Yandex Expands to Storage
April 13, 2012
Yandex is getting frisky or ??????.
Yandex, the leading Russian search engine responsible for 63 percent of search traffic in Russia in, has launched a beta version of a free service that allows users to store their files online, according to the Taume.com article “Yandex Launches Free Storage Service.”
The service, known as Yandex.Disk, allows web users to access their stored files from any internet-enabled device and upload up to 10 GB of files in any format be it documents, photos, music, or videos. Yandex.Disk also automatically saves all attachments to the emails in their Yandex.Mail account which has additional storage space for this purpose.
The article states:
“Yandex.Disk supports synchronization between multiple devices, for example, a text file saved on a home computer can be opened and edited on a laptop at work. Yandex.Disk is accessible via a web interface, as well as via Windows or Mac OS GUI client. Owners of iOS- or Android-based smartphones can also use the service via the Yandex.Mail app.”
Could this be the beginning of a tech Cold War? If Yandex continues integrating its products outside the U.S. and becomes the default search engine for Google rivals such as Apple the American search giant may have finally met its match. What happens if Yandex gets the idea of Amazonizing itself?
Jasmine Ashton, April 13, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Amazon CloudSearch Demo Available
April 13, 2012
Search Technologies, a search and content processing consulting firm, has a public demonstration of the new Amazon CloudSearch system. The corpus for the demo is Wikipedia. You can check out the demonstration at this link. I ran a query for one of my favorite math guys “Euler”, and this is the result the system displayed. I noticed a latency of about three seconds, but your mileage may vary. With the announcement of the Amazon CloudSearch service, clicking and testing were probably keeping the AWS infrastructure busy.
Several features have been tapped by the Search Technologies’ engineers:
- Facets or hot link to Article Type, Category, and Most Recent Author are display
- The snippet averages about 70 words
- The Categories have a slight highlight.
For more information about Amazon CloudSearch, you can start with Amazon’s own information pages.
For information about Search Technologies, navigate to www.searchtechnologies.com.
Stephen E Arnold, April 12, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Amazon CloudSearch
April 12, 2012
Well, some of the folks working to bolt a search and retrieval system into “big data”, mobile apps, and cloud vendors’ systems are trying to figure out what to do about Jeff Bezos. The head of Amazon has taken time from his space flight activities to disrupt the world of cloud-based search and retrieval.
The announcements were handled in Amazon’s typical mode. Those who were privy to the new service, which is based on A9 with what looks like some open source goodness inside, had to keep quite. Then Amazon published a chunk of Web pages about the service. You can find most of the basics in this CloudSearch documentation collection.
There are two general interest type blog posts. You may want to check out Dr. Werner Vogels’ “Expanding the Cloud—Introducing Amazon CloudSearch” and the AWS Blog story “Amazon CloudSearch—Start Searching in One Hour for Less Than $100 / Month.”
The system is the “old” A9 search service which received some early life support from Udi Manber, now a Googler. But the features and functions referenced in the documentation suggest that additional work has been done to make facets, snippets, highlighting, and graphic features take advantage of some open source goodness. However, Amazon takes some care to make sure that the provider of the open source goodness is tough to grab. The best example of this method is Amazon’s handling of the Android operating system for the Kindle Fire. Beneath the sluggish interface of the Kindle Fire beats the heart of Android 2.x. Even the Amazon app store runs certain apps, not all of them. The approach works and keeps many of Amazon’s secrets from turning up in Gawker or trendy Silicon Valley blogs. Amazon secrecy is not quite Apple grade, but Amazon is familiar with the orchard.
According to Expanding the Cloud – Introducing Amazon CloudSearch:
Developers set up a Search Domain — a set of resources in AWS that will serve as the home for one collection of data. Developers then access their domain through two HTTP-based endpoints: a document upload endpoint and a query endpoint. As developers send documents to the upload endpoint they are quickly incorporated into the searchable index and become searchable.
Developers can upload data either through the AWS console, from the command-line tools, or by sending their own HTTP POST requests to the upload endpoint.
There are three features that make it easy to configure and customize the search results to meet exactly the needs of the application.
Filtering: Conceptually, this is using a match in a document field to restrict the match set. For example, if documents have a “color” field, you can filter the matches for the color “red”.
Ranking: Search has at least two major phases: matching and ranking. The query specifies which documents match, generating a match set. After that, scores are computed (or direct sort criterion is applied) for each of the matching documents to rank them best to worst. Amazon CloudSearch provides the ability to have customized ranking functions to fine tune the search results.
Faceting: Faceting allows you to categorize your search results into refinements on which the user can further search. For example, a user might search for ‘umbrellas’, and facets allow you to group the results by price, such as $0-$10, $10-$20, $20-$40, etc. Amazon CloudSearch also allows for result counts to be included in facets, so that each refinement has a count of the number of documents in that group. The example could then be: $0-$10 (4 items), $10-$20 (123 items), $20-$40 (57 items), etc.
For more information on the different configuration possibilities visit the Amazon CloudSearch detail page.
Automatic Scaling: Amazon CloudSearch is itself built on AWS, which enables it to handle scale.
Okay, automatic. This sounds like the standard line from every cloud vendor with knowledge of sharding, distributed computing, and work allocation. We noted that the system supports Boolean logic and math operations. That’s good news and long overdue from Amazon.
Our take on Amazon CloudSearch is that Amazon has introduced a service which will allow developers to get out of the business of figuring out how to bolt a third party search solution to their Amazon content. For organizations looking for a silver bullet to kill the on premises search systems, Amazon has taken a quick step into the search disco.
Will Amazon’s CloudSearch become a viable alternative for on premises search? Will Amazon’s new service put additional pressure on the big enterprise companies like Hewlett Packard and Oracle. Both of these outfits have spent big money buying ageing findability solutions. What about Microsoft with its ubiquitous search solutions included with SharePoint? What happens to mid tier vendors like Lexmark Isys or start ups like DataStax and its Enterprise 2.0 service?
We don’t know. What we do know is that Amazon, unlike Google and Facebook, has found a way to enter a service space without looking much like a head on competitor to any other company. Google has not moved too far from its on premises Google Search Appliance. Facebook continues to dither when it comes to full-on search. Amazon’s challenge will be getting its costs under control and finding a way to placate the Wall Street MBAs. Search on Amazon is, in our opinion, a service which is in dire need of improvement.
Perhaps the CloudSearch will impact the way Amazon.com’s book search works? I am still struggling to find a way to NOT out books which are not yet available. I find the method of coping with titles on the iPad 3 Kindle reading app almost unusable.
Can Amazon do better? Yes. Will CloudSearch be that important leap forward? I don’t know. But I am watching, and I have a hunch that other search vendors, partners, and integrators are checking out this most recent blast from Bezos Land.
Stephen E Arnold, April 12, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
SEO: Heading for a Change
April 12, 2012
This year is likely to bring about consolidation in the search engine optimization industry, according to the article, “Search Marketers Should Brace For Industry Consolidation.”
Modern corporations want functionality without the inconvenience of dealing with multiple providers. This is a common complaint in the business world. In most cases companies must utilize more than one provider in order to meet all their needs.
A good example is BoostCTR which is a performance driven and optimization firm. They offered an enterprise business that will focus on improving click through rates and return investments for an anonymous search engine that can control the algorithms around search results. However they cannot monitor the profit rate and would have to depend on another provider to do so.
According to IgnitionOne’s president Roger Barnette:
“The stakes are high right now, Marketers are suffering. They are trying to sell stuff, and there are too many different companies offering services and industry jargon to get the job done correctly. You have 15 different companies. Enterprises want companies that can support all their needs.”
There is an old saying ‘One for all, and all for one.’ That is an ideal phrase that covers the current desires of today’s entrepreneur. Thus, in order to cater to modern businesses, the search engine optimization industry is likely to undergo some significant change. Long time coming to the outfits who undermined relevance for free Web search.
Jennifer Shockley, April 12, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Complexities of Enterprise Search
April 12, 2012
As more enterprise options flood the market, one would expect the task of tackling enterprise search to be simplified, but it has not been the case. Alan Pelz-Sharpe dives into the complexities of enterprise search infrastructure in the aptly named, “Enterprise Search Is Not Easy.” Three major players dominate the search market: Google, Microsoft, and Apache Lucene. However, a big ship can be hard to turn:
“The enterprise search market can well be described as ‘slow moving.’ Though the names change over the years, the underlying technology remains much as it was a decade ago. On the one hand, this is a positive thing because it has delivered mature, scalable, well-tested offerings that generally work well. On the other hand, we have search engines that continue to fall short of end users’ expectations (no matter how unrealistic those expectations may be). As has become the norm, expectations are set largely by Internet search experiences via the likes of Google and Bing – a very different search paradigm with few of the necessary restrictions or challenges of enterprise search.”
So if employees are truly end-users, and demand a good user experience for their enterprise appliance, how does an organization choose the right fit? Pelz-Sharpe weighs in again:
“For IT managers faced with updating or replacing existing search technology, I advise you to look at the different options available; it’s not just a two or three-horse race. There are many interesting options to explore from vendors including Endeca, Vivisimo, dtSearch and Exalead, each with differing strengths and weaknesses. Whichever option you finally decide upon, if your ultimate goal is to provide a single point for search within your organization, do not underestimate the complexity and potential cost of your project.”
We would add another up-and-coming industry success story to the list of third-party vendors above, Fabasoft Mindbreeze. Many customers offer their recommendation for Mindbreeze, especially regarding its flawless Cloud capabilities. Wolf Hengstberger of ADV Austria says:
“As head of IT and organization at ADV, I found the solution particularly impressive. After registering for the service on the Mindbreeze website, we immediately received the necessary embed code for the integration in our website. The search was available straight away. Exactly what I expect a contemporary modern Cloud service to be: Quick. Flexible. Easy.”
Check out the suite of enterprise and search solutions offered by Fabasoft Mindbreeze and see if they can simplify the complexities of enterprise for your organization.
Emily Rae Aldridge, April 12, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Google Asserts No Android Fragmentation
April 12, 2012
In the iPhone versus Android mobile battle, Android may be about to suffer a huge loss.Tech News World recently reported on the issue of fragmentation causing Android developers to flee in the article “Is Fragmentation Breaking the Android Dev’s Will?”
According to the article, due to the continued fragmentation of its operating system, developers are starting to lose interest in developing apps for Android. Based on information derived from a survey conducted by Appcelerator and IDC at the beginning of the new year, Android phone app development fell by nearly five percentage points over the past quarter to about 79 percent and interest in Android tablets fell just over 2 percent to about 66 percent.
The article states:
“Google’s (Nasdaq: GOOG) own figures show that many different versions of Android are current being used. Google statistics regarding the number of active devices accessing Google Play over two weeks ending March 5 found that 62 percent ran Gingerbread, or Android 2.3. Another roughly 25 percent ran Froyo, or Android 2.2. Eclair, or Android 2.1, was used by 6.6 percent of the devices.”
However, will some mobile outfits just take the open source version of Android and make an Amazon-like version? We don’t know but you may find these phones presaging the future.
Jasmine Ashton, April 12, 2012
The Question of PLM or Not to PLM
April 12, 2012
Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) is a hot button issue with its share of skeptics. Does PLM assist with complex problems or is it a rigid computer program that makes it impossible to work with? Adam Ohern takes a look at both sides in his article “Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) Software: The War Rages On.”
Ohern says that PLM is making life easier for designers and manufacturers by linking everything from engineering to logistics. However, the cynics find PLM software to be oppressive and too structured to make things easier.
“The PLM-skeptic crowd see PLM software systems as antithetical to a truly creative, dynamic working culture. They see PLM as a way of squeezing every last inch of flexibility out of a system, and forcing everyone in an organization to comply with a particular way of thinking and working.”
Even though PLM is a source of conflict, it is definitely a step in the right direction. As it evolves and becomes more integrated into companies, we believe that the skeptics will lessen. Innovative software companies like Inforbix are making sure of that. They are revolutionizing the way companies find, reuse and share product data. Companies are starting to take notice and we believe that PLM will eventually win this war.
Jennifer Wensink, April 12, 2012
Now the Gartner Nexus
April 12, 2012
The Nexus? Perhaps Gartner is the azure chip outfit behind the rush of certain search and content processing vendors to the customer service market niche?
Industry analyst firm Gartner, Inc. is attempting to introduce a new term into the world of information, as Business 2 Community notes in “Harnessing ‘the Nexus’ for Deeper Employee and Customer Engagement.”
Basically, writer Mark Myers explains, “the Nexus” is the collection of all things social media, cloud computing, mobile, and big data. Any recent technology that has changed how we live and work, basically. Interesting concept, but it seems to me that “harnessing the nexus” is even less clear than “information optimization”.
Whatever you want to call it, Myers believes he is on to the key with Vivisimo’s CXO Mobile app, the release of which he helped to plan. He asserts that having myriad data tools available on a smartphone will give a huge advantage over having to pull out a laptop. The write up declares:
“A customer-facing professional can hold in their hand access to systems as diverse and powerful as CRM, content management, supply chain management, ERP, business intelligence and more, all fused in a contextually-relevant way that gives them a better view of their customers and partners. Rather than burying them in data, CXO Mobile pushes the right information and engagement power ‘to the edge’ to enable mobile workers to accomplish more without anchoring themselves to a desk.”
Well, ok, that app does seem useful. However, does it really add anything of value to embrace vague categories like “the Nexus”? It seems to me that it only adds the potential for confusion.
Gartner, Inc. is a prominent IT research and advisory company serving thousands of organizations. Founded way back in 1979, the company is headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut.
Cynthia Murrell, April 12, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Desktop Search Moves to the Cloud
April 12, 2012
Tech Crunch’s Colleen Taylor recently reported on a new app called Found, that lets you find and access your documents whether they are on your computer or online, in the article “Found Makes Searching for Files Anywhere Super Simple (and Really Sick).”
According to the article, the San Francisco based app aims to organize the mess of documents that are relevant to our work and personal lives. Found currently plugs into Gmail, Google Documents, and Dropbox and the company says that it will be adding additional integrations in the near future.
Taylor states:
“Once you install it on your computer, looking for things in Found quickly becomes second nature — and you quickly start to wonder about how much time you wasted searching for things before you had it. Of course, the real key will be seeing how snappy the Found app is once more people are using it after the public launch later this spring — nowadays, an app is only as good as it can scale. But at the moment, Found is looking very like a very promising tool for the those of us who are a bit less organized with our files than we’d like to be.”
While the app won’t be released to the public until mid-May, you can see how Found works via an embedded video in Taylor’s article. The notion of a cloud service indexing content on a local machine may give some users pause. We prefer to use behind-the-firewall solutions. Even cloud back ups are solutions which don’t address the issues we face.
Jasmine Ashton, April 12, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
The Wall Street Journal Calls Motorola a Toy
April 12, 2012
I think the Wall Street Journal is owned by the News Corp. I have a tough time keeping track of real journalists these day. Here in Kentucky, the local newspaper is nuking folks who cost too much and place a burden on certain benefit plans.
I did find the headline “Google’s $12 Billion Toy” interesting. You can locate a copy of the story in the hard copy and environmentally unfriendly version of the Wall Street Journal in Section B1, pages 1-2. There is an electronic version online at this link. Don’t hassle me if it goes dark like so many traditional publishers’ content.
The main point is not about wire tapping, bribes, or nepotism. Nah, the subject of a real journalistic foray is Google’s purchase of Motorola Mobility Holdings. The angle is that Google has a “toy.” Now I used to like toys. Today I am more into gadgets. In fact, calling Motorola Mobility a toy is out of step with what those interested in technology find enthralling. Toy is an object with which children play, an amusement, a trifle, a diminutive thing, etc. My hunch is that by calling Google’s owning Motorola Mobility a toy, the Wall Street Journal was suggesting that Google’s management is childish, immature, and in need of a distraction. The juxtaposition of $12 billion and toy is a stylistic touch that may land the real journalist a gig writing for Jimmy Kimmel or the zany crowd at Saturday Night Live. Comedy writing might be a good back up for real journalists if more layoffs arrive at the big time, real newspapers. With the story’s arrival from a unit of the News Corp., I am just not sure whether the viewpoints about Google’s business acumen are serious or some of that “Google is not our pal” attitude which appears to surface from time to time.
Here’s the passage I noted:
Google’s competitors weren’t as charitable, with one rival executive privately dubbing the undertaking a “hairball.”
Hmm. A hairball. But which competitor?
But I particularly enjoyed this statement:
And that may be the scariest part of all for Google’s investors. The company really believes it can be all things to all people.
My view is that a company which is taking action may not be perfect, but it sure as heck is a more satisfying approach to business than the public removal of senior managers, allegations of bribery and unauthorized listening to voice mail, and the disclosure of alleged secret lunches with government figures.
I feel more comfortable with Google than with some of the antics of real journalists and their owners. Just my opinion from rural Kentucky.
Stephen E Arnold, April 12, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
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