Finally Some Praise for Discovery
July 28, 2012
One of the challenges many businesses face today is how to deal with unstructured data in the ever increasing big data realm. The answer is not that complicated according to Business 2 Community’s article “Discovery in the Age of Big Data.” One just has to ‘discover’ the solution.
How do we discover the solutions, simply put, we search:
“Data exploration and discovery is a critical component of any big data initiative. Search is an important tool in this exploration and discovery process.
“Successful big data implementations take a phased approach and deciding what data to roll into your big data platform is part of this process. This data exploration phase is critical in developing and understanding what data exists, what is missing and how the data ties to the use case scenarios most important to the business.”
Today’s business owners want it all, and with all the tools at their disposal they can. Efficient use of search and discovery can provide a wealth of solutions and relevant information. There are enhanced navigation and visualization tools available that will take users well beyond the fundamental keyword searches commonly used.
Once users start utilizing search within their existing metadata, extracted entities and dynamic document clustering combined, the ability to extract value will be greatly increased. The end result is the ‘discovery’ of greater return of investment in the future.
Finally, some praise for discovery.
Jennifer Shockley, July 28, 2012
Amazon: Feet of Clay
July 27, 2012
Two Amazon items caught my attention. Amazon has been on my mind. One of my devices has a fuzzy gray name so I cannot send content to it. Amazon customer support chatted and emailed up a storm, but, Maxie the iPad, is not going to get any auto delivery of books. Nice. The other Amazon issues was the financial reports and the fact that Amazon’s seems to have a wee problem with cost control. Most of the analysts were cheerleading for the eCommerce site which wants to be Applegle or GoogAp.
Here is the Amazon number I noted:
Total Operating Expense: June 30, 2012, $12,727
Total Revenue: June 30, 2012, $12,834.
Thin? Yep, thin as one of those used music CDs I can buy when Maxie the iPad works with the Amazon outfit’s ordering system.
Now this is interesting because Amazon’s costs sure seem to continue to go up and fast. So Amazon revenues have to keep on going up too. The marketing about cloud objects, the push into publishing, research and development, and device making mania are going to drive up costs. Unless that top line gets some more juice, trouble looms.
Same day delivery is either out or on hold. Why?
“Amazon CFO Doesn’t See a Way to Do Same Day Delivery” reveals that the problem is not the idea. The problem is a CFO problem. Not logistics. Not marketing. Not technology. A CFO problem. In my book, CFOs worry mostly about three things: money and money and the SEC.
A failure to seize an opportunity makes a Julius Caesar into a Internet Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus.
Stephen E Arnold, July 27, 2012
Sponsored by Ikanow
Too Many Cooks in the SharePoint Kitchen
July 27, 2012
Bjorn Furuknap brings us another irreverent look at the world of SharePoint, this time focusing on the quantity of SharePoint developers. In Furuknap’s SharePoint Corner, he brings us this entry, “How Many SharePoint Developers Are There Really?”
In its publicity for its purchase of Yammer, Microsoft boasts of how many developers they have building on SharePoint.
Furuknap states:
What’s very odd, though, is that Microsoft claims there are 700,000 ‘developers building on the platform’. With these numbers, that means that for every SharePoint customer, there are over 10 developers. Read that again: For every SharePoint customer, there are more than 10 developers . . . It can mean one of two things: 1) There are far too many developers out there and a lot of them are unemployed. Good for businesses, if true. 2) SharePoint is a platform so complex that you need to pay, on average, ten people to do nothing but develop on SharePoint. Bad for SharePoint, if true.
Let’s go with the idea that SharePoint may be too complex for its own good. What is to be done? Most organizations cannot afford a herd of developers to customize SharePoint into a usable infrastructure. For organizations in that situation we recommend exploring a smart third party solution like Fabasoft Mindbreee Enterprise. Working as a standalone solution, or in conjunction with an existing SharePoint infrastructure, Fabasoft Mindbreeze not only streamlines your enterprise needs, but also integrates the rest of your electronic data repositories via Connectors.
Do not let the complexities of SharePoint bankrupt your IT department. See a high return on your investment by choosing Fabasoft Mindbreeze.
Emily Rae Aldridge, July 27, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Thetus Takes a Big Step for Education in Portland
July 27, 2012
Thetus just took a big step for education by jumping on board a special education program at the local college. The Thetus site proudly announced their future in education in the article, “Thetus Joins the Portland Cooperative Education Program.”
The Portland Cooperative Education Program (PCEP) connects local software companies with Portland State Universities Computer Science students. The students participate via internships with approved companies. Thus, students gain hands on experience in an internship atmosphere. PCEP hopes the end result will help students to focus their development and integrate more easily into a work atmosphere.
The students involved will have a specific regime, which is:
“Students round out their classroom experience by working 20 hours a week for four consecutive 6-month terms in the three tracks: Software Engineering/Software Development, Quality Assurance, and/or Developer Operations. The student changes companies at least once during their 24-month program.”
Thetus was created in 2003 and has provided semantic knowledge modeling and discovery solutions ever since. They specialize in extracting and managing information to support business decision making.
The internship program is a great way to further education with real life skills. By interning at Thetus students will gain insight into a variety of markets, such as energy, environmental, law enforcement, defense and intelligence.
Thetus is doing really good in Portland and joining the PCEP just earned them a spot on the honor roll.
Jennifer Shockley, July 27, 2012
Soft Tech Software Adopted by SATCOM Giant
July 27, 2012
The need for product lifecycle management (PLM) solutions perforates across industries with the communications industry being no exception. It was recently announced that the General Dynamics SATCOM Technologies located in Richardson, Texas, will begin using the PLM software, ProductCenter, created by Soft Tech Inc. in the Equities.com article, “United States : SofTech Product Selected by General Dynamics SATCOM Technologies”.
The reasons for the adoption of the PLM solution by the communication company were discussed in the article:
“ProductCenter streamlines engineering documentation processes and supports multi-CAD tool integrations and the vaulting of product related data. ProductCenter also enables Engineering to manage the Bill of Material (BOM) for improved efficiency in product manufacturing. Although ProductCenter is focused on the product development processes today, it will be used to manage any document that requires access control and routing to any department and/or individual.”
The need for PLM solutions to support mult-CAD files and be accessible across departments is not relegated to this company or this industry alone. Inforbix, another leader in the PLM field, understands that any industry utilizing CAD/CAM files needs a solution that can easy work with such files and yet remain fluid, streamlining processes. They pride themselves on being able to enable all of their PLM users to ‘find, reuse and share product data’ regardless of the size of the enterprise.
Catherine Lamsfuss, July 27, 2012
Open Search Engine has Black Duck Soaring to New Heights
July 27, 2012
Black Duck is getting some wing support from Ohloh and plans on helping developers soar to new heights in the future.
Now, by utilizing the Ohloh code and open source search engine, Black Duck can give flocks of developers a new flight plan. eWeek’s article “Black Duck Launches Open Data Initiative, New Code Search Engine” tells us developers can utilize a free comprehensive resource to find and explore open source projects and code.
The officials at Black Duck stated:
“Visible metrics help open source project teams better manage the operations of their projects, track progress, recruit new members and share their progress with others. Black Duck’s decision to open up the data in Ohloh will make it easier for open source projects to be more transparent about the success and activity of a project.”
“We’re proud to freely license Ohloh data under this respected license, and believe that making this resource more accessible will allow contributors and consumers of open source gain unique insight, leading to more rapid development and adoption.”
Since 2002 Black Duck Software has been giving developers strategy, products, and services for the enterprise scale adoption of open source software. Their adaption of the Ohloh code and search engine gives developers a direction to fly other than south.
The tail feathers of the Black Duck may just carry developers way above the clouds in the future.
Jennifer Shockley, July 27, 2012
Too Bad Google Algorithms Know Best
July 27, 2012
Algorithms do not lie, and Googlers are enduring an unpleasant period of adjustment while trying to convert from Google Places to Google+.
As in the past, major changeovers like this can be a bit buggy, but this bug is eating a hole in the pockets of small business. MediaPost’s article “Problems With Google+ Local Harm Small Businesses” tells us company reviews, ratings and recommendations are mysteriously disappearing, if they show up at all.
Google’s plan was to copy old reviews when businesses migrated from Google Places to Google+ pages, but admits:
“It appears the search engine does not migrate certain reviews that look like spam.”
“The switch from Google Places to Google+ business pages is buggy, broken, and legitimate reviews are lost in processing. This is really unfortunate for local businesses, because building an online reputation can take a long time, and is a tremendously valuable asset to lose. There are a lot of Google business pages that have old reviews on them, which leads me to believe that this is some weird bug or spam filter.”
It looks like small companies are not the only ones suffering because of this pesky problem. Since recommendations, reviews and ratings increase website and page rankings on Google’s organic search results, this glitch has small businesses re-evaluating their AdWord budgets.
Too bad Google, algorithms know best and small businesses are watching the numbers. If this is a bug, Google needs to call an exterminator quick.
Jennifer Shockley, July 27, 2012
So Lets Talk About MBAs Understanding Analytic Methods
July 27, 2012
Apparently biologists and scientists are having communication issues, but fortunately they have a medium to provide some council. Repercussions can be limited, as according to PNAS’s article “Heavy use of Equations Impedes Communication Among Biologists,” scientists just need to work on relevance and presentation in order to improve communication and move forward.
The method to the MBA’s madness still seems a little mad, as:
“Most research in biology is empirical, yet empirical studies rely fundamentally on theoretical work for generating testable predictions and interpreting observations. Despite this interdependence, many empirical studies build largely on other empirical studies with little direct reference to relevant theory, suggesting a failure of communication that may hinder scientific progress.”
Their actual point was too many mathematical equations are having a negative effect on the inputting of citations per page. It seems the more equations equal less citations. The irony is that the language of science is often one of mathematics.
Communication is the key to progress, and obviously scientists are not locked out since they are still progressing. The MBA’s think they need to enhance the presentation of the mathematical models utilized. This makes sense, but science is based on research and theory, so eventually the professionals will draw their on conclusion.
So, let us talk about MBA’s understanding of analytic methods. Is their conclusion feasible, or will it only lead to more miscommunication?
Jennifer Shockley, July 27, 2012
Interesting Reads
July 26, 2012
There is a very enlightening source of reading references to be found in Jeff Huang’s “Best Paper Awards in Computer Science.” He conveniently provided a list of informative papers neatly categorized by area of expertise, like artificial intelligence or human computer interaction.
While scrolling down the list, two interesting papers seemed to jump right out.
The first of which, “Unsupervised Part-of-Speech Tagging with Bilingual Graph-Based Projections,” describes a new approach, as:
“A novel approach for inducing unsupervised part-of-speech taggers for languages that have no labeled training data, but have translated text in a resource-rich language. Our method does not assume any knowledge about the target language (in particular no tagging dictionary is assumed), making it applicable to a wide array of resource-poor languages. We use graph-based label propagation.”
The second paper, “How does search behavior change as search becomes more difficult?” Describes some research on search and their conclusions, with:
“When having difficulty in finding information, users start to formulate more diverse queries, they use advanced operators more, and they spend a longer time on the search result page as compared to the successful tasks. The results complement the existing body of research focusing on successful search strategies.”
Researchers are consistently developing models to predict and understand changes in text entry. Sadly, most of the models fail to account for varying system parameters and the ever changing human factor, nor their evolving relationship.
The latter explains the dumbing of search…but they were interesting reads.
Jennifer Shockley, July 26, 2012
Sign In as Difference User in SharePoint 2013
July 26, 2012
The “Sign in as a Different User” menu option has been done away with in SharePoint 2013. Microsoft has made it known that they have worked to make SharePoint 2013 a more streamlined, efficient, out-of-the-box solution, and in doing so are discouraging users from customization. However, some of the features that were removed still need to be navigated in some way. The “Sign in as a Different User” command is one example. Nick Grattan’s SharePoint Blog gives us a workaround in, “Sign in as Different User and SharePoint 2013.”
Grattan states:
This ‘Sign in as Different User’ menu item is very useful when testing applications, but it can lead to problems especially when opening documents, say in Microsoft Word. So, it may be for these reasons that the option has been removed in SharePoint 2013. You can add the menu item back in, but I would suggest only doing this on test or development SharePoint servers. To do this, repeat this edit on all servers in your SharePoint farm:
What follows is a step-by-step list of instructions to help you successfully complete the function.
For users who are concerned in general about the lack of customization options in SharePoint 2013, we would encourage the addition of a smart third-party solution. For instance, Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise can stand alone or work alongside an existing SharePoint infrastructure to increase efficiency and intuitiveness. Fabasoft Mindbreeze is a trusted industry leader based in Austria, and consistently wins recognition for by KM World.
Emily Rae Aldridge, July 26, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
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