EasyAsk Taps BrainSell for SugarCRM Embedment
August 22, 2012
Natural language tech firm EasyAsk has turned to BrainSell to help with pre-packaged business intelligence solutions for SugarCRM, the open-platform, web-based customer relationship management software. The press release,”EasyAsk and BrainSell Ink Exclusive Agreement to Deliver EasyAsk Business Edition for SugarCRM Sales,” informs us the new solutions are to be deployed across North America. The write up explains:
“EasyAsk for SugarCRM Sales provides an easy way for entire sales organizations to track, analyze and manage sales operations within SugarCRM. Users simply ask questions about relevant sales topics in English and get fast results from their SugarCRM data. Utilizing a pioneering natural language architecture, similar to that used by IBM in creating Watson and defeating the Jeopardy grand champions, EasyAsk understands both the intent and the content of every sales question an approach that is more intuitive and returns better answers than standard search and analysis products. This is specifically designed for business users, who don’t need to know anything about SugarCRM, to get the information they need, when they need it.”
Invoking the popular Watson—well played. Running directly inside SugarCRM, EasyAsk and BrainSell’s contribution facilitates drilling down into CRM records for the latest results. Display options are customizable, and collaboration tools are designed to be fast and easy to use.
Based in Burlington, MA, EasyAsk was founded in 1994 by a professor of computational linguistics who also happened to be expert in database systems and computerized natural language. As the name implies, the company emphasizes ease-of-use in its products.
BrainSell is headquartered in Topsfield, MA, but has offices across the US. The company stresses its relationships with prominent business software developers, but says its strength lies in its extensive experience integrating and administering business systems.
Cynthia Murrell, August 22, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Stamped 2 0 Released With Celebrity Supporters
August 20, 2012
The San Francisco Chronicle recently reported on the re-release of a new app called Stamped this a bound to give GooglePlus a run for its money the article “Ex-Googlers Relaunch Their Startup Stamped And Get Ryan Seacrest, Justin Bieber, and Ellen DeGeneres to Invest.”
According to the article, Stamped is an app that was originally created by former Google employees Robert Stein and Bart Stein to make small business reviews more social. But after the app was launched, the Googlers quickly realized that they had an even better idea for it. They wanted Stamped to be a place where users could keep track of all of their favorite things, from restaurants to books, movies and music.
So after spending six months of rewriting the app coding, the small team of ten has now released Stamped 2.0:
“Stamped 2.0 now app operates like Twitter; you can follow others and see their activity in your feed. Each user only gets 100 stamps to use on their favorite things and they’re given more if users interact with their recommendations. The stamp limit, Stein believes, will make every recommendation more authentic.
In addition, Stamped creates personalized guides for users based on their interests and their friends’ recommendations. It pulls together lists of books, restaurants, movies and songs for users to try based on suggestions from trusted people and publishers. The New York Times, for example, will be putting all of its Best Sellers on Stamped as book recommendations.”
The Stamped team has done a great job of getting celebrity support. It will not take long before their fans follow suit.
Jasmine Ashton, August 20, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Mercado Ignition Evolves into Adobe Search&Promote
August 13, 2012
Looking for Mercado’s search system and merchandising suite Ignition? It is currently tough to find, but it is still available. It is now called Search&Promote, and is owned by Adobe.
Companies can weave a confusing web when they start snapping each other up. Omniture bought Mercado and renamed the software Omniture Merchandising. Then Adobe bought Omniture. It seems businesses would get more sales if it were easier for customers to find the products they liked in an earlier incarnation. Why not just go with “Adobe Ignition?” Nah, too simple.
Here’s the description of the system in its latest form:
“Adobe Search&Promote enables marketers to optimize how visitors browse, find, compare, and select relevant products and content on web and mobile sites. Businesses can easily promote priority items based on business objectives and visitor intent, as well as automate merchandising and promotions activity via KPI-based triggers or metrics. Adobe Search&Promote is part of the Adobe Digital Marketing Suite for online business optimization.”
The software is available as an enterprise SaaS application. The search and navigation interfaces are flexible, and the marketing console is designed to be intuitive.
Mercado began in 1998, and was based in Pleasanton, California. Founded in 1996, Omniture lives on as a division of Adobe, and is based in Orem, Utah. Adobe, of course, is a publishing and (now) marketing software powerhouse that began in 1982 and just keeps expanding. They famously gave the world the Portable Document Format (PDF) in 1993.
Cynthia Murrell, August 13, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Ami Revamps Web Site
August 11, 2012
Ami, the enterprise intelligence software company, has refreshed its Web site. If you navigate to the UK version of the company’s site here, you can learn about the firm’s current positioning. (Be warned, though: there is an auto-run video explaining the firm’s approach.) There is also an “old” Web site which is still online at this link.
The new site is more slick and sleek than the old. The color combinations are less jarring, and there is much less clutter on the page. The auto-run video, though, could be a problem. A software company should be aware that, yes, even now, not everyone’s system can handle such an imposition.
The company’s mission as described on the new site reads:
“Our mission is to enable our customers to develop the most far reaching insight and intelligence about the markets and sectors in which they operate through the optimised acquisition, analysis and presentation of information from both internal and external sources. . . .
“AMI Enterprise Intelligence specialises in the development of information and content processing software designed to capture, organise and analyse information from both internal and external software using horizon scanning techniques that are widely considered as best practice in competitor analysis.”
Ami was formed in 1999 by some individuals from the areas of aviation and electronics. These professionals applied the rigorous standards from those fields to the development of their software; those standards, they say, impart an unrivaled level of reliability to their products.
Cynthia Murrell, August 11, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Alternatives to Windows Default Search Function
August 10, 2012
BACKLOG Alternatives to Windows Default Search Function
Makeuseof gives us “7 Awesome Alternatives to Windows Search.” Why not just use Windows Search to find stuff on your computer? You can, of course, but the article explains:
“Have you ever searched for a program, file or folder on your computer only to discover that the default search application takes longer to display your search than it does for you to go find it manually yourself? I have. And I’d imagine that most Windows users face this same dilemma.
“Although there are some things you can do to improve searching using the Windows Search – and the search application seems to be much more improved in Windows 7 – there are some excellent alternatives to the default Windows Search that you should consider.”
All list entries are free and hand you results faster than Windows Search. Some, writer Aaron Couch asserts, even pull up more accurate results. His seven picks are: UltraSearch, Snowbird,FileSearchEX, Super Finder XT, Locate32, Search Everything, and Launchy. See the write up for Couch’s description of each tool.
There’s no denying that free is great. However, that qualification left a couple of our favorites off this handy list: Sow Soft’s Effective File Search and Pocket Search from Gaviri. Both of these applications do offer free trials, so you can still get a free of charge.
Cynthia Murrell, August 10, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Valve Expand Steam Android App
August 9, 2012
The search function on Steam’s Android app provides evidence that Valve may intend to branch out beyond games. The Verge reports, “Steam Store Search Shows Categories for Non-Gaming Apps.” Granted, when writer T.C. Sottek encountered the new, non-game headings there were no apps under any of them. But why create the categories if the company doesn’t plan to populate them? The write up states:
“The ‘Genre’ section of the app’s index lists genres like ‘accounting, education, software training’ and ‘photo editing,’ with a total of ten additional categories over those shown in the Steam desktop client — though none of the categories contain any software. There’s obviously no guarantee that this means Valve intends to sell more than just games, but it’s not unreasonable to think that the company might someday go down that road: it’s already working to streamline the selection and release process for games on its platform with Steam Greenlight, and could conceivably do the same with other software genres.”
Steam is Valve‘s very successful online game platform, currently hosting over 1,800 games. Some are their products, but many others are from third parties. More than an effective way to distribute software, the platform also allows users to build communities around many of the titles, complete with a chat feature. Valve declares that their Source game engine is “considered the most flexible, comprehensive, and powerful game development environment out there.” The company began in 1996, and receives its mail in Bellevue, Washington.
Cynthia Murrell, August 9, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
IntelTrax: Top Stories July 27 to August 2
August 6, 2012
Data analytics solutions and other Business Intelligence tools were the primary focus of many of this week’s IntelTrax stories.
Big Data is a continued source of controversy within the analytics community, particularly regarding its existence and whether or not it is something old or new. “Big Data is Analytics for Dummies” argues that big data is simply the rebranding of an old concept.
The referenced article explains the reasoning behind the rebranding argument:
“Cloud computing, for instance, offers much the same thing “ASPs” offered ten years before, with the difference that this time round it is going to work. Similarly, analytics has been available for many years, as a high-cost service using high value supercomputers, and operated by white-coated high priests who have come into the field from linguistics, philosophy and computer science. If you have a big data set, and the money to have it explored, analytics has been there to reveal the secret trends within you information, which might give your business an edge.”
Another notable post from last week is “Data Miners and the Need for Certificates Debunked.” According to the article, due to the fact that every field has been infiltrated by data mining, the need for experts and certifications in the field has come about as a result.
When discussing whether or not certifications have value, the article states:
“The “data mining” definition has been created by marketing industries just to summarize in a buzz word techniques of applied statistics and applied mathematics to the data stored in your hard disk. I don’t want say that tools are useless, but it should be clear that tools are only a mean to solve a problem, not the solution. In the real world the problems are never standard and really seldom you can take an algorithm as is to solve them! …maybe I’m unlucky but I never solved a real problem through a standard method.”
A story that explains the importance of data analytics technology within the insurance industry is “Insurance Doubles Down on Analytics.” According to the article, insurance companies looking to detect fraud are strongly impacted by data and statistics which is one of the reasons why they are embracing the big data revolution.
The story cited:
“The report, which covers the spectrum of tools from business intelligence tools to advanced analytics tools, finds that the average insurer invests 9 percent of the IT budget on data and analytics. This amounts to almost $10 billion per year, and while the insurance industry has long used analytics for traditional risk-centric analysis, there is a shift in the ‘how, where, and when’ the industry leverages data and analytics, according to the report.”
As you can see, text analytics and big data analysis are becoming increasingly important for companies looking to manage their content in a way that makes the most out of a multitude of different types and structures of data. Digital Reasoning is an analytics company with experience providing affordable solutions for both the government and private sector.
Jasmine Ashton, August 6, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Is There a Stalking App?
August 4, 2012
This next article is not about search. . . it is about stalking. CNet News reports, “Stalkbook: Stalk Anyone, Even if You’re Not Facebook Friends.” The dodgy service, developed by MIT grad Oliver Yeh, starts with a simple concept: cache the login information of Facebook friends to see friends’-of-friends pages that would otherwise be hidden. Yeh is building on this idea to develop a roster of such logins so that, eventually, pretty much anyone will be able to see anyone else’s Facebook pages. Oh, great!
Writer Emil Protalinski observes:
“Technically speaking, it is possible to do. He would have to build a very large network of individuals willing to use his app for such purposes, cache all the information he can, all while avoiding Facebook’s wrath as more and more users start using Stalkbook.
“Unfortunately for Yeh and fortunately for Facebook’s users, Stalkbook goes against Facebook’s terms of service (Statement of Rights and Responsibilities). In the Safety section of Facebook’s TOS, point number five clearly states: ‘You will not solicit login information or access an account belonging to someone else.'”
The app is not yet live, and Facebook officials are aware of its existence. When Protalinski asked the social networking site for comment, a spokesperson pointed him to their Data Use Policy. Yes, Facebook’s terms-of-use shout at someone like Yeh, “you must not do this!”
What a relief! There’s no way this thing could get off the ground illicitly, right?
Cynthia Murrell, August 4, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Insight Into the Future of Search
July 30, 2012
As technology progresses, we are becoming more and more reliant on our mobile devices, really the apps on those devices, to get the job done. Nir Eyal of the Nir & Far behavior engineering blog recently published an article that breaks down the way modern apps are being developed, called “Stop Building Apps and Start Building Behaviors.”
According to the article, app developers are currently using interaction design and psychology to create products that will work with your brain in mind. There are three qualities that modern apps need in order to achieve this: be a feature, build it easier, and make it a habit.
When explaining the importance of building a simple yet engaging app, Eyal looks into the future:
“The next wave in mobile computing will move beyond the phone. Several companies are anticipating a world where users wear devices to make difficult behaviors much easier.LumoBack, a company now money on Kickstarter, has built a new way to improve users’ posture. [Disclosure: LumoBack co-founder Charles Wang is a close friend.] A device, worn like a belt around the waste, sends data to an avatar named Lumo on the user’s phone. When he or she slouches, so does Lumo, providing immediate, actionable feedback.”
So, the future of app development really has very little to do with designing overly ornate apps that meet your every need, but rather focusing on simplicity and elegance.
Jasmine Ashton, July 30, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
Sinequa Generates Voltage at Siemens
July 28, 2012
The electricity is flowing at Siemens, and Sinequa is generating the voltage. LeMagIt’s article “Siemens Adopts Sinequa for its Retrieval” talks about their new collaborative platform for business information and expertise exchange.
The project is called TechnoSearch, and it makes short work of mass data, combining it into an efficient, accessible data source with the TechnoWeb Siemens. They will be implementing a mass of knowledge and technological know-how from millions of documents, databases and applications and combining it within one unified source. This opens the door to a range of uses and collaborations in the future.
According to Thomas Lackner, director of the project “Open Innovation” at Siemens:
“The traditional document management systems often provide insufficient research capacity. In addition, some information is available only to a select group of employees and some teams work closed using Web 2.0 technologies for communication and knowledge sharing. Our goal was to establish a universal solution for all our employees abroad, which extracts the relevant information from data sources the most diverse and put available to all via a single platform.”
The highly charged current may continue into the future, as Siemans has plans on extending applications. Currently they are supported on TechnoSearch Sinequa SS8, where unified access is granted to content for those connected.
Open innovation is a bright concept, but with high voltage comes risk. Let us hope Siemens has a surge protector, just in case.
Jennifer Shockley, July 28, 2012
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