Metasearch Can Cut Research Time by Half
June 11, 2012
There is a new Meta search engine that has entwined Google, Yahoo and Bing results into its database according to announcements. Sperse also implements real-time results from Twitter, thus returning more comprehensive, relevant and fast results. Harnessing the information of multiple providers at once could decrease research time by half.
Founded in 2008, Sperse has implemented some unique features that make it stand out in the meta search engines crowd:
“Unlike other search offerings, users will also be able to optionally streamline their selections through Sperse’s ability to offer color images displayed in conjunction with the selected results. Additionally, when results are displayed, the ‘Preview’ options shows a live preview of the website and helps users save substantial time by promptly identifying the content they need. Also the integration of several specialized search fields i.e. Web, Images, Audio, News, Video, and others creates a centralized platform for professional users to filter the content they need.”
Sperse also offers AdLight, their premier platform for search, display and performance marketing. This ‘smart advertising’ platform utilizes Sperse’s network of publishing properties and search engines to amplify target access. Use ability, convenience and ease of access for consumers increases ROI for advertisers.
Summer is here, and shaving off a few hours of research can provide some time to enjoy it. Sperse takes one query and sends it to different indexes, gets the results, and shows them in one result list. The idea is that you don’t have to run the same query in different search systems, so it is a time saver.
Jennifer Shockley, June 11, 2012
EasyAsk Product Announced As a Cool Vendor
June 11, 2012
A new, “cool,” vendor has been announced in a list of Cool Vendors in the Analytics and Business Intelligence, 2012 report by Garner, Inc.
According to the article, “EasyAsk Named ‘Cool Vendor’ by Leading Analyst Firm,” EasyAsk’s Siri-like mobile app for corporate data is one to note. The app, named Quiri, combines voice and NLP to provide a usable, and apparently “cool,” user-experience. A video demonstration of the product is available here. The article states:
“Quiri offers users Siri-like built-in speech recognition and natural language processing, allowing users to conveniently speak their business questions and get immediate answers to business questions. Users tap a microphone button, speak a request and Quiri retrieves the answer from existing corporate data.
EasyAsk eCommerce search and merchandising software – available on-premise or as a service (SaaS) – leads the industry in customer conversion by providing the right products on the first page, every time.”
We find this to be an interesting angle for a product spotlight. We aren’t sure if this is a pay-to-play write-up or an objective analysis. We also aren’t sure what “cool” means when referring to a product’s usability, but look forward to seeing more from EasyAsk.
Andrea Hayden, June 11, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
Mondeca Updates Linked Open Vocabularies
June 11, 2012
Mondeca has updated their Linked Open Vocabularies(LOV). LOV’s goal is to help Web vocabulary users and managers access the broad ecosystem of linked open vocabularies in the Linked Data Cloud. The site’s About page explains:
“The vocabularies we are about are the many dialects (RDFS and OWL ontologies) used in the growing linked data Web. . . . Not only does linked data leverage a growing set of vocabularies, but vocabularies themselves rely more and more on each other through reusing, refining or extending, stating equivalences, declaring metadata.
“LOV objective is to provide easy access methods to this ecosystem of vocabularies, and in particular by making explicit the ways they link to each other and providing metrics on how they are used in the linked data cloud, help to improve their understanding, visibility and usability, and overall quality.”
A vocabulary is worthy of inclusion in the LOV dataset if it is expressed in one of the Semantic Web ontology languages (RDFS or some species of OWL); is published and freely available on the Web; is retrievable by content negotiation from its namespace URI; and is small enough easily integrated and re-used, in part or as a whole, by other vocabularies. See this page for more on the LOV dataset and features.
Mondeca is a leading provider of solutions for the management of advanced knowledge structures: ontologies, thesauri, taxonomies, terminologies, metadata repositories, knowledge bases, and linked open data. Their products and services help clients in Europe and North America boost their information retrieval, analysis, and usability. The firm was founded in 1999 and is based in Paris, France.
Cynthia Murrell, June 11, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
Sprylogics Tech Update
June 11, 2012
In an effort to make the most of their innovations, Sprylogics is focusing on four particular areas of further development. Canada Newswire lets us in on the “Sprylogics Technology Update.” The write up informs us:
“The Sprylogics Technology Team is focused on leveraging and enhancing the existing patent pending technology base to build mobile search solutions that interpret what people are saying online and on their mobile phones in order to:
a) Better understand what they are looking for (query intent);
b) Better understand trends and patterns in people’s behavior and opinions in aggregate (improve quality and relevancy of search results).
“This is accomplished through the use of semantic technologies and natural language processing techniques like entity extraction, semantic graph creation, disambiguation, matching and clustering to process massive volumes of unstructured data in order to extract key sentiments, facts, opinions, user interests and intents. “
Sprylogics’ solutions have been updated in the following areas: expanded natural language processing; improved machine learning; a beefed up knowledge base; and advances in mobile development and API’s. See the article for details on each. We wonder how much of this progress is linked to the company’s financing boost earlier this year.
Sprylogics, Based in Ontario and was formed in 2011, styles itself the “semantic search engine.” Cluuz is the catchy name of the company’s search platform, while their Analyst and Evidens analyzes workflow. Sprylogics is awaiting a patent on their unique semantic graph visual display.
Cynthia Murrell, June 11, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
Google for Government. Any Other Ideas?
June 10, 2012
Fear is weak, but it is a known tactic in times of war. According to the article Governments pose greatest threat to internet, says Google’s Eric Schmidt, Google’s EC had a vision of cyber warfare that should have our screens shaking on the stand.
The prophecy foretold of a conspiracy of secrets that led to the future decline of the internet. Now everyone enjoys a good theory, and this one deems all nations that carry out cybercrimes a threat to honest information everywhere. Individual hackers can be an issue, but its government themselves that has Google’s Executive Chairman hardwired.
Eric Schmidt gives tidings of grave things to come with:
“Governments that censor online material are up from four a decade ago to at least 40 today. Through filtering, governments could build their own “Balkanised web”, where people saw different information online depending on who and where they were, without anyone knowing what had been censored.”
“Make no mistake, this is a fight for the future of the web, and there is no room for complacency. It is very difficult to identify the source of cyber-criminality and stop it.”
Schmidt’s His concern for the future well-being of information rights was ironic given the history. That is not to say his opinion was tainted in any way by recent events, just to be clear. We ignore government, just simply overthrow the government and let Google become the government. Hmmm… any other ideas?
Jennifer Shockley, June 10, 2012
Semantic Duet Seems to Harmonize. Will 1+1=3?
June 10, 2012
The enterprise data crowd is being entertained by a new duet according to, fluid Operations and Ontotext Team Up to Usher in the Next Generation of Enterprise Data Management. The article states:
“Ontotext and fluid Operations (fluidOps) have teamed up to offer clients practical enterprise solutions for RDF data mining, access, publishing and search.”
Dr. Andreas Eberhart of fluid Operations predicts an evolution in data management, stating:
“This is really a pairing of best-in-class tools that we feel will usher in the next generation of enterprise data management. There are many players in the semantics space providing bits and pieces of a solution, but Ontotext and fluidOps have proven to deliver turnkey products that deliver a complete solution and have solved real world customer demands.”
Ontotext develops core semantic technology, text mining and web mining solutions. They specialize in creating software for tools and solutions based on semantics that optimize performance in data integration, analysis, evaluation, management and publishing.
fluid Operations is stationed out of Walldorf, Germany and designs open platform software. Their specialty is semantic integration for both structured and unstructured data entwined with business and IT stacks. They also provide infrastructure and cloud monitoring, management and orchestration solutions.
These two software designers harmonize well. The stage is set and this duet may very well write the next data management symphony. Ontotext and fluid are an interesting tie up. It makes us wonder, will 1+1=3?
Jennifer Shockley, June 10, 012
Can One Build an Ethical Medical Data Store?
June 10, 2012
There are many ways to gather data, some more scrupulous then others. Gaining permission to share personal history is the more ethical, but according to the article How to Build a Mountain of Patient Data: Don’t Ask for Permission, there’s a professional health loophole in regards to information sharing.
“One of the reasons Indiana has been successful is we haven’t over-regulated the private sector. It’s allowed the market to blossom. We were able to do a lot of that work when there was less scrutiny.”
Opinion, something about saying ‘private sector’ followed by ‘more work with less scrutiny’ just seems wrong.
According to Molly Butters of Indiana Health Information Exchange:
“The result is many patients may not know they’ve been included. And if they are aware, opting out is hard: Patients must be granted permission by their health care providers to opt out of the exchange. The number of people who opt out is few.”
Indiana has around 6.5 million residents over all. Indiana Health Information Exchange along with their exchanges, have requisitioned the medical information of 4.5 million of those residents.
Building a data store is necessary, but not at the cost of privacy. It seems Indiana has added the clause ‘can be shared throughout health industry’ to the HIPAA Act. How many professional librarians are comfortable with this approach? How many traditional publishers? How many of the Facebook generation? Let’s think about that… None, some or all?
Jennifer Shockley, 10, 2012
YouTube Factoid: Lots of Video
June 9, 2012
If you thought prescreening YouTube videos was quick and easy, the article How Much Would It Cost To Pre-Screen YouTube Videos? About $37 Billion Per Year… might give you a change of heart or simply make you stare at the screen in awe.
You see, despite insistence that this should be mandatory, the main issues are time and you can’t just have anyone prescreen for violations. The person doing the job has to determine if the video is a copyright infringement. Who can you trust? Who will hold an unbiased opinion based on the actual law?
According to federal law only one person is qualified to take on the job and that is a judge:
“Using the fact that the average pay for a judge in Silicon Valley is apparently $177,454, and that based on the volume of uploads and number of hours in a working day, a mere 199,584 judges would be required as screeners, this gives us the final figure for the cost of checking properly those 72 hours per minute as $36,829,468,840 per year. Interestingly, Google’s revenue for 2011 was $37,905,000,000.”
The time and money figures provide understanding as to why it’s difficult to prescreen all uploads. You might even shed a tear for YouTube providers if the law demands video prescreening versus shutdown. An ironic and interesting factoid is that Google made enough to pay the judges… and still profit.
Jennifer Shockley, June 9, 2012
A Serenade for Social Web by Spindle
June 9, 2012
The Social Web’s being serenaded again, but this song has a different beat. Spindle croons a tale of exploration and discovery with a realistic element according to, Announcing Spindle. Their company mission is simple; they want to make social content more discoverable.
Spindle freely acknowledges the web is vast and stated:
“We believe that we’ve barely scratched the surface of what’s possible via the social web and that discovery needs to be reimagined from the ground up. Location, device, time of day, the structure of the physical world, the social graph, and your interests can uncover better content than keywords. At Spindle, we’re building the discovery engine for the social web.”
When information is delivered only via a specific group or source, one might miss something pertinent. Regardless of how informative and insightful your group of friends, something more logical might be just outside your circle. Spindle realizes that and is developing a way to change how you discover information and relate to the people, organizations and places all around you.
The competition for the perfect web tool has been growing strong. Until now, most the players have sang the same old song with variations in the beat. Spindle’s new tune has a catchy jingle that sticks in the mind. The new search system spotlight just may be shining on them, as they continue to serenade the social web.
Jennifer Shockley, June 9, 2012
No Love in the Air or the Numbers for Google+
June 9, 2012
Summer is here and love is in the air, but Cupid isn’t aiming any arrows towards Google+. Things just aren’t going well for Google’s 6th attempt at social networking, according to the article The truth about Google+: The social network without passion.
Google has repeatedly tried to find love, but they continue to add obituaries to their social networking cemetery.
Orkut 2004, currently only used in Brazil.
Dodgeball 2005-2009
Jaiku 2007-2009
Wave 2009-2010
Buzz 2010-2011
Google+ was recently analyzed by RJ Metrics, who sampled posts by 40,000 randomly selected users. Their findings were as follows:
“The average post has less than one +1, less than one reply, and less than one re-shares.”
“30 percent of users who make a public post never make a second one. Even after making five public posts, there is a 15 percent chance that a user will not post publicly again.”
“Among users who make publicly viewable posts, there is an average of 12 days between each post.”
“After a member makes a public post, the average number of public posts he or she makes in each subsequent month declines steadily.”
One can almost hear the sound of Google+ being etched on a new tombstone. It seems their networking super model has the charisma of a socially impaired hermit and cupid has taken a leave of absence. There is just no love in the air or the numbers for Google+.
Jennifer Shockley, June 9, 2012
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
