Adobe Plays the Open Source Card
February 11, 2012
Thetus endorses Flex and Flash in “The Adobe Flex Open Source Hubbub.” Adobe Flex, long used to develop applications for the Adobe Flash Player, is now being unleashed on the open source community. The write up states:
The Flex SDK is already available to the open source community, but under the control of Adobe, meaning that they solely have the power to actually make any changes to Flex. Now Adobe has officially decided to relinquish this control and send Flex off into the great wide, open source world. . . .In order to cement ongoing commitment to Flex in the community, Adobe has a proposal in place with the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) to guide the future of Flex.
Under Apache’s program, changes to software development kits are voted on by contributors in the community. We applaud Adobe for taking this step.
What about HTML5? We’re still not there yet. Stay tuned for further developments. Open source may not be a life saver for either Adobe or Hewlett Packard. What is it? A way out with some face saving?
Cynthia Murrell, February 11, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Android App Developers Prepare for Global Expansion
February 11, 2012
Android is a big winner or a potential headache. Here in Harrod’s Creek we just don’t know. The dramatic increase of smartphone and other tablet users over the past couple of years has resulted in the creation of thousands of apps. Read Write Web recently reported on the international smartphone market in the article “There is a Huge Market For iOS & Android Apps Overseas, Report Says.”
According to the article, the mobile analytics company Flurry has been tracking the progression of Android and iOS penetration all over the world. The company has found that despite the fact that the United States is the most mature smartphone market, app developers should consider pursuing emerging markets like China, Korea, and the United Kingdom.
The article states:
Flurry encourages app developers to look overseas for potential growth markets. For instance, in China there are 122 million middle class adults age 15-64 that are not using iOS or Android. In the U.S. that number is 91 million (figuring a 200 million potential smartphone user base or about 60% of the population).
While the U.S. remains a hotbed for testing new apps, be prepared to see global app expansion in 2012. With Android “sort of” open and fragmentation a headache for some developers, can Android crush the annoying iOS and deal a death blow to Microsoft?
Jasmine Ashton, February 11, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Facebook Reigns Supreme
February 10, 2012
In a world dictated by technology the latest and greatest products headline the news. Apple products such as the iPad, iPhone and iCloud continuously dominate the news and the attention of tech lovers everywhere. However, as captivating as these products may be, when it comes to internet searches they are not the fan favorite.
According to the Experian Hitwise article “Facebook Was the Top Search Term for Third Straight Year,” social media continues to dominate the public’s interest. “Experian Hitwise, a part of Experian Marketing Services analyzed the top 1,000 search terms for 2011, and Facebook was the top-searched term overall in the US. Analysis of the search terms revealed that social networking-related terms dominated the results, accounting for 4.18 percent of the top 50 searches.”
Furthermore, social media terms have topped the list for the past six years. It seems that social media outlets such as Facebook show no obvious sign of slowing down but in a world where it’s out with the old and in with the new it will be interesting to seethe data for 2012.
April Holmes, February 10, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Lucid Imagination Dives into the Cloud
February 9, 2012
Continuing to reap the benefits of investment in open source, Lucid Imagination has just launched its cloud contender. Marketwire reports, “Lucid Imagination ‘Search-as-a-Service’ Powers Flexible, Cost-Effective Enterprise-Wide Data Discovery.” Like the company’s enterprise version of LucidWorks 2.0, the cloud-based version builds on Apache Lucene/Solr. The write up explains:
“LucidWorks Cloud helps businesses of all sizes conquer even the most daunting data and business quandaries by rapidly firing up cost-effective, flexible, and scalable enterprise search applications that help users find the information they need, when they need it. More than 30 companies used the pre-release version of LucidWorks Cloud, shaping the new product to meet even the most rigorous demands of cloud-based enterprise search.”
Both versions of LucidWorks add a lot of features to their open source foundations, like an improved user interface, monitoring and reporting tools, and an open connector framework that bridges to alternative data sources.
Founded in 2007, Lucid Imagination focuses exclusively on Apache Lucene/Solr search technology. Eight out of the 30 core committers to that open source project work for Lucid. The company also offers free developer software. Many of its clients around the world are huge household names, like AT&T, Ford, and The Smithsonian, to name just a few.
Cynthia Murrell, February 9, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Bing on Social Search Controversy between GOOG and Facebook
February 9, 2012
Bing finally speaks up about its social search advantage; surprising, since the company has somehow been flying under the radar recently with the controversy surrounding Google privacy and social networking.
Liz Gannes from AllThingsD.com interviewed Bing Search director Stefan Weitz regarding social data and search results in the article, “Bing–Which Has Deals With Facebook and Twitter–Finally Speaks on Social Search Controversy.” In the interview, Weitz states that social search has positively impacted the Bing experience and attributes that impact to the company’s attention to people. Weitz also comments on capitalizing on the debate around Google’s privacy and social settings. The article states:
“They [Google] are doing a nice job on their own of handling this problem. But they are learning just like we are. They did what we didn’t want to do, which was make the user experience peppered with this stuff, with +1s everywhere, the Google+ content in the top corner. I think [Google] realized we were ahead and they overextended. But I know a ton of guys there and they’re smart and they’re reacting to what has been said.”
I struggle to see exactly how Microsoft is different than Google on this issue. Instead of pressing the company’s own network (like Google using Google+,) Microsoft is using Facebook and Twitter in the same regard. Bing has just been a little slower about incorporating social data into its search results—according to Weitz, this is because making sense of social signals is complex.
I think making sense of this social search contention is possibly even more complex. Is there too much ego and testosterone in the social locker room?
Andrea Hayden, February 8, 2012
Linguamatics Embraces Informatics
February 9, 2012
Fierce Biotech IT announces, “EU Program Backs Linguamatics and ChemAxon’s Informatics Work.” The European Union’s Eurostars Program grants research and development funding to small and medium companies.
The project being funded is, according to the companies, the first interactive text-mining system specifically for chemistry research. Writer Ryan McBride elaborates:
The companies say that pharma and biotech outfits are expected to be the main customers for the technology. With this tool, ChemAxon and Linguamatics want drug companies or other users to be able to do chemical evaluations, hunt for new chemicals, get structure visualizations in searches and ‘explore image to structure conversion,’ according to the companies’ press release.
More personalized medical research is expected to be one application of the system. That sounds promising.
ChemAxon serves the biotechnology and pharmaceutical fields worldwide, providing chemical software development platforms as well as desktop applications.
Linguamatics bases its data management solutions on natural language processing technology. I2E is the company’s flagship text mining software, also available in the cloud as I2E OnDemand.
Cynthia Murrell, February 9, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
River Logic: Integrated Information
February 9, 2012
Founded in 2000 as iNetze.com by chief research officer and director Robert Whitehair, River Logic Inc. has developed into an integrated business planning and modeling solution provider. Its applications are used to plan, track, forecast, and optimize budgets, costs, profits, and cash flow across suppliers, customers, and product lines. The company was one of six on IDC’s “2011 Innovative Business Analytics Companies Under $100M to Watch” list.
The company’s core application, Enterprise Optimizer, was developed in collaboration with the Russian Academy of Sciences and mathematicians at the University of Massachusetts. The program’s roots go back 15 years to the early 1990s, when Whitehair and other UMass mathematicians began developing a modeling program using artificial intelligence. Formally launched in 2005, EO is designed to manage cross-functional decisions at strategic, tactical, and policy levels considering all the elements and consequences of those decisions. The models allow the user to see the financial and operational impact of those decisions and then optimize them.
The product itself has a simple diagram style interface used to create the business processes that drive value in an organization. These diagrams model the supply chain and show how things like trade promotions impact volume, distribution and financial performance.
Named to the 2010 “Supply Chain & Demand Executive” 100 list, River Logic is focused on delivering EO-based solutions in a couple of areas, especially consumer packaged goods with healthcare as a secondary market. River Logic’s hospital performance management solution, Integrated Delivery System Planner,enables physician-centric coordination, where costs, resources, and activities are tracked and assessed in terms of the workflow of the entire, integrated system. A Synetics Group-River Logic alliance delivers Trade Promotion Optimization Planner, which helps enterprises plan, evaluate, and optimize promotions to increase the return on trade spending.
The company’s client list includes consultants such as Barloworld Logistics and manufacturers Nampak Tissue and Bolthouse Farms. Competitors are SAP, IBM, and Oracle.
Rita Safranek, February 9, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
A Fairy Tale: AOL Was Facebook a Long Time Ago
February 8, 2012
The Wall Street Journal amuses me. A Murdoch property, the newspaper does its best to minimize the best of “real” News Corp. journalism. I appreciate objective editorials which present oracular explanations of meaningful events in the world of “real” business.
A good read is “How AOL—Aka Facebook 1.0—Blew Its Lead” by Jesse Kornbluth. What is interesting is that this is a report from a person with Guccis on the ground. According to my hard copy edition, February 8, 2012, page A15:
Mr. Kornbluth was editorial director of America Online from 1997 to 2003. He now edits Headbutler.com.
I did a quick search on Facebook 3.0—aka Google—and learned from no less an authority than the Huffington Post the Mr. Kornbluth edits a blog which is a “cultural concierge service.” He is a “real” journalist and has been a contributing editor for Vanity Fair and new York, and a contributor to the New Yorker, the New York Times, etc.”
The addled goose is still in recovery mode, sort of like a very old restore from the now disappeared Fastback program. Thinking of old software and AOL, I think in 1999America Online was in hog heaven in terms of stock price. I recall shares coming in the $40 to $100 range. The accounting issues of 1993 were behind the company. The merger with Time Warner was a done deal by mid January 2000. The $350 billion was a nice round number. The New York Times marked the 10th anniversary in its “analysis” on January 11, 2010, with the story “How the AOL-Time Warner Merger Went So Wrong.”
Now I learn that AOL was Facebook 1.0. I had forgotten about AOL’s chat rooms. When I think of chat rooms, I recall CompuServe, but I was never into AOL despite the outstanding marketing campaign with the jazzy CD ROMs that seemed to be everywhere. Here’s Mr. Kornbluth’s Facebook parallel:
Data Management for Search Wizards
February 8, 2012
Over the last couple of years data management has become a hot button issue for many corporate enterprises.Tech News World recently reported on data management best practices in the article “The 5 Pillars of Master Data Management.”
According to the article, there are five principles that should be adhered to in order to achieve master data management success. These principles will help one understand how to quantify success, track ROI and communicate the business impact.
In order to succeed the article advises that companies: define their business problem, plan beyond phase one, have a strong governance program in place, recognize that the most important word in MDM is management, and partner with a vendor who has significant MDM and information governance experience.
The article states:
A single trusted view of information provides the clear insight and transparency that organizations need to have effective business processes and interactions with customers and partners. Particularly at a time when social media and new information platforms are becoming pervasive, organizations now have access to new resources offering rich customer insights. However, businesses and governments must recognize that governance has to be part of this information gold rush.
While this write-up has some helpful tips on why it is important to prioritize master data management, we found it to have some painful generalizations. Just the ticket for the search wizards to keep projects running into sandbars and sometimes sinking.
Jasmine Ashton, February 8, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Infegy: The Social Radar Company
February 8, 2012
In 2006, founders Justin Graves, who was working for an interactive advertising agency at the time, and Web developer Adam Coomes used $50,000 of their own money to launch Infegy. Its key technology is “Social Radar”, a social media monitoring and Web analytics platform that measures online sentiment to gauge trends, predict consumer needs, and drive corporate strategy. The data is delivered through the cloud in a subscription-based format. A March 2011 upgrade generates faster results and features new spam filtering and a customizable drag-and-drop dashboard.
Social Radar sorts through some 8 billion Internet posts (including Tweets, blog posts, and customer comments), ranking not just the rise and fall of volume on a topic, but also the tone of discussion and the words that resonate. Companies can run in-depth analytics on Web and social media content to see how products and campaigns are received in the marketplace, what customers are saying online, and how and why trends have changed over time. Social Radar’s database allows views within targeted demographics.
In 2009, the company had over $350,000 in revenue and became profitable. In 2010, Graves and Coomes were Bloomberg/Businessweek’s America’s Best Young Entrepreneurs finalists. In 2011, International Data Corporation selected Infegy as an Innovative Business Analytics Company Under $100M to Watch. Following the March 2011 upgrade release, Coomes left the company.
Infegy’s primary clients are mostly advertising agencies and market research firms, such as ORC International, VML, and Mason Zimbler, interested in what consumers are saying about their brands and campaigns in the social media sphere. Think candid focus group minus the two-way mirror. Political campaigns have also shown interest. Brands using Social Radar include Viacom, 3M, Pizza Hut, MTV, and Sony. Competitors include Radian6, Collective Intellect, Crimson Hexagon, and Temetric Research.
Rita Safranek, February 8, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
