Zylab Offers Guidance on International eDiscovery
April 16, 2013
The complex issues surrounding eDiscovery only get more tangled when you consider cross-border transfers of information. Prominent eDiscovery and data management firm Zylab held a helpful webinar on the matter, and supplies a summary of it (and more) in an interview with the Metropolitan Corporate Counsel. The company’s Mary Mack speaks in, “Today’s Most Challenging Litigation Cost Issues: Privacy, Privilege, and Over-Preservation Related to ESI” [Electronically Stored Information].
Mack explains issues around the evolving global eDiscovery landscape clearly and concisely—I highly recommend the article. She touches on social media privacy and the costs of over-preservation. She also supplies timely insights into international developments. For example, she states:
“It has been very difficult for companies to move data for legal purposes across borders and in a timely manner. The EU is now trying to clarify the rules with respect to data protection, but in doing so it has opened up a whole can of worms and a world of opportunity. Under the EU draft, there are permissions to get and standards to achieve with respect to things such as apps, cookies and cloud computing. Silicon Valley has been lobbying quite a bit on this issue because apps and cloud are international, just as the Internet is international.
“Also, the EU is working with APEC (Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation) on privacy rules. Therefore, it is doubly important that there be U.S. involvement during this inflection time.”
Organizations around the world turn to ZyLAB for help with eDiscovery issues. The company was founded in 1983, with the release of the first full-text retrieval software for the PC. It’s eDiscovery/ Information Management platform, ZyLAB Information Management Platform, was released in 2010.
Cynthia Murrell, April 16, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Thetus Goes to the Government
April 16, 2013
Big data is awash in exciting new names, but some tend to stick out more than others. Thetus Is a name not many are familiar with yet, however that is poised to change. Especially, in the government. The small analytics upstart is making big inroads with governmental big data, as we discovered in a recent Thetus Blog post, “Government Big Data Forum.”
The story focuses heavily on explaining the forum:
“This year the forum will “examine emerging technologies and concepts designed to address the full spectrum of agency mission needs for Big Data.” With three keynote speeches and a strong list of vendors exhibiting their products this event will definitely be worth while for anyone interested in government analytical tools. If you’re already attending make sure to stop by our booth to see the latest capabilities in our core product, Savanna!”
Thetus has been busy with government work. In addition to this forum, they recently helped take an analytical look at Kenyan droughts, which brought them heaps of praise. The cornerstone of everything they do is Savanna, which has a fascinating demo available right now. This is a great opportunity for governments looking for big data help. Time to take a look and see how it fits.
Patrick Roland, April 16, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Apache Software Foundation Graduates New Program
April 15, 2013
The Apache Software Foundation is a strong presence in the world of open source software development, perhaps the strongest presence. Their system involves supporting fledging initiatives through the incubation process, and then graduating them into the great wide world. This is a process that has grown some of the most productive and useful software solutions that are currently tackling the issues of Big Data and unstructured data – namely Apache Lucene and Solr.
Read more about the Apache Software Foundation’s latest success and graduation ceremony in the article, “The Apache Software Foundation Announces Apache cTAKES(TM) as a Top-Level Project.”
The article begins:
“The Apache Software Foundation (ASF), the all-volunteer developers, stewards, and incubators of nearly 150 Open Source projects and initiatives, today announced that Apache cTAKES has graduated from the Apache Incubator to become a Top-Level Project (TLP), signifying that the Project’s community and products have been well-governed under the ASF’s meritocratic process and principles.”
Previously mentioned, Lucene/Solr currently supports some of the most exciting initiatives in enterprise search, such as LucidWorks Search and LucidWorks Big Data. Knowing that these solutions are built upon open source Apache initiatives bring efficiency, security, and cost-effectiveness.
Emily Rae Aldridge, April 15, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
Online Retail Goes Old School
April 15, 2013
You’ve probably heard the theory that the world is cyclical. What happens once is bound to happen again and so on. However, we didn’t expect online retail to follow this path so quickly. We discovered more from a recent SLI Systems story, “Online Retail Goes…Brick and Mortar?”
According to the story:
“According to the New York Times, companies like Etsy, eBay, Piperlime and Bonobos, which have typically had an online-only presence, are now testing small showrooms in large cities across the country. These smaller stores, with smaller square footage than standard “big box” retailers, allow these online retailers to customers interact with products physically before they buy. These stores are not meant to house all products, but rather serve as a showroom for new or popular items. Because they carry limited stock, they are able to afford more expensive, high-visibility locations in major cities.”
Surprisingly, this isn’t the only instance of an online stalwart entering the physical world. eBay, the online auction behemoth, is also tinkering with the idea according to Internet Retailer. Is this the end of online commerce? Of course not. But what we are excited about is how some real world experience will shape the way online businesses interact with customers. Ideally, this will be a blend of shopping experiences.
Patrick Roland, April 15, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Media Spotlights Vivisimo
April 15, 2013
If there’s one thing we can count on with analytic news it is the idea of familiar names popping up in unexpected places. That was our initial instinct upon reading a recent Sys-Con story, “Innovative Analytics—Changing the IT Landscape.”
The biggest surprise was this tidbit of news:
“IBM is a late entrant into developing a core product focused on log analytics leveraging new technologies. Their new product is promising as it integrates competencies from multiple software divisions as well as the recent Vivisimo acquisition. This combination of products brings the challenge of integration and installation, while allowing the new product to pull strengths of multiple best-of-breed products. By integrating systems manuals as an additional source to identify specific problems, this new workload analytics capability will be a good addition for existing and new IBM Tivoli customers.”
We were pleased to see a solid company like Vivisimo get so much praise here. It is well deserved as their stock continues to rise. To illustrate, we also caught them in a recent edition of Washington Business Journal. There’s something to be said for garnering so much press in a small window of time. To us, it means people are catching on and focusing on this company. The media can tell you a lot in that way.
Patrick Roland, April 15, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Elsevier Acquires Mendeley
April 15, 2013
Color us pleasantly surprised; a traditional publisher is embracing open content. I fact, it has sunk a hefty sum into it, we learn from “Confirmed: Elsevier Has Bought Mendeley for $69M-$100M to Expand Its Open, Social Education Data Efforts” at TechCrunch. Major global science and health publisher Excelvier has long been seen as an opponent of the open license. Mendeley, on the other hand, is founded on sharing and collaboration. Does this acquisition signal a shift in the publishing industry?
Writer Ingrid Lunden delves into the details:
“Mendeley is both a technology/platform acquisition as well as an acqui-hire for Elsevier. CEO Victor Henning, one of the three PhD co-founders of Mendeley, tells us in an interview that all of Mendeley’s 50 staff are coming over to Elsevier, and Henning will become VP of strategy for the company — a sign that Elsevier may be gearing up for more activity and possibly acquisitions in this space.”
Elsevier has actually been working with Mendeley for several years, indicating it may long ago have seen the inevitability of a more open publishing model. For its part, Mendeley will continue to run its main platform and its academic edition while expanding its free services. Lunden emphasizes:
“It will also keep its API free and open to use: that API today is used by some 300 apps, up from 260 in January. Henning says Mendeley will continue to source data from different places — not just focus on what’s published or owned by Elsevier.”
That is a very important pledge. Henning also says the deal will allow Mendeley to take a longer view, as opposed to stressing over short-term revenue, as they would have done had they remained independent. That means the opportunity to proceed with projects that have been on the back burner, like the hoped-for launch of an Android app later in the year. For more information see the article and/or see the Q&A page Mendeley has created about the agreement.
Cynthia Murrell, April 15, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Recommind Moves into Healthcare
April 14, 2013
Recommind is embracing the healthcare market. Marketwire shares, “Recommind Will Be First Time Speaker and Sponsor at World Health Care Congress Conference.” With legal conquered, it looks like the company is on to new adventures. We learn from the press release:
“Recommind, a leader in unstructured data management, analysis and governance technology, today announced it will be sponsoring and speaking for the first time at the World Health Care Congress (WHCC) event on April 8-10 at the Gaylord National Harbor in Maryland. Recommind will join the global health care community of business, political, and academic leaders to actively share information and collaborate to improve the overall quality and cost of health delivery in the US and throughout the world.”
The company hosted a speaking session, at which they advised attendees on key analytics issues, like implementing an efficient infrastructure, communicating information back to providers, analytics-informed preventative programs, and sharing improved outcomes. It is good to see the company branching into the spirited medical arena.
Experts at handling unstructured data, Recommind provides search-powered analysis and governance solutions to customers around the world. These tools are built around on their CORE information management platform. Headquartered in San Francisco, the company was formed in 2000.
Cynthia Murrell, April 14, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Oracle Upgrades Discovery and BI Tools
April 14, 2013
Oracle has released upgrades aimed at improving business outcomes and simplifying IT requirements, we learn from a press release posted at MarketWatch, “Oracle Extends Business Analytics Portfolio Empowering Organizations to Transform Data Into Insights.” Both Endeca Information Discovery and Oracle Business Intelligence Foundation Suite have been enhanced. The company points out that both solutions perform best on their tailor-made Exalytics In-Memory Machine. The write-up informs us:
“Oracle Endeca Information Discovery 3.0 delivers a completely redesigned user interface that offers new drag and drop visualizations to provide users with a superior discovery experience, new personal data load for business users to add their own Excel data files to IT provided data, and new Oracle BI Server connectivity, to leverage trusted data from existing analytic applications, along with other features.
“Oracle Business Intelligence Foundation Suite Release 11.1.1.7 delivers significant enhancements to usability, mobility, user experience and Big Data integration, enabling organizations to analyze critical information and get the intelligence they need to optimize their business.
“Endeca Information Discovery and Oracle BI Foundation Suite run better on Oracle Exalytics In-Memory Machine, the industry’s first engineered system for Business Analytics. Oracle Exalytics takes best-in class analytics and in-memory software engineered on high-performance hardware to reduce the cost and complexity of IT infrastructures while increasing productivity and performance for data discovery, business intelligence, modeling and planning applications.”
This Exalytics machine has the potential to make the entire BI undertaking much, much simpler. Endeca, acquired by Oracle in 2011, has long been a strong player in the enterprise discovery field. Oracle’s BI suite integrates several key features in one platform: enterprise reporting, dashboards, ad-hoc analysis, scenario analysis, scorecards, and predictive analytics. The company’s commitment to supplying cutting-edge technology while maintaining easy-to-use interfaces is apparent in these latest improvements.
Cynthia Murrell, April 13, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Chiliad and Virtual Consolidation
April 13, 2013
Yep, fragmentation is an issue even in big data analytics. I read “Chiliad Takes Virtual Consolidation Route to Big Data Analytics.” Chiliad is a company which provides software and services to a number of US government agencies and to other customers as well.
The main point of the write up is:
Chiliad says it can eliminate some of those barriers to adoption of big data analytics with Discovery/Alert 7.0, an iterative information retrieval system that lets analysts search any data warehouse or data set across clouds, agencies, departments and organizations.
The once popular term “federation” has given way to a host of synonyms, including unified information access and consolidation. The new twist is the use of the word “virtual” which implies that leaving data where it resides is something new. The alternative is creating a data warehouse like the old iPhrase system and other repository centric approaches to data management.
The article contains this statement: “Discovery/Alert provides global ranking of results to help analysts find relevant information in massive collections of data.” Then I read, “We [Chiliad] actually give you a unified, holistic global ranking of all of your results… As organizations scale out to billions of records and petabytes of data, relevancy becomes more important.”
The story highlights features which remind me of Fast Search & Transfer’s descriptions of its system. In fact, a number of search and content processing vendors have made similar points for many years.
What’s new? The emphasis is on “all” and “virtual.” Will these concepts be enough to move search and content processing, analytics, and business intelligence forward? Will these assertions cause some firms to dog paddle instead of speeding to the finish line?
I don’t know. The marketing points seem remarkable consistent in my opinion. The problems seem to be unsolved despite the efforts of many, many vendors to deliver actionable information.
Stephen E Arnold, April 13, 2013
Sponsored by Xenky.com, the new ArnoldIT portal
USPTO and Its TIFF Image System
April 13, 2013
If you don’t have money and free patent services are not working, you may want to use the US government’s www.uspto.gov site to get the image files for a patent document. We used a fresh Windows 7 machine and got the system working, but there were a few tips we thought we would pass along.
First, you access the images by running a query from this page: http://patft.uspto.gov/. You will want to pay close attention to the syntax for querying the USPTO system which reminds me of an old-style search service.
I ran a query for 7,953,642. Here’s what the USPTO system displays:
You will want to click on the “Images” link which is in the clump of red text at the top of the page:
When you click on Images you will see this if you have a Tagged Image File Format which supports an older image standard installed:
If you so see the patent document, you can generate a PDF by installing a freeware PDF printer. Just print each page of the patent and use software like Adobe Acrobat of FoxIt which allows a user to assemble individual files into a single PDF. When bundled, you have your complete patent.
If you do not have a suitable TIFF viewer, you will have to download software which supports the USPTO file format. I recommend Alternatiff which is available without charge from this page: http://www.alternatiff.com/
We learned that getting the TIFF viewer working was painless using Opera, Version 12.1. Your mileage may vary. Our efforts to get the viewer working with Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer were not productive.
One question which comes up whenever one of my team works with the the USPTO files is, “Why aren’t these folks using the Portable Document Format file type?” Another member of my team asked, “Haven’t these folks heard about HTML5, XML, or Word for goodness sakes?”
My response: “You want to question the United States government?”
I sure don’t.
Stephen E Arnold, April 13, 2013
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