Attivio Beefs Up Staff
April 19, 2012
Attivio has welcomed aboard David Woroboff, as Market Watch informs us in “Attivio Appoints General Manager of Government Solutions.” A former Northrop Grumman employee, Woroboff is known for inventive answers. Attivio President & CEO Ali Riaz commented:
“For our rapidly-expanding customer base in government, intelligence, and law enforcement, the challenge of managing extreme information is even more critical due to the immensely high stakes involved. When lives are at stake, there is no margin for error of delayed response. David brings his rich experience and proven ability to understand their mission challenges and problems to the conversation — we are confident that his perspective and insight will translate to broader deployment of Attivio’s solutions across this sector.”
There certainly is a lot at stake in the field of government, intelligence, and law enforcement. Fortunately, Attivio boasts high-performance, cost-effective approaches to the complex data challenges faced by government agencies and their defense and aerospace colleagues. Attivio prides itself on innovatively integrating enterprise search, intelligence, and analytic capabilities to provide the best solutions.
Cynthia Murrell, April 19, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Microsoft Contributes to Linux
April 19, 2012
Microsoft and Linux used to be bitter rivals. Over the years the tension has eased between the open source OS and the Windows builder, but now Microsoft is listed as a company that contributes to the Linux kernel. TechNewsWorld tells all in, “Microsoft’s Linux Labors: A Signal of Defeat?” Microsoft used to call Linux a “cancer” and now they are working in the collaborative development model to support its virtualization efforts and its customers.
The blog and twitter feeds lit up when this news hit the web. Some believe Microsoft is trying to capitalize off of open source, while others rationalize it was only a matter of time before the PC giant turned to open source software. Open source is proving its value, especially in the big data and cloud markets, so Microsoft finally realizes how useful it can be.
“In fact, ‘Microsoft is adding code to the kernel to help make it work better for Microsoft, and that is exactly how Open Source works,’ Google+ blogger Kevin O’Brien suggested. ‘Everyone scratches their own itch, and the wonderful thing about Open Source is that we all get to benefit,’ he explained. ‘I hope Microsoft continues to offer code to Open Source.’”
How the mighty have fallen! PCs are still the universal computer, but open source is starting to become the universal solution for many IT problems. Combine the two and who knows where technology will go. Is this the start of a whole new way of thinking for Microsoft? If so, will Microsoft and its open source software swear not to do evil like Google?
Whitney Grace, April 19, 2012
Sponsored by TheTrendPoint
Google: WalMart Type Margins Good Enough?
April 18, 2012
For the most part, we all know that Walmart dominated the retail world by cutting or buying out the competition. For several decades they cornered the market with low pricing and an overabundance of locations, weeding out the mom and pop stores of the past.
In the article Asymco: Google makes only $1.70 a year per Android device – Apple 2.0 – Fortune Tech, we can see a very similar comparison between Walmart and Google, where domination and control of specific markets seems to be the approach instead of producing reliable products.
“We have a significant breakthrough in understanding the economics of Android and the overall mobile platform strategy of Google.
P&L considerations were not the only (or even at all) factors in investment for Google,” Dediu writes. “Having a hedge against hegemony of potential rivals, having a means to learn and develop new business and having a role in defining the post-PC computing paradigm is all probably bigger considerations than profitability.”
In the end, you get what you pay for and people are starting to rediscover that philosophy. Issues will eventually arise when companies replace the value of their products and people with their desire for growth and power. Is Google less about becoming Microsoft and more about emulating WalMart? If so, Amazon is a competitor to think about, as WalMart is becoming a yesterday business.
Jennifer Shockley, April 19, 2012
Sponsored by TheTrendPoint
Ooyala Personalizes Video Advertising
April 18, 2012
As online video viewing continues to gain popularity, advertising tailored to users is an important factor for content producers.
Video technology company Ooyala helps brands personalize videos and profit from sharing content. An article from VatorNews, “Ooyala Launches Personalized Video Discovery Platform,” shares more about the product which aims to keep viewers glued longer by monitoring viewer habits based on length of videos viewed and content viewed. Ooyala’s product would suggest follow-up content of a similar length and related content. The article states:
“In pre-release, with select customers, Ooyala found that the tailored content was already driving a four-fold increase in consumer engagement, meaning longer viewing periods, more videos completed and ultimately improved monetization.
I sat down with Bismarck Lepe, Ooyala’s co-founder and president of products, the other day and he explained to me that as more people shift the time they are watching video content to online methods, people are going to gravitate to the services that have the best elements of television with the personalized aspects of on-demand viewing.”
This sort of tailoring makes for happy customers, discovering content that is enjoyable to them, and happy creators, seeing more revenue dollars in return. Video is a vital part of bringing consumers to sites, and an effective system like this is crucial in improving the streaming experience.
Andrea Hayden, April 18, 2012
Trapit: Search without Search
April 18, 2012
Trapit at www.trap.it is an automated finding system. Software “watches” what a user reads and then performs a “more like this” function. The results are not a laundry list. The presentation is similar to that used in Flipboard and Pulse. The idea borrows from iPhone and iPad apps with some DARPA money stirred into the mix. The inventors or implements worked at SRI, the blue chip technology consulting firm which used to be the Stanford Research Institute. the company is getting a little PR push, but it has been in business since January 2010.
You can read the CrunchBase profile at Chattertrap. Heavy weight real journalist John C. Dvorak covered the company in his “Trapit, the Non-Search Engine” article at PCMag.com. TechCrunch characterized the company as a Siri sibling. The reason is that Trap.it and Siri share some artificial intelligence methods.
The big news is that in January 2012, the company landed $6.2 million in addition to the US government money.
These “we will tell you what you need to know” systems are going to become more prevalent. These “smart” systems are ideal for information grazers who have neither the time, desire, or expertise to perform old fashioned research.
Will a user know when a potentially important article has been filtered out of the stream? Nah. Won’t matter. Today’s MBAs and former middle school teachers are too busy to dig for info, verify it, and assemble their own synthesis. And magazines produced the old fashioned way have zero chance to gain traction with certain demographics.
Stephen E Arnold, April 18, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Real Journalist Ignores Future of Many Real Journalists
April 18, 2012
Years ago I worked for Bill Ziff, yep, the magazine guy. In the late 1980s and in the early years of the 1990s, magazines worked. But today magazines are no longer the slam dunk. In 1989 it took about $1 million to get a new title off the ground. If you had lots of titles, the costs were still punishing but there were economies of scale.
I read “Is a Blogger a Journalist?”, published in a property once owned by Mr. Ziff. The write up contains this passage:
Hopefully this un-American precedent will be reversed shortly. Meanwhile, the public should be outraged. Furthermore, for years, many writers have advocated for the idea that the Bill of Rights is outdated in the modern era and that journalists per se should be regulated. These people should be strongly rebuked. If we do not protect our rights, we lose them.
Sounds good. My thoughts are:
- The distinction between a “real” journalist, a run-of-the-mill journalist like those riffed from the Courier Journal a couple weeks ago, and bloggers is a fuzzy one indeed. Fuzziness leads to ambiguity, of which there are seven types.
- When “real” journals find a way to make money like the News Corp., the notion of behavior becomes somewhat plastic. Alleged criminal behavior seems to surface when some of the “real” journalists’ methods come to light. The run-of-the-mill journalists try to build a following or eek out an income doing whatever. I had one writer tell me he made more spreading mulch than producing content for my non-real information services.
- The folks who consume content do not know when a story is “real”, “shaded,” or flat out incorrect. The ability or willingness to dig in and determine facts, no matter how slippery, is eroding. The rush to “smart software” which tells a person what he or she needs to know is the next wave in information.
Bottom line: Say, hello, to murky. Do you know if the search results you get from Bing, Google, or Yandex are “accurate”? I didn’t think so. Assumptions are much easier than figuring out what is going on with “free” content no matter who produces it. I have not decided if I will post the paper I am giving at the Text Analytics Conference in San Francisco next week. The subject? Manipulating predictive systems by exploiting persistence, simplification, and sampling.
Stephen E Arnold, April 18, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Algorithms Can Deliver Skewed Results
April 18, 2012
After two days of lectures about the power of social media analytics, Stephen E Arnold raised doubts about the reliability of certain analytics outputs. He opined: “Faith in analytics may be misplaced.”
Arnold’s lecture focused on four gaps in social media analytics. He pointed out that many users were unaware of the trade offs in algorithm selection made by vendors’ programmers. Speaking at the Social Media Analytics Summit, he said:
Many companies purchase social media analytics reports without understanding that the questions answered by algorithms may not answer the customer’s actual question.
He continued:
The talk about big data leaves the impression that every item is analyzed and processed. The reality is that sampling methods, like the selection of numerical recipes can have a significant impact on what results become available.
The third gap, he added, “is that smart algorithms display persistence. With smart software, some methods predict a behavior and then look for that behavior because the brute force approach is computationally expensive and adds latency to a system.” He said:
Users assume results are near real time and comprehensive. The reality is that results are unlikely to be real time and built around mathematical methods which value efficiency and cleverness at the expense of more robust analytic methods. The characteristic is more pronounced in user friendly, click here type of systems than those which require to specify a method using SAS or SPSS syntax.”
The final gap is the distortion that affects outputs from “near term, throw forward biases.” Arnold said:
Modern systems are overly sensitive to certain short term content events. This bias is most pronounced when looking for emerging trend data. In these types of outputs the “now” data respond to spikes and users act on identified trends often without appropriate context.
The implication of these gaps is that outputs from some quite sophisticated systems can be misleading or present information as fact when that information has been shaped to a marketer’s purpose.
The Social Media Analytics conference was held in San Francisco, April 17 and 18, 2012. More information about the implications of these gaps may be found at the Augmentext.com Web site.
Donald C Anderson, April 18, 2012,
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Thinking of End Users when Implementing Enterprise Search Solutions
April 18, 2012
We recently wrote about selling search internally to your boss. Karen Lynn looks at the flip-side of that discussion in, “Selling Search Internally – Part 2 – How to Get Buy In from the Staff.” Lynn points out that enterprise search investments can be an expensive endeavor, so be sure to include all stakeholders, especially end users, in the planning process to be sure you’re spending the resources on a solution that will be adopted. If your end users do not like the solution, don’t expect it to be used.
Lynn explains,
If they have input to its overall features and design, they will be more invested in using it. Involving users manufactures all kinds of good-will collateral that can help develop better morale and a positive workplace. Doing this early in the process also introduces change more slowly to users–and people rarely react well to lots of radical change. Making them a part of the process and doing it early with lots of prepping for change can affect overall satisfaction rates with the search implementation after it’s complete.
The author also stresses the importance of a training program. Implementation is by no means the last step in the deployment process. Lynn makes some valuable points and we agree that end users hold a valuable seat at the enterprise search round table. Training end users is a good opportunity to share how the search solution can help in day to day tasks, which is helpful for encouraging the adoption of new technologies.
One way to make the process easier is by deploying an easy to install solution that is end user friendly and offers comprehensive training and support. We like the feedback we’ve seen from customers of Fabasoft Mindbreeze. The Salzburg City Council of Austria had this to say about implementing Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise for their 900 users to better manage the 10,500 new documents that come in daily:
Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise makes our everyday work easier. Obtaining relevant information fast is something we now take for granted and it has become a key feature of our work and our approach to it. Above all our citizens benefit from it. They receive their information much faster.
Read more about Fabasoft Mindbreeze benefits for end users, including mobility and Cloud searching, at http://www.mindbreeze.com/.
Philip West, April 18, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Manufacturing Race Demands PLM Advantage
April 18, 2012
Economies across the world continue to free-fall while competition among manufactures increases in a global network stitched tighter every day with emerging technologies. These two factors have led many companies to turn to product lifecycle management to streamline processes from idea inception all the way to product distribution. PLM providers, in turn, are racing to create the most affordable, fully applicable solutions for all industries benefiting from such services. A recent article titled, “Oak Barrel Software Partners with Infor on PLM”, on Infor’s website, explains how a new partnership has been created in order to appeal to more potential customers.
The article quotes Venkat Rajaji, Infor’s global PLM product manager, explaining the need for innovative PLM solutions by saying,
“Getting new products to market is a race that continues to grow more complex, and process manufacturers must be increasingly agile, responsive and focused on the rapidly changing demands of the market to outpace the competition.”
Because of the race among manufacturers those seeking PLM solutions should make absolutely sure that those providing such services not only have a stellar reputation but also is able to customize data management solutions to the specific needs of the company. Inforbix, a leader in PLM with a focus on data management and enterprise search, is committed to working closely with each client to ensure that all needs are met. With top of the line customer service Inforbix is who we recommend to companies, regardless of size, for their PLM needs.
Catherine Lamsfuss, April 18, 2012
Want to Slip Around the Systems Department? Go Cloudy
April 18, 2012
Silicon.com presents an interesting view of why cloud computing is of interest to executives in “Business Execs ‘Use Cloud Computing to Dodge the CIO’.” Um, shouldn’t different departments be trying to work together instead of flouting one another? Perhaps that’s too naïve. Or too logical.
Writer Steve Ranger points to research from Forrester which found that two thirds of CIOs now believe their business sees cloud computing as a way to circumvent IT. Two Thirds! The article tells us:
“Cloud computing is being used as a way for businesses to dodge the IT department and get services delivered more quickly. But as well as giving the CIO sleepless nights, this attempt to side-step the IT department is causing additional cost and complexity along the way.”
That’s one way to manage: go around the “problem”. Another silver bullet play by the uninformed. These executives may, however, find that they are shooting themselves in the feet. Datamation finds “Cloud Computing: Bigger and Better—But Still Flawed.” In that piece, Robert McGarvey explores the way cloud computing has failed to deliver, and the way it is playing out differently than previously conceived. He writes:
“Cloud computing, so far, has not lived up to expectations — it’s slow, it has troubles housing huge enterprise critical data, and it is perceived as insecure.”
We recall that Google at one time was working to find end user and information technology conduits into the enterprise. We are not sure how well this works. Google, after 13 years in business, generates only about five percent of its revenue from sources unrelated to online advertising. If Amazon jumps into the enterprise sector with more than cloud search, we think the developer angle Amazon takes may be more welcome than the “go around” approach.
Cynthia Murrell, April 18, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
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