censorship by another other name still makes it tough to search what is not there. That might not be so bad when we’re talking about minors who just need to make sense of the periodic table, but to what other uses might this technology be put in the future?
Call me old fashioned, but I like books in the classroom.
Cynthia Murrell, March 23, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Amazon and Distribution Changes
March 23, 2012
Major online retailer, Amazon, is in the process of relaxing its policies regarding its ebook distribution. In the article “Amazon Publishing to Sell Series of eBooks Outside the Kindle Store,” we learn a little more about the decision to spread the wealth.
The recent retaliation of Barnes and Noble and other wholesale booksellers against Amazon has sparked a change in how Amazon will continue to do business. Barnes and Noble, as well as other booksellers, pulled the print editions of books published by Amazon Publishing from their shelves this month in retaliation to Amazon’s “Kindle store only” policy. It is a policy that Barnes and Noble management believes undermines the industry and creates monopoly.
In response to their action, Amazon announced that its latest series of short biographies will be sold outside of the Amazon marketplace. No word on whether the other stores will pick up the books but Amazon has assured the public that they want their books to be distributed as widely as possible.
Amazon has confirmed that its latest addition to the Amazon Publishing roster, a series of short biographies edited by James Atlas, will indeed be sold outside of the Amazon ecosystem in both print and ebook form.
Why is it that Amazon is ridiculed for its apparent lack of availability when Apple has long had a foothold in the marketplace as a “buy here, pay here only” business? Apple products are available at your nearest electronics provider (as are Amazon Kindles). Yet when it comes to content, you must go through iTunes in order to utilize all aspects of your product.
We think that a distribution shift is an important part of access. Are consumers and search lost in the mulcher?
Stephen E Arnold, March 20, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Bing and Desperation Marketing
March 23, 2012
I coined the bound phrase “desperation marketing” as part of the tests I conduct to determine what gets indexed and how. I thought it, like “exogenous complexity” and “endogenous simplicity” contributed by my colleague in Israel were sufficiently fresh to return some useful data.
I had no idea that “desperation marketing” would become a useful concept. In fact, when I read “Two Bing Marketers Fired for ‘Mismanaging Company Assets,’ Violating Procurement Policy” I was surprised. The story explains that some alleged missteps were taken by some Microsoft executives. “Missteps” and “executives” have become terms which I don’t like to see adjacent.
Here’s the fuzzy passage from the news item:
Microsoft said its internal inquiry had found the two in violation of internal guidelines dictating relationships with outside vendors, which includes any number of partners, agencies or media companies. Mr. Hadley served as general manager, worldwide marketing for Bing, Microsoft’s search engine. He helped orchestrate Bing’s sponsorship of Jay-Z’s book launch party and Lebron James’ “The Decision.” Mr. Carver was Bing’s advertising director.
If find it interesting that marketing executives get into situations where alleged desperate measures are required. Even “clever” maneuvers, although amusing to me, underscore the stress under which some professionals find themselves. I don’t even get to the issues of business ethics. The financial pressure cooker or maybe the desire to be a winner is what catches my attention.
Who would have thought that “desperation marketing” is a valid way to describe certain alleged tactics.
Stephen E Arnold, March 23, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Accessing Unstructured Data across Various Platforms of Digitally Published Content
March 23, 2012
One of the key components to successful collaboration is the accessibility of the digitally published content in the information environment, whether it is a wiki, portal, document, blog, etc. In “Communities vs. Portals, Blogs, Wikis, Documents, and More,” the author weighs-in on the issue as it relates to providing relevant and dynamic information to users in an effective way.
The author had this to say:
Communities encourage participation by definition as much as they allow for consumption. And activity streams provide an easy and efficient way to aggregate, consume, share, and engage. With that said, some people like to see a bunch of boxes on a web page in a dashboard / newspaper type view. Fair enough…Of course the value of that information in the portal becomes much less because people can only consume in a traditional portal vs. taking some type of action to collaborate on or share the information & knowledge you have just gained.
The author argues for providing all users, even the ones that don’t yet embrace social business and stick to static publishing, with the ability to subscribe and share. If you have vast amounts of unstructured data in your organization, look to increase the value of your information assets with a third party solution, like Fabasoft Mindbreeze.
No matter where your information is held, on-premise or in the Cloud, Mindbreeze search allows users to easily find and access business knowledge. Here you can read about the user-friendly interface that your tech-laggard users will appreciate.
The Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise user interface is based on Web 2.0 technology and combines simplicity with elegance. The operation is self-explanatory. Work just as you are used to. Access your data from anywhere. Also on smartphones and tablets. Elegant design, easy operation. With you wherever you are. Find and access your enterprise and cloud information straight away.
So while experts in the field continue to discuss ways to increase user adoption through dynamic portals, Fabasoft Mindbreeze is a comprehensive search solution with an intuitive interface out-of-the-box that you can deploy now.
Philip West, March 23, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Kenesto Leading the Way in Business Process Automation
March 23, 2012
Manufacturers are constantly faced with new trials and tribulations. Business process automation is helping ease that burden. As discussed in “Solving PLM Process Problems with Kenesto” , Kenesto, an automation company, is “challenging the traditional solutions by offering something valuable yet less complex.”
Kenesto focuses on effective and efficient communication. They aim to keep things simple and their solutions are designed “to make it very easy to implement ad-hoc processes.” So what does Kenesto do?
- Product development / product lifecycle management involve lots of people, and they need to communicate. Kenesto does that.
- That communication benefits from the ability to share information with the group. Kenesto does that through attachments (and some level of data, that I still need to understand a bit better).
- The communication benefits from having a status and named participants, with knowledge of what has been done and who is due to act. Kenesto does that.
Communication is the key to successful product development. Product data also needs to be shared in a similar way. Like Kenesto, Inforbix is focused on sharing product data throughout a company in a simple and effective manner. Their software helps find, share and reuse engineering and manufacturing data. Kenesto and Inforbix are making huge strides in communication and we expect the best is yet to come.
Jennifer Wensink, March 23, 2012
Check Your BLOB Cache Lately?
March 22, 2012
It’s 9 a.m. Do you know what your BLOB cache is doing?
SharePoint users everywhere are discovering there’s a little more to using the software’s binary large object (BLOB) cache than to just set it and forget it, according to a recent post on the SharePoint Interface blog site.
Using SharePoint’s BLOB cache without altering a few important attributes from their out-of-the-box values will lessen the strain on your SQL servers and speed up a site’s performance by storing large objects like images, video and CSS in a system’s Web front ends.
But just using the SharePoint BLOB cache without a little tweaking can wind up sending a Web publication’s audience different content than expected, warns SharePoint blogger Sean McDonough.
“The SharePoint BLOB Cache is a powerful mechanism to improve farm performance and scalability, but it shouldn’t be turned on without some forethought and a couple of changes to the default BLOB cache element attribute values,” McDonough writes in his post Do You Know What’s Going to Happen When You Enable the SharePoint BLOB Cache?.
Specifically, the author cautions about using the default max age limit for a specific object on a given page – like an image, for example. According to McDonough, in allowing SharePoint’s BLOB cache attribute defaults to stand, the image intended to remain indefinitely on a page may only last 24 hours.
Other attributes to consider modifying to a specific environment include allowing for Web applications used in multiple zones by setting specific attributes appropriate for each (an internal and a public zone, for example) and changing path expressions to curtail what files call the BLOB cache home.
Obviously, each environment has different needs and resources to deal with them. Hiring an outside system architecture consultant like Search Technologies is a good move.
So whether it’s an online product catalog at hand or a Website dedicated to traveling the world on a budget, using SharePoint’s BLOB cache feature can really speed things up but think before just firing it up right out of the box.
Jonathan Tressler, March 22, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Sinequa Rings Up eCommerce
March 22, 2012
Enterprise search software company Sinequa has posted a recent news release, announcing that Sinequa Business Search has been selected to facilitate customer product searches, entitled “INFOMIL, a Subsidiary of E.LECLERC, Selects SINEQUA to Facilitate Consumer Choice in Group Stores.”
According to the article, Sinequa Business Search linguistic and semantic capabilities can propose relevant product references based on questions that are vague or specific. It does this by creating: a specific search structure, better access to cultural and food products, and structured auto-completion to support customers.
When discussing the specific search structure, Denis Dargelos, Design and Development Manager at Infomil states:
With Sinequa Business Search, we offer consumers and aisle managers quick, flexible access to the products of their choice. We could even say that we guide them from a vague idea to a specific product. Merely adding an interface layer on top of SQL queries to search in our product database would not have provided the same level of flexibility and user service.
Sinequa Business Search is an excellent new offering to help both customers and businesses alike with their enterprise search needs. Sinequa has become quiet in the last few months. Our question is, “Is the company in transition or for sale?” We are monitoring the news or lack of it.
Jasmine Ashton, March 22, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Apelon Releases DTS 4.0
March 22, 2012
Apelon Medical Terminology in Practice recently posted a news release introducing the latest version of its open source terminology management software titled “Apelon Introduces Distributed Terminology System 4.0”
According to the article, Apelon’s latest DTS is a comprehensive open-source solution for the acquisition, management and practical deployment of standardized healthcare terminologies. It is built on the JEE platform allows for simplified integration into existing enterprise systems.
The article states:
DTS users easily manage the complete terminology lifecycle. The system provides the ability to transparently view, query, and browse across terminology versions. This facilitates the management of rapidly evolving standards such as SNOMED CT, ICD-10-CM, LOINC and RxNorm, and supports their use for longitudinal electronic health records. Local vocabularies, subsets and cross-maps can be versioned and queried in the same way, meaning that DTS users can tailor and adapt standards to their particular needs.
The advance of technological terms in the medical industry that need to be referenced quickly and accurately, has precipitated the need for enhanced functionality in terminology management tools. The latest version of this software is easier to use than its predecessors and will help even more institutions integrate the latest decision support technologies into their daily work. We are monitoring the vertical search in this market sector.
Jasmine Ashton, March 22, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Will More Companies Leave Google Maps?
March 22, 2012
Here’s an interesting observation, or will be if this really does become a trend: Digital Trends asks, “Why Are Companies Defecting from Google Maps?” Writer Geoff Duncan notes that both Foursquare and Apple are reducing their usage of Google Maps. Two withdrawals, however, do not necessarily mean more are on the way. If more do follow, we will know that Duncan was on to something.
The article supplies a brief history of mapping and route-planning services, a field in which Google came from behind players like MapQuest to dominate the market. It helped that Google was giving away the service for free, and even helping third parties use it on their sites. That is Google’s usual path to domination, after all.
There is, however, a reason other companies have not followed Google’s lead in this direction: the mapping and routing process calls for a lot of man-hours, even in the digital age. Last autumn, even Google introduced a paid version. Duncan writes:
“Google first announced plans to begin monetizing Google Maps nearly a year ago, including a requirement that any new services forward display advertising in Google Maps along to their end users, so Google could start generating advertising revenue from the service. The hammer truly dropped in October 2011, when Google finally revealed pricing for Google Maps services. Lightweight usage was still free — subject to terms of service, of course. However, significant load volumes would begin to incur charges: basically, services and applications that generated more 25,000 map loads per day would be charged $40 to $10 for every additional 1,000 map loads. For folks using styled maps — the most intensive and customized option — the initial threshold is 2,500 maps per day.”
That’s a lot of maps, and the vast majority of sites using the service would remain un-charged. For behemoths like Foursquare and Apple, however, it seems that it may have made the difference; the trial period ended shortly before these companies (mostly) jumped ship. Only time will tell whether other Google users will follow their lead.
Stephen E. Arnold, March 22, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com <http://www.pandia.com/enterprise-search>
How to Create Your Own Oracle Text Index
March 22, 2012
The Swiss-Army Development blog recently released some useful information about key word search with Oracle Text in the post “Keyword Search via Oracle Text.”
The post attempts to create a foundation for using Oracle Text to implement full text search in a table. It takes readers step-by-step through the process of building the back end of an Oracle Text Index and then leveraging that index to include full text search.
The writer states the reasoning behind this project:
“Oracle text is a feature available in the Oracle Database and is used to provide keyword search indexing to large blocks of text and even binary formatted files like Word and PDF files. As part of a project I am working on, I need to create a keyword search index that spans multiple columns. This will allow my users to search for keywords in the title, abstract and content of a note entered into the system. The note could be in the form of an uploaded file, or it could be manually entered through the interface.”
The Swiss wash their cows, useful activity if not germane to milk, cheese, and beef.
Similar to Oracle Text perhaps?
Stephen E. Arnold, March 22, 2012
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