The Enterprise is a Jungle Search
April 16, 2015
The word collaboration has become one of those corporate power words like “synergy” and “KISS method.” Many people groan inwardly at new ways to “collaborate,” because it usually means another tool they have to learn and will fall out of use in under a year. With the myriad of ways to collaborate digitally, getting any actual collaborating done is difficult. The SAP News blog says enterprise collaboration might be getting a little easier in the article, “EnterpriseJungle Tames Enterprise Search.”
EnterpriseJungle created an application with the SAP Hana Cloud Platform to help companies connect quickly find and connect with experts within or outside their company. The Principal at EnterpriseJungle states that a company’s people search is vital tool to locate and harness information.
“ ‘Large companies are desperate to get a handle on understanding and accessing the expertise available to them at any given moment,’ said Sinclair. ‘Our solutions help companies solve fundamental questions like how do we find the people who are fantastic at what they do, but only known to their closest core group of co-workers? And, how do we easily bring their knowledge and expertise to the front line with minimal extra work? If we can help get information to employees that need it, we’re fundamentally making their lives easier, and making the company’s life easier.’ “
After a description of how EnterpriseJungle’s works and its usefulness for companies, it makes a claim to offer Google-like search results. While it might be a people search tool, the application is capable of much more. It can help people locate experts, track down skill sets, and even improve IT relations.
EnterpriseJungle is hitting on a vital tool for companies. People search has a severe need for improvement and this might be the start of a new enterprise niche market.
Whitney Grace, April 16, 2015
Stephen E Arnold, Publisher of CyberOSINT at www.xenky.com
Mobile Office 365 Usage on the Rise
April 16, 2015
A recent study by harmon.ie has found that Mobile Office 365 is growing quickly among its users. Mobile is a huge consideration for all software companies, and now the data is proving that mobile is the go-to for even heavy-hitting work and enterprise applications. Read more in the AppsTechNews article, “The state of mobile Office 365 usage in the workplace – and what it means for SharePoint.”
The article begins with the research:
“24% of harmon.ie mobile users are now using mobile Office 365 in the cloud, compared to 18% six months ago. Not surprisingly, the most popular activity conducted by business users on mobile devices was online and offline document access, according to 81% of the vote. 7% most frequently use their mobile devices to add a SharePoint site, while 4% prefer to favourite documents for later offline access.”
Retrieval is still proven to be the most common mobile function, as devices are still not designed well for efficient input. To keep up with future developments regarding mobile use in the enterprise, stay tuned to ArnoldIT.com. Stephen E. Arnold has made a career out of following all things search, and his SharePoint feed is an accessible place to stay tuned in to the latest SharePoint developments.
Emily Rae Aldridge, April 16, 2015
Stephen E Arnold, Publisher of CyberOSINT at www.xenky.com
NSF Makes Plan for Public Access to Scientific Research
April 16, 2015
The press release on the National Science Foundation titled National Science Foundation Announces Plan for Comprehensive Public Access to Research Results speaks to the NSF’s interest in increasing communications on federally funded research. The NSF is an independent federal agency with a 7 billion dollar annual budget that is dispersed around the country in the form of grants to fund research and education in science and engineering. The article states,
“Scientific progress depends on the responsible communication of research findings,” said NSF Director France A. Córdova…Today’s announcement follows a request from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy last year, directing science-funding agencies to develop plans to increase access to the results of federally funded research. NSF submitted its proposal to improve the management of digital data and received approval to implement the plan.”
The plan is called Today’s Data, Tomorrow’s Discoveries and promotes the importance of science without creating an undue burden on scientists. All manuscripts that appear in peer-reviewed scholarly journals and the like will be made available for free download within a year of the initial publication. In a time when scientists are less trusted and science itself is deeply misunderstood, public access may be more important than ever.
Chelsea Kerwin, April 16, 2014
Stephen E Arnold, Publisher of CyberOSINT at www.xenky.com
Yahoo: A Portion of Its Fantastical Search History
April 15, 2015
I have a view of Yahoo. Sure, it was formed when I was part of the team that developed The Point (Top 5% of the Internet). Yahoo had a directory. We had a content processing system. We spoke with Yahoo’s David Filo. Yahoo had a vision, he said. We said, No problem.
The Point became part of Lycos, embracing Fuzzy and his round ball chair. Yahoo, well, Yahoo just got bigger and generally went the way of general purpose portals. CEOs came and went. Stakeholders howled and then sulked.
I read or rather looked at “Yahoo. Semantic Search From Document Retrieval to Virtual Assistants.” You can find the PowerPoint “essay” or “revisionist report” on SlideShare. The deck was assembled by the director of research at Yahoo Labs. I don’t think this outfit is into balloons, self driving automobiles, and dealing with complainers at the European Commission. Here’s the link. Keep in mind you may have to sign up with the LinkedIn service in order to do anything nifty with the content.
The premise of the slide deck is that Yahoo is into semantic search. After some stumbles, semantic search started to become a big deal with Google and rich snippets, Bing and its tiles, and Facebook with its Like button and the magical Open Graph Protocol. The OGP has some fascinating uses. My book CyberOSINT can illuminate some of these uses.
And where is Yahoo in the 2008 to 2010 interval when semantic search was abloom? Patience, grasshopper.
Yahoo was chugging along with its Knowledge Graph. If this does not ring a bell, here’s the illustration used in the deck:
The date is 2013, so Yahoo has been busy since Facebook, Google, and Microsoft were semanticizing their worlds. Yahoo has a process in place. Again from the slide deck:
I was reminded of the diagrams created by other search vendors. These particular diagrams echo the descriptions of the now defunct Siderean Software server’s set up. But most content processing systems are more alike than different.
Information Retrieval: Experience and Fantasy
April 15, 2015
I read “Cynicism and Experience.” I am retired, and I spend my days FURminating my ageing white boxer.
As I brushed, I recalled a statement in Gulliver’s Travels. You know, Swift, Jonny Boy, who wrote:
This made me reflect, how vain an attempt it is for a man to endeavor to do himself honor among those who are out of all degree of equality or comparison with him.
Heartened, I then scanned some of copious flows of content from my Overflight system, which keeps me posted on information germane to search and content processing.
The system displayed a link to an article which urges me to use my experience in a non cynical way. I suppose Jonathan Swift’s first tutor told him to knock off with the characterizations of those who fell under his gaze.
He did not.
And, to be truthful, I am not likely to change my approach either.
The write up, which is the work of a person who seems to be much younger than I, recognizes that there are a few, not many, but a few benefits of having experience. In my case, I started work after I graduated from college in 1966 and have been chugging along through graduate school and beyond for—let’s see, what is the tally?—49 years.
I find the admonitions of those more youthful than I interesting. For example, I learned:
It can be fun to be the wise elder telling legends of the great monster you barely escaped in your younger days.
Yep, it is. The good news is that I have a wealth of information upon which to draw. The bad news, for those whom I find as “interesting” produce a cornucopia of triggers.
I also learned:
If you don’t share experience with others, your effectiveness will never scale beyond your own efforts. If you impart your battle scars on others without considering the circumstances in which they were inflicted, people who believe you will miss out on awesome things. The challenge of the experienced developer is to pass on wisdom without passing on dogma, but most developers think their personal experience should be enshrined as a best practice.
I have a tutor. My tutor winces each time I translate one of my observations into her native language. She said yesterday, “You should not reference the characters in the dialogs as drug dealers.”
Okay, I understand. When she is not working with me three times a week, she helps children, lost souls, and victims of assorted disasters.
I find the contrast between our world views a reminder that the ability to identify lessons, cautions, and warning signs a skill not everyone possesses.
Consequently I approach the content I monitor with a variation on my instructor’s selflessness. For example, I point out that Watson is an expensive effort that has essentially a low probability of hitting the revenue goal of $10 billion by 2020. I find the craziness of search and content processing firms funny. Explanations of how such and such technology can process “all an organization’s information” are my equivalent of the Three Stooges’ routine involving assorted face slaps. I often get tears in my eyes when I read the puffery on the LinkedIn enterprise search discussions. One amusing incident involves a new hire pontificating about the future of his company which has burned through $20 million plus and has been trampled by another outfit in the manner of Real Madrid defeating Granada.
The write up includes a puppy break. I like this type of puppy because it demonstrates what is beneath the surface of the entitlement-style approach of many ever so young experts, analysts, and commentators. Perhaps callow is a better word? No, jejune. I quite like jejune.
I found this passage suitable for presentation in a Typeslab graphic:
Imagine yourself as a wise elder, bitten once before by a project that used the Ook! programming language. The project was to build a social network specifically for people who hate social networks. You used the web framework Ook! on Oreos, but even then it turns out a language built around manually moving pointers around an array using grunts made it hard to build a modern web application. The project failed, and you learned.
Yes, imagine:
My mind generates an image of an unmarried teacher with the glorious name Miss Soapes. Yes, Ms. Soapes. She was good at giving me and everyone in her charge “advice.” I listened to her and rejected that which did not match my approach. She struck me as out of touch with reality. You know. The real world of conniving, disrespectful, sometimes cruel seventh graders.
I do not recall anyone in our seventh grade class heeding her suggestions which did not match the zoom zoom world of 1956. Oh, wait. Yes, there was one person who followed Miss Soapes’ plan for life. Lois had much promise but it ended in repetitive life abuse. Sad. Lois, like Miss Soapes, was sure of herself, but uninformed.
Call me prescient, but I have had an effective early warning system for advice delivered with apparent reasonableness. Yes, ex cathedra. Yes, a chimerical throne.
In the write up, the kicker for me was this statement:
The difference between saying “I used X and it sucked” and “I used X for Y and it didn’t work out because of Z” is the difference between becoming experienced and simply growing cynical. Be experienced, not cynical.
Nah, I want to to make the message clear.
Keeping parents happy or vendors who foist questionable software upon clueless customers does not interest me. I tolerate with difficulty those who want every child to get a gold star and an A for effort.
Yes, puppies. How lovable.
The puppy with the teeth probably got the most food. I quite like the author’s word choice. “Sucked” has a Miltonic touch. How better to convey a nuance that with “sucked.”
I wish there were a FURminator for some other modest problems in life.
Stephen E Arnold, April 15, 2015
Short Honk: Google: Perhaps Google Is Sorry
April 15, 2015
I don’t want to rehash familiar ground. Google perceives itself as a great outfit. “Antitrust: Commission Sends Statement of Objections to Google on Comparison Shopping Service; Opens Separate Formal Investigation on Android” makes it clear that the European Commission has some doubts. The headline also demonstrates that the EC wants to create a Google friendly document. That first page of results is important.
As a Googler once told me, “It is easier to ask for forgiveness than ask for permission.” I have emended this to mean, “We’re sorry. We’re really, really sorry.” It worked in a “Fish Called Wanda.” Oh, wait. That was a motion picture. Well, close enough.
Stephen E Arnold, April 15, 2015
Oracle is Rocking COLLABORATE
April 15, 2015
News is already sprouting about the COLLABORATE 15: Technology and Applications Forum for the Oracle Community, Oracle’s biggest conference of the year. BusinessWire tells us that Oracle CEO Mark Hurd and Chief Information Officer and Senior VP Mark Sunday will be keynote speakers, says “Oracle Applications Users Group Announces Oracle’s Key Role at COLLABORATE 15.”
Hurd and Sunday will be delivering key insights into Oracle and the industry at their scheduled talks:
“On Tuesday, Sunday discusses the need to keep a leadership edge in digital transformation, with a special focus on IT leadership in the cloud. Sunday will build upon his keynote from two years ago, giving attendees better insight into adopting a sound cloud strategy in order to ensure greater success. On Wednesday, Hurd shares his insights on how Oracle continues to drive innovation and protect customer investments with applications and technology. Oracle remains the leading organization in the cloud, and Hurd’s discussion focuses on how to modernize businesses in order to thrive in this space.”
Oracle is really amping up the offerings at this year’s conference. They will host the Oracle User Experience Usability Lab, Oracle Proactive Support Sessions, Oracle Product Roadmap Session, and more to give attendees the chance to have direct talks with Oracle experts to learn about strategies, functionality, products, and new resources to improve their experience and usage. Attendees will also be able to take accreditation tests for key product areas.
COLLABORATE, like many conferences, offers attendees the chance to network with Oracle experts, get professional feedback, and meet others in their field. Oracle is very involved in this conference and is dedicated to putting its staff and products at the service of its users.
Whitney Grace, April 15, 2015
Stephen E Arnold, Publisher of CyberOSINT at www.xenky.com
Informed Millennials
April 15, 2015
With the fall of traditional newspapers and aging TV News audiences, just where are today’s 20- and young 30- somethings turning for news coverage? Science 2.0 tells us “How Millennials Get News,” reporting on a recent survey from the American Press Institute and the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. The joint effort comes from a collaboration arrangement the organizations call the Media Insight Project. Conducted at the beginning of 2015, the survey asked Millennials about their news-consumption habits. The article tells us:
“People ages 18-34 consume news and information in strikingly different ways than did previous generations, they keep up with ‘traditional’ news as well as stories that connect them to hobbies, culture, jobs, and entertainment, they just do it in ways that corporations can’t figure out how to monetize well….
“‘For many Millennials, news is part of their social flow, with most seeing it as an enjoyable or entertaining experience,’ said Trevor Tompson, director of the AP-NORC Center. ‘It is possible that consuming news at specific times of the day for defined periods will soon be a thing of the past given that news is now woven into many Millennials’ connected lives.’”
Soon? Even many of us Gen Xers and (a few intrepid Baby Boomers) now take our news in small doses at varying hours. The survey also found that most respondents look at the news at least once a day, and many several times per day. Also, contrary to warnings from worrywarts (yes, including me), personalized news feeds may not be creating a confirmation-bias crisis, after all. Most of these Millennials insist their social-media feeds are well balanced; the write-up explains:
“70 percent of Millennials say that their social media feeds are comprised of a diverse mix of viewpoints evenly mixed between those similar to and different from their own. An additional 16 percent say their feeds contain mostly viewpoints different from their own. And nearly three-quarters of those exposed to different views (73 percent) report they investigate others’ opinions at least some of the time–with a quarter saying they do it always or often.”
Well, that’s encouraging. Another finding might surprise some of us: Though a vast 90 percent of Millennials have smart phones, only half report being online most of all of the day. See the article for more, or navigate to the report itself; the study’s methodology is detailed at the end of the report.
Cynthia Murrell, April 15, 2015
Stephen E Arnold, Publisher of CyberOSINT at www.xenky.com
Watson Has Health Care Partners
April 14, 2015
Fresh from its triumphant recipe book, IBM Watson is now tackling health care. I read “IBM Announces Deals With Apple, Johnson And Johnson, And Medtronic In Bid To Transform Health Care.” The idea is that smart software in the hands of partners will ameliorate some of the challenges in US health care.
In the tradition of Technology Review, Forbes states:
Experts in health care and information technology agree on the future’s biggest opportunity: the creation of a new computational model that will link together all of the massive computers that now hold medical information. The question remains: who will build it, and how? IBM is today staking its claim to be a major player in creating that cloud, and to use its Watson artificial intelligence – the one that won on the TV game show Jeopardy – to make sense of the flood of medical data that will result. The new effort uses new, innovative systems to keep data secure, IBM executives say, even while allowing software to use them remotely.
The IBM vision is to work with Apple to put Watson in apps. Johnson & Johnson, a household name for many reasons, will use Watson for “personal concierge services.” And heart implant devices will benefit from Watson’s “understanding.”
The technology required to deliver these intermediary services will be Lucene, home grown code, and software acquired via acquisitions. I am confident that IBM will be able to integrate this suite of technology in a way that will add some excitement to health care.
IBM will bring the spirit of the ingredient tamarind to its recipe for health care transformation.The PR effort is more interesting than Watson’s game show performance. Is there post production in medical care? Is a log file kept of medical decisions that deliver interesting outcomes? Who is responsible if the data analysis is different from what the doctor ordered, the nurse practitioner implemented, or the nursing staff delivered?
One can, I assume, ask Watson?
Stephen E Arnold, April 14, 2015
Visual Data Mapper Quid Raises $39M
April 14, 2015
The article on TechCrunch titled Quid Raises $39M More to Visualize Complex Ideas explains the current direction of Quid. Quid, the business analytics company interested in the work of processing vast amounts of data to build visual maps as well as branding and search, has been developing new paths to funding. The article states,
“When we wrote about the company back in 2010, it was focused on tracking emerging technologies, but it seems to have broadened its scope since then. Quid now says it has signed up 80 clients since launching the current platform at the beginning of last year.The new funding was led by Liberty Interactive Corporation, with participation from ARTIS Ventures, Buchanan Investments, Subtraction Capital, Tiger Partners, Thomas H. Lee Limited Family Partnership II, Quid board member Michael Patsalos-Fox…”
Quid also works with such brands as Hyundai, Samsung and Microsoft, and is considered to be unique in its approach to the big picture of tech trends. The article does not provide much information as to what the money is to be used for, unless it is to do with the changes to the website, which was once called the most pretentious of startup websites for its detailed explanation of its primary and secondary typefaces and array of titular allusions.
Chelsea Kerwin, April 14, 2014
Stephen E Arnold, Publisher of CyberOSINT at www.xenky.com
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
