Protected: Litigation Support Software Gets a Speedier Tool
June 29, 2012
Google Executive Criticizes Surface and Windows 8
June 29, 2012
Google pontificates on Microsoft‘s new tablet, Surface, CNet News reveals in “Google Exec: ‘Surface Is a Very Complicated Strategy to Pull Off’.” Google should know; it is the new Microsoft. Remember the Google phone?
Though Google’s Sundar Pichai gives his company’s rival some credit for the innovation that went into the Surface, he expressed doubts about the project’s future. He seems to pin his criticisms on Windows 8, which he elegantly calls a “big disruptive thing.” He emphasizes that the OS may not work well on laptops. CNet’s Dan Farber observes:
“It’s not surprising that Google executives would cast doubt on Microsoft’s new plan to seed Windows 8 around the world. Google is escalating its efforts to compete with Microsoft, using the same ecosystem model — Google develops the software and hardware vendors make and sell the devices.
“Google just announced Chromebooks built by Samsung that run the Google Chrome operating system and use its Google Docs application suite. Pichai said that sign ups for Google Apps — its enterprise suite — are growing at triple digit percentages and that OEMs are signing up to produce Chromebooks as well.”
All good points. Farber notes that, like Microsoft’s Surface, Google operates from the precarious position of simultaneously working with and competing with its manufacturing partners. I would add that we can see how well that tactic works through the Android lens. Does Google hope the problems it has had with smartphones won’t translate to laptops? Perhaps they feel they’ve learned enough from their Android struggles. We’ll see.
Cynthia Murrell, June 29, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
The Future of Google: Search, Sales, or Showmanship?
June 28, 2012
The news “thing” makes me nervous. Mr. Murdoch wants to sell his “real” journalist news properties it seems or he wants to take some other action. Bloggers are reporting on events in near real time, confusing me with reports of various events which, in most cases, have little significance in the world of the addled goose in rural Kentucky.
I wanted to raise one question, triggered by the flood of information about Google’s demonstration day at Google I/O. “What is Google?”
I am okay with whatever Google does. The company does not have a material impact on my life. For many, however, Google is the Alpha and the Omega of “the future.”
I scanned the Thomson Reuters’ “news” story “Google Goes Up Against Amazon, Apple with Nexus Tablet.” The main idea is that Google is—yawn—in the hardware business, competing with Amazon and Apple. This is new information? Hardly. I also took a look at “Project Glass Demo: Hangouts in Air.” How does skydiving improve the relevance of the queries I run on Google? Ah, future improvements when I jump from an aircraft and want to locate a doc in the box.
Let me step back.
First, Google is dependent on advertising for revenue. I read but do not fully agree with the assertions in “IgnitionOne: Growth Slows For Paid-Search Spend.” For the sake of intellectual joy, let’s assume that:
Marketers continue to allocate budgets to U.S. paid-search advertising campaigns, but growth slowed to 15.5% in the second quarter of 2012, compared with the prior two quarters. In Q4 2011, paid-search ad spend grew 22.4%; and in Q1 2012, 30.3%, according to a quarterly report that IgnitionOne will release Thursday [June 28, 2012].
I keep trying to relate Google’s hardware and technical sky diving to ad revenues. Frankly, I am coming up a few cans short of a six pack. Google can generate ad revenue by participating in large markets. A good example is China. Oh, I almost forgot that Google has created a bit of tension between itself and the Chinese government. There are quite a few Chinese mobile phone manufacturers using Android, but these phones don’t generate direct ad revenue for Google. I wonder if that gap can be closed. In the hardware game, Google has pitted itself against Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft. In general, I wonder if there might be more revenue to gain with positive relationships with these firms. Oh, I almost forgot that a scorched earth policy is being used with these three giants. Well, let’s hope that ad revenues are not softening because selling hardware can be tricky. I wonder if Barnes & Noble has cracked the code. Oh, I almost forgot that the classic middle man bookseller may be losing money on hardware.
Using Search Refiners in SharePoint for a More Powerful Search
June 28, 2012
In “Custom SharePoint 2010 Search Refiner – Displaying Range of Choices,” at the ShareMuch.com Blog, Yaroslav Pentsarskyy demystifies some SharePoint search refiner features. Pentsarskyy explains his approach,
In this post, we’ll take a look at some of the most common customizations/configurations you’d want to do to a refiner in SharePoint 2010 enterprise search. First off, this post assumes you’re using SP 2010 Enterprise Search Center. If you perform a search query and navigate to the search results page you can edit the page and see a refiner web part on the left.
If you have users that do not know where to begin their search, refiners in SharePoint provide users the ability to narrow search results down by more meaningful filters, thereby reducing time spent searching. This becomes especially helpful, and Pentsarskyy’s guide may be worth the read if you are new to the search features in SharePoint.
One simple way to get a more powerful search is by integrating a third party solution into your SharePoint system developed by experts in search, like Fabasoft Mindbreeze, which extends the capabilities of your farm. Their Web Parts based information pairing capabilities give you powerful searches and a complete picture of your business information, allowing you to get the most out of your enterprise search investments. And your end users will benefit from the fast and intuitive search with clearly displayed results and simple navigation.
Philip West, June 28, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Manufacturing Industry on Brink of PaaS Revolution
June 28, 2012
Everyone knows how cloud technology has transformed how the world does business and how data is stored and shared. Software-as-a-Service was created solely from the cloud and allowed small and midsized businesses in many industries access to software that traditionally was much too expensive for smaller budgets. The latest cloud-based technology is Platform-as-a-Service according to the SYS-CON Media article, “How PaaS Can Change Manufacturing Software”, and offers even more than SaaS.
The article explains PaaS’s many capabilities by pointing out,
“PaaS also allows manufacturers to:
- Upgrade manufacturing add-ons before vendor releases
- Purchase a wide diversity of apps that are designed to be interoperable
- Get third-party developers to quickly build customized solutions
Beyond that, the cheaper developments costs that PaaS enables can allow third-party developers to pass along these savings to manufacturers. Of course, the PaaS options that can serve the manufacturing industry today are relatively few and are still maturing.”
We expect that as PaaS grows in popularity (there are very limited vendors now for PLM solutions) the manufacturing industry will realize its great potential and an increase in PLM solutions adoptions will be the result. PaaS is now primarily aimed at small and midsized businesses because of its limitations but as it improves larger companies will be able to incorporate it into their existing PLM solutions.
Catherine Lamsfuss, June 28, 2012
Protected: Predictive Coding Gets Patented
June 27, 2012
Connotate and Digital Reasoning Glean Intelligence from Social Media
June 27, 2012
Governments are eager to rapidly cull actionable intelligence from the constant deluge of unstructured social media data. Digital Reasoning and Connotate have announced that they are teaming up to address this need with Connotate’s expertise in large-scale data monitoring and extraction and with Digital Reasoning’s unstructured data analytics chops. The press release states:
“Connotate’s ability to monitor dynamic social media sources, automatically reformat large-scale data into simple formats and deliver them to Digital Reasoning’s machine-learning text analytics solution helps government agencies and businesses achieve a deeper understanding of how they are perceived and connected to the world around them. Rather than analyzing all of the world’s data, this partnership instead focuses on leveraging only relevant, timely information so that government agencies can accurately link people and organizations to a myriad of related data points, including time and location. This capability is crucial to government agencies as well as enterprises conducting competitive intelligence or internal audits.”
Sounds like a capable combination. Connotate CEO Keith Cooper is excited about the unprecedented partnership, which combines technologies to take on what he says are the three main challenges of big data: velocity, variety, and volume. Tim Estes, CEO of Digital Reasoning, emphasizes that speed is the crucial factor in this particular project.
Digital Reasoning boasts that their Synthesys, used by over a dozen government agencies, is the first software platform that automatically makes sense of big data. The company was founded in 2007, and makes its primary home in Franklin Tennessee, with an office in Washington, DC.
Founded in 2000, Connotate aims to help clients increase the value they get out of Web-based data with easy-to-use solutions. Connotate asserts that it is the only vendor in its field “with a broad, uncontested patent portfolio.” That is a definite advantage. The company has been named a KMWorld “Trend-Setting Product” for the past six years.
Cynthia Murrell, June 27, 2012
Sponsored by HighGainBlog
SharePoint Projects Easily Spiral Out of Control
June 27, 2012
As any SharePoint developer knows, a project can easily get out of control. Original estimates are often overrun and decimated as glitches and problems occur. The ShareMuch blog tackles this issue in its piece, “Did You Think About: Why Do We Go Over the Estimates on SharePoint Projects?”
The author begins:
Just as everyone you and I are going over the estimates on many SharePoint projects; it doesn’t matter how much experience you have. With more experience you might be able to mitigate the outcomes of going over estimates, but avoiding going over the estimates, in a first place, is not so trivial. I’m sure you already thought about the whole “going over the estimates” problem and even have few answers why it happened; most of those answers are probably related to stakeholders on a project and other events.
He goes on to explain that instead of focusing on specific solutions, the focus should be on the reasons why this happens and better prevention.
We think that one effective prevention technique is to bring a smart third party solution on board, a solution like Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enteprise. Fabasoft Mindbreeze is a leading Austria-based company. Its products stand alone or work alongside an existing SharePoint infrastructure. Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enteprise is fully scalable, with updates available at least once per quarter, avoiding the need for continuous customization and over-shot budgets. Mindbreeze backs up what they sell – read feedback from their many satisfied customers.
Emily Rae Aldridge, June 27, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Sinequa Questions Big Data
June 27, 2012
Sinequa’s Business Search Blog recently reported on big data in the article “Big Data: Marketing Nirvana or the Next Big Bubble to Burst.”
According to the article, Big Data is a phrase that many organizations misuse in order to pump up their services. This is unfortunate for those companies that really do have something to offer to this burgeoning market.
The market the Sinequa is referring to is one where enterprises and administrators have to deal with vast amounts of unstructured data that come in a variety of formats and sources. Therefore, the market is created by companies that create products and services that extract the useful information from this large mess of data.
Sinequa then goes on to plug its solution by stating:
“At Sinequa, we have been dealing with Big Data (in the above sense) for quite some time: Our Unified Information Access solution has been used by large enterprises and administrations to plough through billions of data base records, business transactions, and unstructured data of all sorts, like documents, emails, and social network data. Our semantic analyses and Natural Language Processing have served to make sense of this magma of data, and to create structure where there was none. All this in order to find sense in chaos. The challenge for us was to combine deep analysis with high performance in dealing with big volumes.”
While Sinequa’s customers benefit from the fact that they have been creating Big Data solutions for quite some time, that doesn’t mean that that their solution is the only solution to structuring the unstructured data. The point is, however, a valid one.
Jasmine Ashton, June 27, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
Swedish Technia Innovative Forum to Be the Best
June 27, 2012
As product lifecycle management (PLM) solutions grow in popularity it is no surprise to see companies from around the globe interested to learn how PLM can benefit their organizations. That is why it is also no surprise that this year’s Technia Innovative Forum in Stockholm, Sweden is slated to be the biggest and most popular to date according to the article, “Technia: Technia Organizes the Nordic’s Largest Innovation and PLM Event at Cirkus in Stockholm”, on The Swedish Wire.
The article quoted Technia CEO, Jonas Gejer, as saying,
“This year’s approach has the potential of turning out to be the most interesting one ever. We have a fantastic line-up of speakers and also many interesting activities during the day. I look forward to discussing with our visitors how PLM can create winning and innovative strategies for tomorrow’s products.”
With so many PLM solutions flooding the market right now it is a wonder that companies have any idea where to begin. For small and midsized companies having the financial ability to even shop for PLM solutions is probably still new and intimidating. When shopping around the most important thing companies should remember is that without the proper training and ongoing support a PLM solution is useless. For that reason we recommend Inforbix, a new data management solutions provider, focusing on helping their clients find, share and reuse data to the fullest extent possible to reduce waste and duplication.
Catherine Lamsfuss, June 26, 2012
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