The Dark Side of Information
July 1, 2013
Free information will be our doom, Quartz‘s Jaron Lanier asserts in, “Free Information, as Great as it Sounds, Will Enslave Us All.” From high-frequency trading to online marketing, insists Lanier, big data is being used by those with the resources to collect and manipulate it to enrich themselves. Meanwhile, those of us with just paltry, personal devices are the ones creating the information, creating the value that fuels such systems. It is an argument that has been advanced before, and Lanier pursues the thread:
“Something seems terribly askew about how technology is benefiting the world lately. How could it be that so far the network age seems to be a time of endless austerity, jobless recoveries, loss of social mobility, and intense wealth concentration in markets that are anemic overall? How could it be that ever since the incredible efficiencies of digital networking have finally reached vast numbers of people that we aren’t seeing a broad benefit? . . .
“While people are created equal, computers are not. When people share information freely, those who own the best computers benefit in extreme ways that are denied to everyone else. Those with the best computers can simply calculate wealth and power away from ordinary people.”
See the article for its supporting arguments. Lanier does not leave us hanging for a potential solution. He recalls a suggestion he credits to Ted Nelson, which the IT pioneer made back in 1960: embed a “universal micropayment system” into any digital communication network, so that each individual who contributes any bit of data would get a bit of compensation in return. In that reality, for any tweet each of us sent, search query we made, or even security-camera image of us that was later used by any organization (for whatever purpose), we might become a few cents richer.
Interesting idea; can it gain any traction before the current system is set in stone?
Cynthia Murrell, July 01, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Big Data Gets Bigger
June 28, 2013
Organizations are looking for Big Data solutions anywhere they can find them. And there are lots of options on the market. However, open source varieties are garnering the most attention for their affordability and flexibility. An Information Week article discusses some pros and cons in their article, “Big Data Pioneers Get Big For Their Britches.”
It begins:
“DataStax, the commercial support provider behind the Cassandra open-source NoSQL database, announced this week that is has seen ‘dozens’ of companies migrate from Oracle Database and Oracle MySQL to Cassandra over the last few quarters. The reason it’s happening, according to DataStax CEO Billy Bosworth, is that these organizations are seeking scalability, disaster avoidance and cost savings. I’ll buy in on scalability and cost savings. Cassandra can handle immense scale with replication and redundancy across multiple, global data centers.”
The author then goes on to say that while there are many compelling arguments for Cassandra, he doubts that this harkens the end of relational databases. And yet, we do not see people returning to Oracle or relational databases anytime soon. Solr 4 is also being used as a NoSQL option and benefits from its analytics capability. Apache Lucene Solr is the base of the industry leading LucidWorks solutions, which are also making headlines. We think this is good news for the enterprise, even if it may be bad news for Oracle.
Emily Rae Aldridge, June 28, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
Big Data Solr Training at Lucene Revolution EU
June 27, 2013
Lucene Revolution EU 2013 is shaping up to be one of the biggest events of the open source community this year. In addition to the regular conference line-up, two-day training workshops will precede the conference. One of the course summaries that looks particularly compelling is “Big Data & Solr.”
The course summary states:
“The twenty modules and five labs teach participants about the essential technologies for generating both traditional Solr search indexes and NoSQL/analytics ‘databases’ using Hadoop, Cascading, Cassandra, Mahout and Storm. By the end of the class, students will understand both good and bad use cases for these popular ‘big data’ technologies, and how they can be used to create larger, more sophisticated search and analytics solutions based on Solr. Click here for details and a full course outline.”
Solr 4 is emerging as a major Big Data player due to its NoSQL database capabilities and analytics engine. LucidWorks has built their very successful Big Data solution based on Apache Lucene Solr. In fact, LucidWorks is the major sponsor of Lucene Revolution, continuing their ongoing dedication to open source technology and development. Do not miss Lucene Revolution EU 2013, and if time allows, make sure and attend one of the workshops beforehand.
Emily Rae Aldridge, June 27, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
Enterprise Analytics with Similarity Search
June 25, 2013
Today SearchHub.org is offering a webinar designed to help organizations implement Similarity Search across the enterprise. In a collaboration between Knowledgent, MapR, and LucidWorks, the webinar, “Operationalize Enterprise Analytics: Similarity Search at any Scale,” will explore integrating Big Data analytics into daily business.
The webinar will address:
“How do you introduce big data analytics into your daily business, foster rapid adoption, and ensure a return on your investment? Similarity Search provides a foundation for enterprise analytics that can be operationalized by delivering advanced, automated data exploration capability. Learn how Similarity Search can significantly increase productivity across a broad spectrum of data search use cases.”
It is very exciting to see collaboration between so many heavy hitters in the open source enterprise world. Such partnerships are really molding and shaping open source enterprise technologies, and Big Data solutions in particular are really benefiting. The LucidWorks products on their own are intuitive and efficient solutions for many organizational needs. However, such collaborations truly push the edge on what emerging technologies can do and we cannot wait to see what is next.
Emily Rae Aldridge, June 25, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
LucidWorks a Big Data Startup to Watch
June 21, 2013
Big Data is a big market, and everyone either has an eye out toward investment or toward adoption of one of the up and coming solutions. CIO has highlights the best of the best in their latest article, “10 Hot Big Data Startups to Watch.”
We were pleased to see that LucidWorks makes the list, as we happen to think their solutions and services are some of the best. Read what the article has to say about LucidWorks:
“LucidWorks Search is designed to help developers build highly secure, scalable and cost-effective search applications, while providing a simple and comprehensive way to access open-source search technologies. LucidWorks Big Data is an application development platform that integrates search capabilities into the foundational layer of Big Data implementations . . . LucidWorks Big Data and LucidWorks Search work hand-in-hand to accelerate and simplify the building of highly secure, scalable and cost-effective search applications.”
The LucidWorks enterprise search tools help users navigate Big Data. Ease of navigation is essential for any Big Data solution, because if it is not intuitive, it is not going to be used. Also setting LucidWorks apart is their industry leading support and services offerings. Big Data can be daunting, but LucidWorks does it right and makes it doable.
Emily Rae Aldridge, June 21, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
Enterprises Move Away from Oracle
June 19, 2013
Recent news tells us that Netflix, Openwave Messaging, and Ooyala have moved away from Oracle and into the DataStax fold. DataStax is an Apache Cassandra based enterprise and Big Data solution centered on NoSQL database architecture. The latest news by ZDNet is offered in their article, “DataStax CEO: Open source databases onslaught for Oracle.”
The article begins:
“Enterprises are increasingly moving to open source database to cut their dependence on Oracle, Apache Cassandra has a strong community resistant to fracturing and business leaders are calling the tech shots at first over CIOs. Those are some of the key takeaways from my chat with DataStax CEO Billy Bosworth. Bosworth, a former Oracle database admin and executive at Quest Software, has been pushing an enterprise version of the Apache Cassandra NoSQL database platform.”
While NoSQL databases are making a strong showing, there are other open source search architectures to choose from as well. For instance, LucidWorks builds its value-added open source search and Big Data solutions on top of the trusted power of Apache Lucene Solr. But LucidWorks sets itself apart by offering an industry-leading support and services package, which sets enterprise developers and users at ease.
Emily Rae Aldridge, June 19, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
National Instruments Selects Attivio
June 14, 2013
Increasingly major national and international companies are turning to open source solutions to solve their information storage and retrieval needs. These companies need enterprise solutions that are agile, efficient, affordable, and secure. The latest to join the ranks of open source adoption is National Instruments. KM World covers the news in their story, “Powering Information Discovery and Search Needs.”
The article begins:
“National Instruments has chosen a unified information access platform to enable more efficient knowledge discovery and analysis into the future. After evaluating a number of solutions, National Instruments decided that Attivio’s Active Intelligence Engine (AIE) would best handle its requirements, particularly related to ontology-driven query completion, auto categorization, sentiment analysis, dictionary management, recommendations, language support and improved relevancy boosting, according to Attivio.”
Attivio’s Active Intelligence model strives to integrate business intelligence, enterprise search, and Big Data into one scalable model. This type of consolidation seems to be driving the value-added open source market. For instance, LucidWorks offers two solutions: LucidWorks Search and LucidWorks Big Data. Both have distinct functions, but are designed to serve the all-encompassing enterprise needs of an organization. Small and medium sized organizations even find that they can benefit from the scalability of LucidWorks, and rest on their trusted support and security. Explore both options and see how they will fit into your enterprise.
Emily Rae Aldridge, June 14, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
Lucene 4 Sought by Cloudera
June 10, 2013
Lucene 4 has been getting a lot of recent attention for its ability to power Big Data applications in the enterprise. Paired with Hadoop, Lucene is becoming one of the go-to solutions on the market as is competitive with commercial offerings as well. Lucene has caught the eye of Cloudera, and its Lucene-based Big Data solution is the focus of the ZD Net article, “Search for Big Data: Cloudera and Lucene get Hitched.”
After a discussion of Cloudera’s integration of Lucene, the author moves on to talk aobut the other major player in the Lucene realm, LucidWorks:
“LucidWorks, which has been the major commercial entity behind Lucene, also has a Hadoop-based search offering on the market, called LucidWorks Big Data. The latter is CDH-compatible and it’s integrated with MapR‘s Hadoop distribution. Admittedly, this could cause some market confusion, and it’s not obvious which search technology may be a more sound investment, given LucidWorks’ close association with the Lucene project.”
LucidWorks clearly has the initial advantage as it is an industry standard with more experience in the field. However, LucidWorks is also known for its award-winning support and training, as well as its adamant support of the open source community. We would not be surprised if LucidWorks reigns supreme in this category for many years to come.
Emily Rae Aldridge, June 10, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
Toronto Hackathon
June 8, 2013
Are hackers a good thing or a bad thing? In the realm of computers, the term used to simply refer to those breaking into the systems of others (bad), but has gained some positive definitions along the way. “Hacking” can now refer to heavily modifying one’s own system or devising unique solutions to challenging problems. PRWeb informs us that “Semantria and Lexalytics Excited to Provide Unlimited API Access for Viafoura Hackathon.” I think organizers had one of the less nefarious definitions in mind. The write-up informs us:
“The Viafoura Hackathon is part of Big Data Week, an international festival focusing on the social, political, technological and commercial impacts of Big Data.
“We’re very pleased to partner up with Semantria and Lexalytics on this Hackathon,” said Ali Ghafour, Viafoura Founder and CTO. ‘We’re excited to see what people will come up with by combining large datasets from media companies with high-end Natural Language Processing technology. Viafoura loves these types of challenges, and we are happy to have Semantria/Lexalytics and the Toronto development community join us.'”
Perhaps I’m a purist, but personally I’d rather a term not gather meanings like a dog in an open field gathers grass seeds. Nevertheless, I sincerely hope all the “hackers” had a good time.
Large media companies rely on Viafoura for audience engagement and monetization solutions. The company, which is headquartered in Toronto, hosted Big Data Week in recognition of big data’s booming importance.
Founded in 2003, Lexalytics creates text mining software for integration into third-party software. The company co-founded Semantria, a services and SAAS firm specializing in cloud-based text and sentiment analysis. That outfit launched in 2011.
Cynthia Murrell, June 08, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
HP and SAP Spat Could Be Trouble for Stocks
June 7, 2013
Up until now the world of big data analytics has been a relatively friendly, yet competitive one. There always seems to be news of new partnerships and business deals among providers. However, as big money gets bigger, big data is getting mouthy. We discovered just how one war of words began in a recent Register article, “HP Tried to Offload Autonomy on SAP, says SAP Co-Chief.”
According to the story:
So, if you’re keeping track: Oracle didn’t want Autonomy. Oracle says it was approached about a sale before HP bought it. Dell didn’t want Autonomy, turning it down before HP bought it, too. Now, SAP didn’t want Autonomy, either, turning it down after HP bought it.
Poor Autonomy, right? Well, not so fast. This is where the story starts getting interesting. The battle over this beleaguered software title has begun to resemble political campaign double speak. Notably, there was the article in the Business Insider, which saw HP stating: “Contrary to reports in the media, HP has no interest is selling Autonomy. During the past year, we’ve received inquiries from SAP about purchasing HP software assets, and time and again we’ve said ‘no.’” Either way, this looks like the makings of an interesting rivalry. However, if squabbling continues, we’d expect stock prices for both companies to waver. In the meantime, why not use LucidWorks or one of the venture backed “been around a while” systems?
Patrick Roland June 07, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
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