Open Source: Researchers Get Frisky
May 2, 2012
Group of Researchers Demand Source Code be Made Public
Phys.org recently reported on a new policy paper written by a group of academic research scientist from across the U.S in the post “Academic Group Says it’s Time for Researchers to Begin Sharing Source Code.”
According to the article, the group is arguing that due to the fact that computer programs have become an integral part of scientific research and since many researchers use public funds to conduct their research, entities that provide funding should require that the source code created be made public, as is the case with other resource materials.
The article states:
“Not providing source code, they say, is now akin to withholding parts of the procedural process, which results in a “black box” approach to science, which is of course, not tolerated in virtually every other area of research in which results are published. It’s difficult to imagine any other realm of scientific research getting such a pass and the fact that code is not published in an open source forum detracts from the credibility of any study upon which it is based.”
This is an interesting point, since as science continues to evolve, the use of computer code, both off the shelf and custom written will likely become ever more present in research endeavors. If researchers don’t begin to share their findings with one another it could easily stunt the progression of many scientific findings.
Jasmine Ashton, May 2, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
Yammer Embraces Search
May 2, 2012
An enterprise social vendor is jumping into search: BrainyardNews announces, “Yammer Update Emphasizes Enterprise, Cloud Search.” Since search vendors are jumping into almost anything with the merest whiff of money, I guess it makes sense for enterprise social network provider Yammer to pursue search. BrainYard editor David F. Carr writes:
“Yammer is introducing ‘universal search,’ along with an option for project or interest groups within a Yammer enterprise social network to sign up for services without necessarily enlisting the company as a whole. . . . To Yammer, universal search makes it possible to search across connections to both enterprise and cloud-based systems integrated with a Yammer network. For example, a search by customer name might turn up automated updates from Salesforce.com, SAP, and a Microsoft SharePoint site, as well as posts by users about that company.”
Uniquely, Yammer saves space by indexing only the metadata coming into a feed, rather than the underlying data, though full-text indexing may appear in the future. The basic social network service is free, and a la carte pricing for premium options gives customers some flexibility.
The new features are part of the spring update Yammer released this month. Other components include: a new tagging method; a Web part that integrates with MS Office 365; updated mobile apps; and the Yammer Embed feature, now moving up from its beta existence.
Launched in 2008, Yammer pioneered the use of secure, private social networks for the purpose of collaboration. More than 80% of Fortune 500 companies currently use the company’s services.
Cynthia Murrell, May 2, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
Wolfram Alpha and The Appification of Search
May 2, 2012
Bye bye boolean. The Verge informs us, “Wolfram Alpha Now Available as a $2.99 PC App.” The innovative “computational knowledge engine” app, already available for iOS at the same price, can now be purchased at Intel‘s AppUp market. The announcement states:
“It appears to be largely the same [as the iOS version] in terms of functionality, but there’s been a few interface tweaks to better fit the larger screen. Wolfram Alpha says that the app has been specifically tailored for laptops and ultrabooks. Of course, you can already access the search engine on your computer for free via the website, but the new app appears to provide a nice midway point between the basic service and Wolfram Alpha Pro, which comes with a monthly fee.”
The Pro version of Wolfram Alpha costs $4.99 per month ($2.99 for students.) The first advantage over the free version lies in the ability to launch a search using images, files, or your own data in addition to simple text. The resulting reports are also more extensive and more readily exportable to a variety of formats. See the link in the above quote for an extensive discussion of the Pro product.
For those unfamiliar with Wolfram Alpha, the service introduced a new angle into the world of search when it launched in 2009. Other Web search engines just retrieve a list of relevant Web sites; this application connects the dots, analyzing data with its Mathematica product. Its functionality has been famously incorporated into Apple‘s Siri.
Cynthia Murrell, May 2, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
SharePoint Sites Offers Customized Solutions
May 2, 2012
Perhaps one of the more useful aspects of SharePoint 2010 is the Sites feature, allowing customization of numerous sites based on included templates. Jennifer Mason of CMS Wire explores in, “SharePoint 2010 Sites: One Infrastructure for All Your Business Web Sites.”
Sites are one of the most powerful components within SharePoint. In fact, they are the foundation for many of the different solutions that can be built within SharePoint. By using Sites we can quickly build many different focused solutions, including items like:
Team Collaboration Areas
Corporate Intranets
Public Websites
Blogs
Database Tracking Solutions (Access Templates)
The solution is essentially one of convenience, as the templates themselves are not touted as anything beyond ordinary. Users often remark on SharePoint’s ability to keep them on the one platform, looking internally to SharePoint for all of their information needs.
We propose Fabasoft Mindbreeze as a smart third party solution and compliment to an existing SharePoint infrastructure. While a web site is relatively easy to create, endowing that web site with a smart and efficient search feature is much harder. Fabasoft Mindbreeze InSite provides unrivaled searchability for your public facing web sites.
Fabasoft Mindbreeze InSite…
- is intuitive and user friendly.
- is instantly ready for use as a Cloud service. It turns your website into a user-friendly knowledge portal for your customers.
- recognizes correlations and links through semantic and dynamic search processes. This delivers pinpoint accurate and precise “finding experiences”.
- is the perfect website search for your company.
No installation, configuration or maintenance required.
So if your organization is looking for a way to take your public web sites to the next level, improving user satisfaction, consider adding Fabasoft Mindbreeze InSite.
Emily Rae Aldridge, May 2, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Technology and Manufacturing Industry in the United Kingdom Adds a New Firm
May 2, 2012
Theorem Solutions, a British firm that provides engineering data services and solutions, recently joined the UK’s Manufacturing Technology Centre (MTC), a Coventry-based facility in which the British government has invested £40.5 million to promote innovation in high technology manufacturing processes with the assistance of various industrial, academic, and institutional partners.
Among the MTC’s other industrial members are Rolls-Royce, Aero Engine Controls, and Airbus UK, while its academic research partners include the universities of Birmingham, Loughborough, and Nottingham. In an article entitled “Theorem Solutions Joins the Manufacturing Technology Centre” that recently appeared on the blog on Dassault Systèmes’ website PLM Market Place.com, the UK’s commitment to developing more efficient data exchange through the creation of the MTC and the subsequent recruitment of partners such as Theorem is emphasized:
“The MTC provides a high quality environment for the development and demonstration of new technologies on an industrial scale, providing a unique opportunity for manufacturers to develop new and innovative processes and technologies in a low risk environment.”
Among the data management solutions critical to the MTC’s mission of enhancing British manufacturing processes is product lifecycle management (PLM) technology, which enables companies to efficiently find, reuse, and share product data enterprise-wide and, as a result, to respond in a more strategically advantageous way to their markets.
Tonya Weikel, May 2, 2012
OpenText: When the Roll Up Stops Rolling
May 2, 2012
This item caught my attention:
Open Text (NASDAQ: OTEX) was downgraded by analysts at RBC Capital from an “outperform” rating to a “sector perform” rating.
OpenText owns a number of search and content processing technologies. Among the search systems which the company has acquired over the years are:
- BASIS. Yes, the Information Dimension data management tool has a search engine. We used BASIS for work at Bell Labs, later Bell Communications Research, in the post Judge Green era. As far as I know, the BASIS engine is still available. Our version ran on the IBM MVS/TSO system. Worked fine and we loved those “GO” commands.
- BRS Search (Bibliographic Retrieval System). Another golden oldie, this search system was, in my recollection, similar to the IBM Stairs III system. Yep, BRS is a mainframe application.
- Fulcrum, originally a Microsoft centric system, Fulcrum as a brand has largely disappeared. The technology lives on within some OpenText products. My notes point to Hummingbird, but I am not sure if this Canadian developed search engine is still chugging along.
- Nstein. This is a content processing subsystem. I used to have a write up, but after a flubbed meeting with me in London two years ago, I stopped information collection about this system.
- SGML search. Once this system was the guts of OpenText, which was founded by Tim Bray, who is now a Googler. I wondered why the SGML engine was not leveraged, but with OpenText’s shift to selling services, I lost track of what was a segment leading technology more than a decade ago.
A year or so ago, we were doing some troubleshooting of a RedDot system (another OpenText acquisition). The native search system for RedDot was Autonomy. We found this interesting.
OpenText implemented, in my opinion, a strategy similar to that used by Autonomy. As you know, Autonomy was acquired by Hewlett Packard for about $10 billion, give or take a billion. OpenText remains a public company. The downgrade may suggest that the roll up strategy is losing or has lost momentum. Will OpenText downshift and burn rubber in the coming quarters? I don’t know. This will be an interesting case to follow. I know that some observers in Canada and various stakeholders will be watching OpenText’s performance numbers.
We have been monitoring a general slowdown in the traditional search, content processing, and taxonomy sector. One hopes revenues will perk up in the second half of 2012.
Stephen E Arnold, May 2, 2012
Sponsored by Ikanow
IBM Embraces Social
May 2, 2012
I wonder what happened to Watson. Surely that next-generation search technology has not been marginalized by Vivisimo’s “big data” antics or the “New IBM Business Integration Software [that] Helps Enterprises Accelerate Adoption of Social, Business, Cloud, and Mobile Technologies.” Wow, that’s like a digital Popeil pocket fisherman.
Now the secret sauce for this digital cornucopia is the new version of IBM’s WebSphere Application Server. According to the write up, WebSphere Application Server includes a business process manager, operational decision management, and the Cast Iron Live service.
What’s Cast Iron? It is an Application Programming Interface (API) which:
allows companies to extend their services to support the emerging community of developers who are building new social, mobile and cloud applications. This new purpose-built offering provides a comprehensive solution to deliver, socialize and manage business API assets.
Search, I presume, is baked in and based on Lucene, not the newly acquired Vivisimo “big data” system. How does this new server help me? Easy. The story reveals a use case:
One client – The Ottawa Hospital has already begun testing how these new software and services from IBM can dramatically change their business model. Working with IBM, they are building a new system that improves the quality of patient care and helps them to better manage the flow of patients throughout the hospital…the attending physician can send an electronic request to the patient’s physician for clarification on past diagnosis. The patient’s doctor receives the consultation request immediately on their most accessible device – a tablet, smart phone or a computer. They respond directly to the specific consult questions electronically, so the attending physician can correctly diagnose the patient.
Just the ticket for auditing data required for RAC, MIC, and ZPIC matters. I like the social touch too. Just what’s needed when walking the patient confidentiality tightrope.
Stephen E Arnold, May 2, 2012
Sponsored by Ikanow
Real Journalists Get the Murdoch
May 2, 2012
“Why You Can’t Trust Tech Press to Teach You about the Tech Industry” paints an old bandwagon and rolls it down the Silicon Highway. I recall the glory days of ancient Rome’s acta. Then there were the broadsheet dust ups in London in the 17th century. But the pinnacle of “real” journalism was reached with the fine work of Messrs. Pulitzer and Hearst in the era of yellow journalism. I thought that the News Corp.’s approach to research had more beef, but it seems that instead of “real” journalism, there was only the murky “governance” issue. A great chance to make “real” journalistic progress was muffed.
The “Can’t Trust” write up makes a stab at slick writing. I noticed the elegant “know your sh*t.” I also enjoyed the comment:
This isn’t a case where a few lesser outlets omitted a minor point about a headline. It’s a case where a story that was interesting enough to earn a full Techmeme pile-on was lacking in coverage that would be necessary for understanding the story at even the most superficial level. As you might expect, a few of the larger outlets have big enough audiences that their commenter communities were able to add the missing salient facts to the story, but on both The Verge and Business Insider, the comments which mentioned Friend Connect were buried in their respective threads and, as of a month later, not highlighted in the original posts.
Now, technology is a slippery fish. Technology journalism is more like a fisher of men tossing grenades into the roiling waters of marketing. My questions:
- How do those using online determine the provenance of a story, advertorial, opinion, or social media comment?
- Will analytic systems provide a series of monitoring devices which will flag content which is a form of disinformation?
- Do those who struggle to make a living in the thin gruel of the digital swamp have the expertise to differentiate among such notions as “search,” “IaaS,” the “cloud”, or “social media”?
- Does anyone care?
Frankly, I enjoy the new world of Murdochism. “Real” journalists take heart. A fresh start is at hand: explaining social media.
Stephen E Arnold, May 2, 2012
Sponsored by Ikanow
One Plus One Equal a Winner
May 1, 2012
I read “Wall Street Journal remains No. 1 US newspaper.” Here’s the link but it will go dark. I won’t quote from the story. The addled goose does not need a “real” journalistic outfit chasing him for sandwiches. The big idea is that the Wall Street Journal is the top dog in US newspaperdom. Left in the dust are the New York Times and USA Today, both fine publications.
I then read “News Corp. Contrite In Wake Of Scathing Report.” I assume that the top dog of News Corp, which owns the Wall Street Journal, is the number one leader of newspaper publishing. The write up contains this statement:
“Hard truths have emerged from the [UK] Select Committee Report: that there was serious wrongdoing at the News of the World; that our response to the wrongdoing was too slow and too defensive; and that some of our employees misled the Select Committee in 2009,” it stated. The company has cited the work of its internal Management and Standards Committee, which has turned over voluminous email exchanges and other records in an effort to show authorities in the U.K. and the U.S. that it has changed its behavior and is being cooperative.
So top US newspaper and its top dog are cooperative. Does one plus one equal winning? Makes sense to me.
Stephen E Arnold, May 1, 2012
Sponsored by HighGainBlog
People Search Engine Ark Gets More Money
May 1, 2012
The folks at Ark must be pretty pleased. All Things D reports, “People-Search Engine Ark Raises Biggest Y Combinator Seed Round in Memory.” The young company scored a remarkable $2 million in funding at Y Combinator‘s latest Demo Day, and now reports a total of $4.2 million in seed money raised so far. That puts the start-up in third place among all of Y Combinator’s companies in seed funding attraction.
Writer Liz Gannes describes Ark’s big idea:
“Ark is almost too good to be true — a search engine that combines public and personalized search for people. It promises to transcend the current stalemate in social search between Google, Twitter and Facebook.
“And it actually is too good to be true — right now, Ark is basically a simple interface to sort Facebook profiles by current city, gender, school, work, interests and other categories. Only 15,000 people have gotten beta access, as Ark has already fully maxed out its Amazon Web Services account by searching their networks and public data.”
Well, now they should be able to afford to upgrade their AWS account. CEO Patrick Riley aims to jump into the gap left by disharmony between Google and Facebook. It seems Zuckerberg’s company is more open to working with Ark than with its arch rival. Go figure.
I recommend checking out the article for more details about Ark’s plans. This will be a company to keep an eye on.
Cynthia Murrell, May 2, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
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