Lexalytics: GUI and Wizard
June 12, 2015
What is one way to improve a user’s software navigational experience? One of the best ways is to add a graphical user interface (GUI). Software Development @ IT Business Net shares a press release about “Lexalytics Unveils Industry’s First Wizard For Text Mining And Sentiment Analysis.” Lexalytics is one of the leading companies that provides sentiment and analytics solutions and as the article’s title explains it has made an industry first by releasing a GUI and wizard for Semantria SaaS platform and Excel plug-in. The wizard and GUI (SWIZ) are part of the Semantria Online Configurator, SWEB 1.3, which also included functionality updates and layout changes.
” ‘In order to get the most value out of text and sentiment analysis technologies, customers need to be able to tune the service to match their content and business needs,’ said Jeff Catlin, CEO, Lexalytics. ‘Just like Apple changed the game for consumers with its first Macintosh in 1984, making personal computing easy and fun through an innovative GUI, we want to improve the job of data analysts by making it just as fun, easy and intuitive with SWIZ.’”
Lexalytics is dedicated to helping its clients enjoy an easier experience when it comes to data analytics. The company wants its clients to get the answers they by providing the tools they need to get them without having to over think the retrieval process. While Lexalytics already provides robust and flexible solutions, the SWIZ release continues to prove it has the most tunable and configurable text mining technology.
Whitney Grace, June 12, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Big Data, Analytics, and Time to Burn
June 11, 2015
Short honk: I read “Riding Dirty: The Science of Cars and Rap Lyrics.” The concept is to match rap music references to models of automobiles. To what end I am not certain. I was delighted to find that Mercedes is the most popular auto in rap music. I used to own a Subaru, which ranks dead last. I am obviously at the bottom of the rap auto popularity heap. Great use of time I assert. How will the auto manufacturers use these data? Ideas Cadillac (#2) and Chevrolet (#3)?
Stephen E Arnold, June 12, 2015
An Enterprise Search Mini Case: LucidWorks and Its Accelerating Mission
June 11, 2015
I read “Lucidworks Accelerates Product Focused Mission with Major Fusion Upgrades.” LucidWorks (Really?)—né Lucid Imagination—appears to be working on products. (Note that the company names appears in different ways: “Lucidworks” with variants “LucidWorks”, “Lucid Works,” and “lucidworks”.)
Lucidworks wants to accelerate its mission. Will this be a quick and easy task?
Flashback in time. Lucid Imagination was founded in 2007. You can read about the vision of the company in interviews with these Lucid (no pun intended) executives:
- Marc Krellenstein, formerly Northern Light and one of the founders of Lucid Imagination, March 17, 2009
- Brian Pinkerton, formerly, December 21, 2010, possibly Amazon?
- Paul Doscher, formerly with Exalead, April 16, 2012
- Miles Kehoe, formerly New Idea Engineering, January 29, 2013, now a consultant
- Mark Bennett, formerly New Idea Engineering, March 4, 2014
These interviews make clear the difficult journey that Lucid Imagination took. (What is interesting is that Lucid’s principal competitor was Elasticsearch, now Elastic. That company came from obscurity to the go-to provider of open source search. To be fair, Shay Bannon, founder of Elastic, had compiled considerable experience with the Compass open source search system.)
Why did I cover Lucid in five interviews?
The reason is that open source search appeared to be the salve to soothe the wounds inflicted by proprietary search system vendors. Satisfaction with search was declining. Users were disaffected with high profile proprietary brands. The community approach addressed, in part, the brutal research, development, and customer support costs which search drags to each meeting with stakeholders.
Lucid had a lead; Elastic benefited. Lucid seeks a focus; Elastic is serving customers. Lucid would be an excellent business school case study, ranking at the top along with the Hewlett Packard Autonomy search situation and the Fast Search criminal charges matter. That is rarified case study company.
In the interviews cited above, it is clear that Lucid embraced Solr and made an attempt to emulate the full featured approach to content processing exemplified by Autonomy and Fast Search & Transfer. Elastic, on the other hand, took a more direct approach, relying on Lucene for the heavy lifting, and narrowing its focus to tools which were almost utilitarian. Want to search a log file? Go with Elastic.
The other key difference is the lack of managerial drama at Elastic. Elastic’s management team appears, at least to this observer in Kentucky, as stable. Lucid, on the other hand, has seen the departure of founders early in the company’s history. Presidents arrived and departed. Marketers appeared and disappeared. Major committers joined and then jumped ship; for example, Brian Pinkerton ended up at Amazon, working on its search product. Yonik Seeley also left to start his own search company Heliosearch. Dr. Krellenstein went from strong supported of Lucid to a disaffected founded. He quit.
As recently as September 2014, Lucid Works featured in “Trouble at LucidWorks: Lawsuits, Lost Deals, and Layoffs Plague the Search Startup Despite Funding.” The headline makes several points. First, LucidWorks has ingested more than $40 million, which puts it on a par with Attivio and Coveo in the money department. But Elastic garnered about $70 million at about the same time. The headline also reveals the disjunctions among managers, regardless of which president was on watch. And, the headline focuses on the point that it is a search vendor, which is not in my opinion a particularly magnetic positioning for software.
According to the “Trouble at LucidWorks” article The Guardian and Nordstrom’s abandoned Lucid’s software. The less than flattering Venture Beat story added:
The situation seems to have worsened following shakeups in the sales team, leaving young salespeople inexperienced in the enterprise-software game trying to win deals. “I don’t think any of the sales team hits (their) number except one guy,” said a former employee. And that one guy has resorted to “dropping his pants,” as the sales expression goes, promising to significantly chop the price of a service if his lead commits to buying right away, a different former employee said. The sales goals aren’t increasing. The revenue target for the year is $12 million, right in line with last year, that former employee said. And it doesn’t help that LucidWorks has fumbled with partnerships it was trying to get in place. It was working on alliances with Amazon Web Services, Intel, and Splunk, one former employee told VentureBeat. “Will [Hayes] imploded that with comments he made in the final agreement,” that former employee said of one partnership. And after Hayes stepped up as chief executive in June, he’s laid off people in marketing, sales, and business development. On the technology side of the company, meanwhile, employees have missed deadlines for shipping software to customers, month after month, another former employee said. Outside the office, the company has other distractions — in court, to be exact. Mike Moody, a former senior vice president of engineering at LucidWorks who was terminated in December, sued LucidWorks and certain executives in February for unlawful termination, according to documents submitted to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. LucidWorks is also ensnared in a case it filed against Seeley, one of its founders, in the Superior Court of California, San Mateo County. “This is a case about double-dealing on an employer, which arises from the secretive founding and launching of the company Heliosearch by Yonik Seeley before his resignation from his former employer LucidWorks in October 2013,” the complaint begins. “Unknown to LucidWorks, while Seeley was still employed by LucidWorks, he simultaneously was working directly against LucidWorks’ interests by developing and promoting his new venture Heliosearch as a competing alternative to LucidWorks.”
Microsoft Artificial Intelligence Upgrades Artificial Insemination
June 11, 2015
No joke. I read “Cómo Microsoft Destina Su Inteligencia Artificial a Insemina Vacas.” The main idea is that using Microsoft algorithms, the efficacy of births has jumped. The write up reports:
Raquel Durá, responsable de Microsoft España, explica a Teknautas que los ganaderos recuperan en poco tiempo la inversión del sistema, y por otro lado, este es escalable según las necesidades y dimensiones de la explotación. “Todo empieza con una pregunta”, explica Sirosh en referencia al origen de GyuHo: “un ganadero preguntó si no podía optimizar su explotación de alguna manera”, y a partir de ese punto entran en acción el análisis de los datos y los modelos matemáticos que anuncian con precisión milimétrica, los momentos claves para la explotación óptima del negocio. O como ellos mismos dicen, “el internet de las vacas”
If your Spanish is as rusty as mine, Google translates the passage as:
Raquel Durá, head of Microsoft Spain, told Teknautas that farmers quickly recover the investment in the system, and secondly, this is scalable according to the needs and size of the holding. “The project started with a question,” Sirosh [a developer] explained with reference to the origin of GyuHo [the insemination process], “a farmer asked if he could not optimize its operation in any way”, and from that point the application of Microsoft’s AI allowed for optimal operation of the inseminations for Internet cows.
I would be delighted if Microsoft could improve the precision of its search results with equal aplomb. I am tempted to ask the cow, “Was it as good for you as it was for Microsoft”? I shall refrain.
Another question, “What does IBM’s Dr. Watson make of this probing matter?”
Stephen E Arnold, June 11, 2015
Search Companies: Innovative or Not?
June 11, 2015
Forbes’ article “The 50 Most Innovative Companies Of 2014: Strong Innovators Are Three Times More Likely To Rely on Big Data Analytics” points out how innovation is strongly tied to big data analytics and data mining these days. The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) studies the methodology of innovation. The numbers are astounding when companies that use big data are placed against those who still have not figured out how to use their data: 57% vs. 19%.
Innovation, however, is not entirely defined by big data. Most of the companies that rely on big data as key to their innovation are software companies. According to Forbes’ study, they found that 53% see big data as having a huge impact in the future, while BCG only found 41% who saw big data as vital to their innovation.
Big data cannot be and should not be ignored. Forbes and BCG found that big data analytics are useful and can have huge turnouts:
“BCG also found that big-data leaders generate 12% higher revenues than those who do not experiment and attempt to gain value from big data analytics. Companies adopting big data analytics are twice as likely as their peers (81% versus 41%) to credit big data for making them more innovative.”
Measuring innovation proves to be subjective, but one cannot die the positive effect big data analytics and data mining can have on a company. You have to realize, though, that big data results are useless without a plan to implement and use the data. Also take note that none of the major search vendors are considered “innovative,” when a huge part of big data involves searching for results.
Whitney Grace, June 11, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Jury Is Still Out on Microsoft Delve
June 11, 2015
Sometimes hailed as Pinterest for the enterprise, Microsoft Delve is a combination of search, social, and machine learning, which produces an information hub of sorts. Delve is also becoming a test subject, as enterprise experts decide whether such offerings intrude into users’ workflow, or enhance productivity. Read more in the Search Content Management article, “Microsoft Delve May Drive Demand for Office365.”
The article summarizes the issue:
“As Microsoft advances further in its mobile-first, cloud-first strategy, new offerings such as Microsoft Delve are piquing companies’ curiosity but also raising eyebrows. Many companies will have to gauge whether services like Delve can enhance worker productivity or run the risk of being overly intrusive.”
As SharePoint unveils more about its SharePoint Server 2016, more will become known about how it functions along with all of its parts, including Delve. It will be up to the users to determine how efficient the new offerings will be, and whether they help or hinder a regular workflow. Until the latest versions become available for public release, stay tuned to ArnoldIT.com for the latest news regarding SharePoint and how it may affect your organization. Stephen E. Arnold is a longtime leader in search and his work on SharePoint is a great go-to resource for users and managers alike.
Emily Rae Aldridge, June 11, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Upgraded Version of Kofax Kapow Released
June 11, 2015
The article on KapowTech titled Kofax Kapow 9.5 Adds Analytics and Simulation Capabilities discusses Kofax’s recent upgrade. The new version includes more graphic support, speedier robot design and testing, and the ability to easily share and synchronize projects. The article says,
“As a global leader in commercial intelligence for the energy, chemicals, metals and mining industries, we provide objective analysis and advice on assets, companies and markets, giving clients the insight they need to make better strategic decisions,” said Matthew Jennings, a Director Operations for Research at Wood Mackenzie. “The new analytics capabilities built into Kofax Kapow 9.5 will give our business analysts detailed, up-to-the-minute insight into how our web data integration processes are running.”
Dave Caldeira, Senior Vice President of Product and Solutions Marketing for Kofax speaks to the importance of real-time management in order for users to keep on top of their projects. The article reports that the Kofax Kapow platform is the quickest way to work with enterprise applications that also routes the need for any coding. Most importantly, it provides the ability to use information that was previously useless. Kofax has more than 20,000 users that rely on the company for its aid in customer engagement.
With Lexmark in Kentucky, the crowd in Harrod’s Creek wishes the company success as it adjusts to its new owner.
Chelsea Kerwin, June 11, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Library Design Improves
June 10, 2015
I like libraries. If you enjoy visiting them as well, navigate to “These Modern Libraries Look Like Alien Spaceships On The Inside.” Among the libraries featured are the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library (Yale), Bibliotheca Alexandrina, and Biblioteca España.
Stephen E Arnold, June 9, 2015
More Semantic Search and Search Engine Optimization Chatter
June 10, 2015
I read “Understanding Semantic Search.” I had high hopes. The notion of Semantic Search as set forth by Tim Bray, Ramanathan Guha, and some other wizards years ago continues to intrigue me. The challenge has been to deliver high value outputs that generate sufficient revenue to pay for the plumbing, storage, and development good ideas can require.
I spent considerable time exploring one of the better known semantic search systems before the company turned off the lights and locked its doors. Siderean Software offered its Seamark system which could munch on triples and output some quite remarkable results. I am not sure why the company was not able to generate more revenue.
The company emphasized “discovery searching.” Vivisimo later imitated Siderean’s user input feature. The idea is that if a document required an additional key word, the system accepted the user input and added the term to the index. Siderean was one of the first search vendors to suggest that “graph search” or relationships would allow users to pinpoint content processed by the system. In the 2006-2007 period, Siderean indexed Oracle text content as a demonstration. (At the time, Oracle had the original Artificial Linguistics’ technology, the Oracle Text function, Triple Hop, and PL/SQL queries. Not surprisingly, Oracle did not show the search acquisition appetite the company demonstrated a few years later when Oracle bought Endeca’s ageing technology, the RightNow Netherlands-originated technology, or the shotgun marriage search vendor InQuira.)
I also invested some time on behalf of the client in the semantic inventions of Dr. Ramanathan Guha. This work was summarized in Google Version 2.0, now out of print. Love those print publishers, folks.
Dr. Guha applied the features of the Semantic Web to plumbing which, if fully implemented, would have allowed Google to build a universal database of knowledge, serve up snippets from a special semantic server, and perform a number of useful functions. This work was done by Dr. Guha when he was at IBM Almaden and at Google. My analysis of Dr. Guha’s work suggests that Google has more semantic plumbing than most observers of the search giant notice. The reason, I concluded, was that semantic technology works behind the scenes. Dragging the user into OWL, RDF, and other semantic nuances does not pay off as well as embedding certain semantic functions behind the scenes.
In the “Understanding Semantic Search” write up, I learned that my understanding of semantic search is pretty much a wild and crazy collection of half truths. Let me illustrate what the article presents as the “understanding” function for addled geese like me.
- Searches have a context
- Results can be local or national
- Entities are important; for example, the White House is different from a white house
So far, none of this helps me understand semantic search as embodied in the 3WC standard nor in the implementation of companies like Siderean or the Google-Guha patent documents from 2007 forward.
The write up makes a leap from context to the question, “Are key words still important?”
From that question, the article informs me that I need to utilize schema mark up. These are additional code behinds which provide information to crawlers and other software about the content which the user sees on a rendering device.
And that’s it.
So let’s recap. I learned that context is important via illustrations which show Google using different methods to localize or personalize content. The write up does not enumerate the different methods which use browser histories, geolocation, and other signals. The write up then urges me to use additional mark up.
I think I will stick with my understanding of semantics. My work with Siderean and my research for an investment bank provided a richer base of knowledge about the real world applications of semantic technology. Technology, I wish to point out, which can be computationally demanding unless one has sufficient resources to perform the work.
What is happening in this “Understanding Semantic Search” article is an attempt to generate business for search engine optimization experts. Key word stuffing and doorway pages no longer work very well. In fact, SEO itself is a problem because it undermines precision and recall. Spoofing relevance is not my idea of a useful activity.
For those looking to semantics to deliver Google traffic, you might want to invest the time and effort in creating content which pulls users to you.
Stephen E Arnold, June 9, 2015
Enterprise Search Excitement: HP Autonomy Litigation News
June 10, 2015
It is not the weekend and there is some minor Hewlett Packard Autonomy litigation news. I read “HP to Pay $100 Million to Settle Case Tied to Autonomy Deal.” The write up reports that HP will pay $100 million to a settlement fund. In the words of the write up, the money is
to resolve a lawsuit stemming from an impairment charge HP took after paying $10 billion for the British company. The money will go to people who bought HP shares between Aug. 19, 2011 and Nov. 20, 2012.
According to write up, the litigation “has no merit.” If so, $100 million is a hefty chunk for something that is fairy dust.
One consequence of the HP Autonomy dust up is that enterprise search vendors are using some artful metaphors to describe their systems’ capabilities. With the Fast Search problem in Norway and the HP Autonomy issue in the US and the UK, enterprise search vendors have certain made me aware of the consequences of having a disagreement over business models and accounting.
Which enterprise search vendor is next in line to make headlines. I have heard that the Lexmark search push has resulted in some frowns and indigestion. Vivisimo has disappeared into the maelstrom of IBM and its software. Oracle is sending what I interpret as mixed signals about the benefits of its hat trick in search: Endeca, InQuira, and RightNow.
My view is that it is tough be a search vendor looking for traction using words like customer support and business intelligence. Worth watching the HP Autonomy imbroglio and the wordsmithing of vendors trying to sidestep the shockwave of high profile search vendor legal activities.
Stephen E Arnold, June 9, 2015
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