Quintura Nets Interface Patent
January 21, 2010
Quintura Inc. received a patent in December 2009 for a “Search Engine Graphical Interface Using Maps of Search Terms and Images.” You can obtain a copy of US7,627,582, from the outstanding online service available for the USPTO. If that system is a little sluggish, a number of other patent document services are available. This invention by Alexander V. Ershov concerns:
A system, method and computer program product for visualization of search results includes a map displayed to a user on a screen. The map shows search query terms and optionally other terms related to the search query terms. The display of the terms corresponds to relationship between the terms. A graphical image is displayed next to at least one of the search query terms. The graphical image is associated with a URL that corresponds to a search result. The graphical image is a favorite icon that is derived from the HTML script associated with a webpage at the URL, or an animated image, or a video, or a cycling GIF. A plurality of graphical images can be displayed in proximity to the search query term. The graphical image can be a logo or a paid advertisement. A plurality of graphical images are offered for sale in association with the query search term, and a size and/or placement of each graphical image corresponds to a price paid by each purchaser, or multiple images can be displayed at the same location on the screen, and a duration of display of each graphical image corresponds to a price paid by each purchaser.
Quintura’s see and find technology replaces the laundry list approach to a user’s query. Here’s an example of a Quintura search result:
In addition to suggested queries, the interface provides the user with a tag cloud, which can be quite helpful for many users. I am no patent attorney, but there may be some legal eagle-type conversations about other firms’ use of the system and method set forth in US7,627,582. You can get more information about Quintura from the firm’s Web site at www.quintura.com. I wrote about this company in September 2009.
Stephen E Arnold, January 21, 2010
Oyez, oyez, a freebie. No one offered a single bent penny to write this short item. Alas! I shall report non payment to the Department of Commerce, an entity of repute.
ChartSearch: Natural Language Querying for Structured Data
January 19, 2010
On Friday, January 15, 2010, the goslings and I were discussing natural language processing for structured information. Quite a few business intelligence outfits are announcing support for interfaces that eliminate the need for the user to formulate queries. SQL jockeys pay for their hybrid autos because most of the business professionals with whom they work don’t know SELECT from picking a pair of socks out of the drawer. We have looked closely at a number of systems, and each of them offers some nifty features. We heard a rumor about some hot, new Exalead functionality. Our information is fuzzy, so we wish not to speculate.
One of the goslings recalled that a former Web analytics whiz named Chris Modzelewski had developed an NLP interface for structured data. You can check out his approach in the patent documents he has filed. These are available from the cracker jack search system provided by the USPTO. His company ChartSearch, provides software and services to clients who want to find a way to give a plain vanilla business professional access to data locked in structured data tables and guarded by a business intelligence guru flanked by two Oracle DBAs.
ChartSearch uses a variant of XML and a rules based approach to locating and extracting the needed data. Once the system has been set up, anyone with a knowledge of Google can fire off a query to the system. The output is not a laundry list of results or a table of numbers. The method generates a report. His patent applications describe the chart generator, the search query parser, the indexing methods, the user interface, the data search markup language, and a couple of broader disclosures. If you are not a whiz with patent searching, you can start with US20090144318 and then chase the fence posts down the IP trail.
What makes this interesting is that the method has been veticalized; that is, a version of ChartSearch makes it easy to handle consumer data and survey data, special enterprise requirements, and companies that “sell” data but lack a user friendly report and analytic tool.
The founder is a whiz kid who skipped college and then dived into data analytics. If you are looking for a natural language interface to structured data, ChartSearch might be worth a look.
Stephen E Arnold, January 19, 2010
Nope, a freebie. I don’t even visit New York very often, so I can’t call on ChartSearch and demand a bottle of water. Sigh. I will report this to the New York City Department of Environmental Protection. Water is important.
Exclusive Interview with Ana Athayde of Spotter
January 19, 2010
Search solutions have the attention of some executives who want actionable information, not laundry lists of results. I learned about an information retrieval company that I knew nothing about from Ana Athayde. Ms. Athayde developed Spotter as a consequence of her work in business intelligence for a large international organization. She told me, “Laundry lists are not often helpful to a business person.” I agree.
Spotter is what I would describe as a next-generation content processing company. The firm’s technology combines content acquisition, content processing, and output generation in a form tailored to a business professional. Spotter’s chief technology officer (Olivier Massiot) previously worked at the pioneering content processing company, Datops SA.
In an exclusive interview on January 18, Ana Athayde, the founder of Spotter (based in Paris with offices several European cities and the US), provides insight into her vision for next-generation information retrieval. She described the approach her firm takes for customers with an information problem this way:
Our clients ask for strategic input on a brand or market; they require more than a general alert and subject monitoring as provided by the services of popular search engines. Spotter clients expect to know more about their customers and what motivates them, learn about their company’s reputation, and about the current risk pervasive in their environment; not simply obtain an internet search-result report. Our clients need deep dive analysis for decision-making, not just a simple dashboard tool and quantitative graphic displays. They want to be able to interpret what it all means and not just receive a simple data-dump. Spotter provides content analysis and leading edge solutions that meet our customers’ analytical needs such as the ability to map and analyze information pertinent to their business environment, so as to gain a strategic business advantage and make new discoveries. Our solutions solve complex problems and deploy these results throughout the enterprise in a form that makes the information easy to use.
A number of companies are providing knowledge management and business intelligence services that output reports. I asked Ms. Athayde, “What’s the Spotter difference?” She said:
I think the key point we try to make clear is our “bundle”; that is, we deliver a solution, not a collection of puzzle pieces. Our ability to capture, monitor and analyze decisions and their impact requires rich, higher order meta data constructs. Many companies such as Autonomy, Microsoft, and Oracle also promise similar services. But once this has been done, the process of information toward decision is not complete. The main competitive advantage of Spotter is to be able to provide to its clients a full decision-making solution which includes, as I mentioned, analytics and our decision management system… Our solution is engineered to link efficiency and quality control throughout the content processing “chain.”
You can read the full interview with Ms. Athayde on the ArnoldIT.com’s Search Wizards Speak features. For more information about Spotter, visit the firm’s Web site at www.spotter.com. Search Wizards Speaks provides one of the most comprehensive set of interviews with search and content processing vendors available. There are now more than 44 full text interviews. The information in these interviews provides a different slant than the third party “translators” who attempt to “interpret” how a search system works and “explain” a particular vendor’s positioning or approach. The Search Wizards Speak series is a free service from ArnoldIT.com lets you read the full text of key players in the search and content processing sector. Primary source material is the first place to look if you want facts, not fluff.
Stephen E Arnold, January 19, 2010
Full disclosure. Spotter’s sales manager tried to give me a mouse pad. I refused. As a result, no one paid me anything to chase down Ms. Athayde, interview her, and go through the hoops needed to understand the Spotter system. Because the Spotter team seemed quite Euro-centric, I will report my sad state of non compensated work to the US Department of State. An organization sensitive to the needs, wants, and desires of non US people and entities.
Google and Face Recognition
January 18, 2010
You can read a good summary of a mainstream publication’s analysis of Google and its face recognition technology. Just navigate to Google Blogoscoped and check out “German Spiegel on Google Goggles’ Face Recognition and More”. The only problem is that the author of the write up did not consider the application of this system and method to video. To get the full picture of the Google facial recognition capability, you may want to skip the traditional publication and read US20100008547 “Method and System for Automated Annotation of Persons in Video Content”. You can find this document at the USPTO’s free patent document Web site, www.uspto.com. I find it interesting that open source information about a specific and significant Google system and method is ignored. Much easier to write without too much information I suppose. That’s what keeps the Larry and Sergey eat pizza book writers in high clover.
Stephen E Arnold, January 18, 2010
A freebie. Due to the direct reference to the USPTO, I herewith report that I was not paid to point out this omission about Google’s facial recognition technology.
Microsoft SharePoint and Word Template Files
January 14, 2010
Short honk: The Beyond Search goslings spotted a document on the Microsoft Support site. Its title is “The Microsoft Office SharePoint Server Enterprise Search service does not full-text index Office Word 2007 template files (.dotx) in Office SharePoint Server 2007.” No big deal but with the hassle over XML, I found the fact interesting.
Stephen E Arnold, January 13, 2010
Another freebie. I think I have to report my not being paid for a SharePoint post to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Is that right? I think the outfit shares office space with the US Postal Museum.
Enterprise Search Deployment Time
January 14, 2010
Our Overflight service snagged a news item in May 2009. The title was “Airbus Licenses Vivisimo Velocity Search Platform”. The release was good news for Vivisimo and straight forward, saying:
Vivisimo (Vivisimo.com), a leader in enterprise search, has entered into a major agreement with aircraft manufacturer Airbus for the license of the Vivisimo Velocity Search Platform. The license covers the corporate-wide intranet for Airbus and some extranet services for Airbus customers, indexing up to two petabytes of data for more than 50,000 users. Vivisimo had already provided search for a group within Airbus before winning the company’s broader corporate business in a competitive setting. In a solution proof of concept, Vivisimo Velocity demonstrated its capability to handle the complexity of Airbus’ many data repositories while respecting the company’s various security parameters.
When I read this, I thought that Airbus made a wise decision. A deployment and an evaluation process was used. That’s smart. Most organizations license an engine and then plunge ahead.
The news item I received in my email this morning was equally clear. “Airbus Lifts Off Vivisimo Velocity to Provide More than 50,000 Users the Power of Search” states:
Vivisimo (Vivisimo.com), a leader in enterprise search, today announced the successful installation of its award-winning Vivisimo Velocity Search Platform with the world’s leading aircraft manufacturer Airbus. Through this deployment, Velocity is powering search across its corporate-wide intranet and its customers, indexing up to two petabytes of data for more than 50,000 users.
After a quote the news release said:
In less than one month since the completed installation of Velocity, search has become the fastest growing application on the customer portal (AirbusWorld) homepage in terms of usage, which has resulted in increased page views.
I think the uptake information is good news for Airbus users and for Vivisimo. The other upside of my having these two statements is that it is possible to calculate roughly the time required for a prudent organization to move from decision to deploy to actual availability of the search service. The deal was signed in May 2009, and the system went online about January 2010. That means that after the trial period, another six months was required to deploy the system.
Several observations:
- Appliance vendors have indicated that their solution requires less time. One vendor pegs the deployment time in a matter of days. Another suggested a month for a complicated installation.
- The SaaS search vendors have demonstrated a deployment time of less than four hours for one test we ran for a governmental unit. Other vendors have indicated times in the days to two week periods, depending on the complexity of the installation. The all time speed champ is Blossom.com, which we used for the Threat Open Source Information Gateway project.
- System centric vendors with solutions that snap into SharePoint, for example, have indicated an installation time of a half day to as much as a week, depending on the specific SharePoint environment.
- Tool kit vendors typically require weeks or months to deploy an enterprise search system. However, in certain situations like a search system for a major publishing company’s online service, the time extended beyond six months.
What’s this mean? Vivisimo’s installation time is on a par with other high profile systems’ deployment times. The reason is that the different components must be integrated with the clients’ systems. In addition, certain types of customization—not always possible with appliances or SaaS solutions—are like any other software set up. Tweaking takes time.
With Google’s emphasis on speed, the Google Search Appliance is positioning itself to be a quicker install that some of the high profile enterprise systems.
What’s this mean? It looks to me that one group of vendors and services can deliver speedier installations. Other vendors offset speed with other search requirements. Beyond that obvious statement, I will have to think about the cost implications of deployment time.
Stephen E. Arnold, January 14, 2010
No one paid me to write this short article. Why would anyone pay me? It’s been 65 years of financial deprivation. I think I have to report this monetary fact to the Social Security folks.
PolySpot Lands Crédit Agricole SA
January 13, 2010
PolySpot, a French systems development company, has landed the Economic Research Department of Crédit Agricole SA as a customer. The system will be used with the financial institutions bilingual Intranet portal. The story I saw appeared in Communauté Finance Opérationnelle. The PolySpot system will provide:
- Access to structured and unstructured data
- Theme suggestions
- Simple and advanced search options
- Programmable Custom Alerts
- Sort options
- Faceted navigation (grouping results by different criteria)
- Access rights management
- Stored query support.
You can get more information about PolySpot’s search and content processing system at www.polyspot.com/. You can read an interview with a PolySpot executive in the ArnoldIT.com Overflight service.
Stephen E Arnold, January 13, 2010
Nope, an unpaid post. When I am in Paris, I hide out in the flea market at Porte de Clignancourt. I will report this to the CRS shortly.
Stratify Software India
January 13, 2010
Some interesting information about Stratify, a unit of Iron Mountain, surfaced in a job posting for an engineer in Bangalore. In India, Stratify does business as Stratify Software India Pvt Ltd. The part of the advert that caught my attention was this description of Stratify as a Software as a Service company. Here’s the snippet I found interesting:
Stratify is a Product company which provides electronic discovery or unstructured Data mining solutions through Software as a Service Model. We are a fully owned subsidiary of Iron Mountain, the world’s largest Data Storage, protection and Recovery company with $3 Billion revenue. We are market leaders in our space and have registered 25-30% growth last year and 70% per annum growth in the previous 4 years. We have mostly Fortune-1000 companies as our clients. Iron Mountain, our parent company, has more than 13,000 employees.
Stratify, originally Purple Yogi, came on my radar as a text and content processing company. Now the firm is a provider of electronic discovery or unstructured data mining solutions. I also think the growth of Iron Mountain is a useful factoid as well.
Stephen E. Arnold, January 13, 2010
A freebie. I suppose this disclosure falls under the purview of the ExIm Bank to which I shall report the fact that I got no money for this item. Don’t you feel better knowing I wrote this because I have only a small pond in which to swim.
Competitive Intel about Google
January 13, 2010
If you are interested in what people say about Google, you will want to become a user of Aqute Intelligence: Google. In addition to being quite helpful, the service is offered without charge and does not have any annoying features. You can scan a list of Aqute’s favorite items. I found the round up of links to the Nexus One an easy way to follow the customer support issues related to the device. One feature that is unique is Google Employees in the News”. You can see the information for the period from December 21, 2009, to January 4, 2010. I find that my work in Google patent applications often requires a quick check to determine if the Google inventor is still in the Google engineering line up. One recent example was a patent document with Anna Patterson’s name. Dr. Patterson founded the Cuil.com system, and I need to see if she had surfaced as a Google employee since her departure. A happy quack to the Aqute team.
Stephen E Arnold, January 13, 2010
Nope, no one paid me to write this. I would like to suggest I did it out of the goodness of my heart, but this is a marketing and sales blog. I will report it to National Cancer Institute anyway.
Google and Its Own Blog Popularity Tally
January 5, 2010
Short honk: If you want to know what was most popular on Google’s own blogs, you will enjoy “Five Years of Google Blogging”. There are a number of interesting factoids in this post, but the one that jumped off the page was that the posts about Chrome, garnered about 2.6 million unique pageviews. The number two post was about Google Wave, Google’s baby dataspace demo, tallied a respectable but less robust pageview count of 639,000. What’s this mean? Well, Microsoft may want to keep its eye on Chrome whether it is as wonderful as Windows 7 and SharePoint or not.
Stephen E. Arnold, January 2, 2010
Another uncompensated post. I am starting 2010 in a most pathetic manner, don’t you agree? I will report this situation to the Coalition Provisional Authority (in Iraq).
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