Concept Searching Offers Taxonomy Management
July 13, 2010
SharePoint just got better thanks to Concept Searching. They’ve just announced the addition of a Distributed Taxonomy Management feature that will work within the conceptClassifier for SharePoint.
The experts all agree this is a good move, but one that should have been adopted by SharePoint as a foundation for their product. Nevertheless, it’s here now and will be a boon to companies with large document libraries and taxonomy needs.
Transparency for the end user is one of the special features of this application and a central server coordinates all the locking and unlocking of the nodes.
The whole idea that Concept Searching offers Taxonomy Management is of little surprise to an industry familiar with their work. When it comes to statistical metadata generation, this is the only classification software company in the world using concept extraction and compound term processing to provide access to information. The company founded in 2002.
Rob Starr, July 13, 2010
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Autonomy: A Real Success. CMSWatch: Maybe Another Real Miss?
July 12, 2010
In Harrod’s Creek, I can easily spot the real squirrel hunters. They have food. Mostly laconic, these hunters have a big pile of dead squirrels as proof of their competence. There is also the smell of fresh burgoo wafting from their log cabins. I can smell ability from my goose pond.
Lousy hunters have empty gun belts and squirrels shot when snacking on store bought food used to lure the critters. That’s a real danger — cheap tricks or just shooting wildly, often putting bird shot in an innocent’s backsides or the face like the 2006 incident between Vice President Dick Cheney and Texas lawyer Harry Whittington. Some faux hunters have just shot themselves in the foot. Ouch!
Azure chip consultants is a synonym for “bad hunter” in my opinion. Source: http://api.ning.com/files/LCP2NCaWo-ptCqGncB3hGsX8vuh8dnDzSJ0iLnkibas_/18holeinhandG.jpg
One of my two or three readers sent me a link to a write up called “Don’t Ogle Search If You Really Want Content Management”. In my opinion, the write up relies on insinuation, not facts. (I think that some folks are immune to facts, but I find facts useful.) In the article’s headline, the word “ogle”, for example, is one I don’t associate with information retrieval. (The publisher of this “ogle” opinion piece caught my attention in July 2008 with its similar assault on Attivio. My response to that misleading article is here.)
Yet another example of factless criticism of a vendor appears in this segment of the “ogle” write up about Autonomy, one of a very small number of search and content processing vendors with a consistent track record of technical breadth, sales, revenue, and profit:
From an initial focus on enterprise search tools, Autonomy has become a roll-up vendor after acquiring a variety of other information management suppliers such as Interwoven. As a financial strategy this can be successful, and investors seem to cotton to Autonomy. As a technology strategy, vendor roll-ups are problematic. Autonomy’s technology strategy is to rip legacy search subsystems from acquired products, replace them with some pieces from its own IDOL toolset, and then promote its particular approach to search as a distinct advantage for you. Specifically, Autonomy will try to sell you on the value of “meaning-based computing.” Even if you can get your mind around what meaning-based means, you should remain skeptical that Autonomy has technically spectacular or original services here. More importantly, you risk getting sidetracked from your original goal of, say, creating a user-friendly repository for your 50,000 Office documents.
These statements are presented without verifiable foundation to support the allegations in my opinion.
Autonomy is on track to hit $1.0 billion by the end of calendar 2010. The company has a proven track record of improving the performance of the companies it acquires. Autonomy’s management has demonstrated its ability to integrate quickly its acquired products with IDOL (the firm’s integrated data operating layer). The result is Autonomy’s knack of transforming the acquired companies’ position in their markets.
But there are other data that shed light on Autonomy’s track record, which I have documented Autonomy’s technology in my writings such as Beyond Search (Gilbane, 2009), the Enterprise Search Report (CMSWatch.com, 2004-2006), and Successful Enterprise Search Management (Galatea, 2009). Here are three points that must not be overlooked:
- Autonomy has 20,000 plus customers plus around 1,000 licensees of its technologies for use in other enterprise software and systems
- Autonomy has made intelligent acquisitions that has given the firm a strong presence in eDiscovery, rich media, and fraud detection. Autonomy has recently pushed into online marketing using capabilities from Ineterwoven and its IDOL framework. My research reveals that Autonomy has acquired companies to bring its technology to new markets so more content can be understood.
- Autonomy has grown its revenues and generated a profit, making it possible for other UK based technology companies to ride the Autonomy horse in the race for government and venture funding.
In December a year or so ago, at the International Online Conference, in my for-fee, end note debate, I challenged Andrew Kanter (Autonomy), Charlie Hull (Lemur Consulting), and Dr. Charles Oppenheim (Loughborough University) about their views of search, content processing, and related fields. In front of an audience of about 300 search professionals, I pointed out that key word search was dead. I pointed out that most search systems did not understand the meaning of processed information. Autonomy’s Andrew Kanter strongly and politely disagreed with me. As I recall, he said to the audience and me:
Autonomy IDOL is the only product in the market that can understand the meaning and concepts of all information in any language, including audio and video. This has big implications for the content management market as no other vendor can do this.
I demanded some concrete examples to support his position. Mr. Kanter without missing a beat gave me four concrete examples drawn from Autonomy’s work in intelligence, search enabled applications, fraud detection, and rich media.
What did I do?
Amateur Sleuthing: Looking behind an Email Address?
July 12, 2010
Short honk: I am not endorsing the method disclosed in “How To: Find the Person Behind an Email Address.” You may find the techniques useful. Enjoy being Dick Tracy. Don’t forget your wrist radio.
Stephen E Arnold, July 12, 2010
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Cyberthreats: Real or Disinformation?
July 12, 2010
A real case can be made for the fact the military is taking a page from 1984 and banging the drums of our fears. That according to Bruce Schneier in a recent column on the CNN Opinion page.
He makes a case the military and government are fighting a seesaw battle over all the hyperbole surrounding the misuse of the prefix ‘cyber’. Schneier provides a few convincing examples making us wonder if in the case of ‘cyber security’ Orwell was right.
The case is made terms like cyber Armageddon and cyber war are inflammatory and nothing to worry about . At least not right now. To quote the article. “ Words have meaning and metaphors matter.”
Can anyone else remember before the military was prompting us with cyber war and the agenda was being controlled, a time when another fine piece of writing warned us about the dangers of believing ‘War is Peace?’ and similar philosophies? Information or disinformation?
Rob Starr, July 12, 2010
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Autonomy, CA, and Enterprise Message Manager
July 12, 2010
Your weekly dose of Autonomy goodness follows:
Message Manager, the popular enterprise search engine, just boosted its capabilities when it was snapped up by Autonomy Corporation. Red Orbit announced this leap forward in a recent article, “Autonomy Announces Availability of Idol-Based CA Message Manager,” and showcased the ways IDOL, its meaning based search platform, will enhance Message Manager.
“The integration of Autonomy IDOL into Message Manager brings advanced automation to information governance tasks based on IDOL’s ability to understand the meaning of information,” the article says. “This significantly reduces the levels of manual effort for classifying, monitoring and managing large and growing volumes of data.”
In addition, current Message Manger users will receive an upgrade of sorts, including, “access to more than 400 connectors and over 1,000 file types, including text, audio and video.”
We see more and more mergers like this, which clearly points toward the growing power of searches.
Pat Roland, July 12, 2010
Freebie but the goose wants some stale bread for writing so much news about the Cambridge kids.
Germany Dings Facebook
July 11, 2010
Maybe Germany has lost its patience with American companies. First, the country failed to see the innocence of the Googlers who were suck down broadcast Wi Fi data. Now Facebook is in the barrel. “German Officials Launch Legal Action against Facebook” makes clear that German authorities are not amused by Facebook. For me, the key passage in the write up was:
“We consider the saving of data from third parties, in this context, to be against data privacy laws,” said Johannes Caspar, head of Hamburg’s Data Protection Authority. Mr Caspar said he had received a number of complaints from people who had not signed up to Facebook, but whose details had been added to the site by friends. He accused Facebook of saving private data of non-members without their permission, to be used for marketing purposes.
Fun loving Californians often find their Bay to Breakers enthusiasm inappropriate for some folks. Like Google, Facebook will have to deal with what probably looks like an annoyance from Silicon Valley.
Good Bullenbeisser. Good boy.
In my experience, German officials may demonstrate some of the characteristics of the Bullenbeisser. Under slung jaw. Tenacious grip. Single mindedness. Oh, stubborn. Sometimes mean. Probably indifferent to adults running naked in the California sun.
Stephen E Arnold, July 11, 2010
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Digital Info Death Ray
July 11, 2010
Traditional Web sites are wounded; many are in peril, starved for traffic. Not even the huffing and puffing search engine optimization gangs can pump up these deflating properties. But the digital death ray is affecting some giants in electronic dissemination as well.
It seems that the Associated Press ( yes, those are the newspaper people ) are getting ready to take on bloggers in some kind of strange cyber battle over the blogs allegedly siphoning traffic away from the paper editions of what’s called ‘hot news.’
In a move that really seems like the terrible trashing around of some dinosaur that’s become panicked by a new faster and more streamlined and immediate species, it’s alleged Dean Singleton ,chair of the Associated Press, has orchestrated a cease and desist order against a Colorado blog for quoting parts of relevant news stories that first appeared in print. This all from Techdirt.com.
At the center of the legal stand is the argument that if the site only provides a few clicks, they have no fair use of First Amendment rights. Interesting premise no doubt and it’s important to remember that the argument centers on the infringements to other Associate Press websites.
Still, wouldn’t it be easier to turn that boat around and go with the inexorable current?
Rob Starr, July 11, 2010
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Social Media Gives eDiscovery Indigestion
July 10, 2010
It seems everyone loves Facebook, Twitter and all the social media tools at our disposal. Everyone except e-discovery, that is. A recent ZD Net article, “Social Media a Nightmare for e-Discovery,” detailed growing difficulties for litigation discovery, which requires all relevant documents be submitted in court and reviewed. According to one electronic discovery representative, social media is, “creating phenomenal difficulties because you have employees creating information in pockets that are not controlled by general corporate governance policy, on servers that are generally not owned by a company and can often really skirt the edges of a company’s IP or relevant business documentation.”
This news isn’t surprising, since it seems every time technology opens a door for people, that same technology slams some windows shut. But, problems like this are what makes technology exciting because it often sparks innovation.
Do we need more evidence that casual assurances that social content is not big problem for search and content processing systems. Will an azure chip consultant endorse eDiscovery products that lack essential functionality? Does a byte reside on a solid state disc?
Pat Roland, July 10, 2010
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Google Gets a Yes in Its Chinese Fortune Cookie
July 9, 2010
Short honk: The BBC reported that Google has a Web page license. “Google Says China License Renewed by Government” noted:
Google has had a long history of run-ins with the Chinese authorities, but without a license granted by Beijing, it cannot operate in China. “Our operations in China are completely at the discretion of the Chinese government,” Mr. Schmidt has said.
Our view from the goose pond is that China sent Google a message. In diplomatic terms, I think this means that Google’s fortune cookie contain some good news. However, Google will get hungry again and have to order another Chinese meal. What will that meal’s fortune cookie say?
The license is a reminder that China is a country and Google is a company. Get too frisky and could the Chinese chef insert something quite surprising in the fried rice?
Stephen E Arnold, July 9, 2010
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Revelation? Disconnect in Support Organizations?
July 8, 2010
I received a snail mail promotion from T Mobile about the company’s HSPA and 3G mobile broadband service. I called the T Mobile 800 number three times. Each time, the person did not know about the service described on my flier. The third time I was disconnected and someone called me back and left the T Mobile 800 number and urged me to call and ask for a specific number. Nope. I drove to the local T Mobile store on July 3, 2010, and learned that no one in the store, including the manager, knew about the HSPA 3G service or the promotion. I showed my T Mobile snail mail card and the manager called T Mobile. No one knew about the HSPA 3 G service.
I read “Chasing the Wrong Carrot: The Big Disconnect in Support Organizations.” I hoped to find some information about why companies like T Mobile cannot inform its various units that a new product is available and that customers like the addled goose will be asked to sign up. The write up did not do much for the goose. I don’t think it is http://www.inquira.comInQuira’s fault. I think that the financial pressure and the wacky belief that firing people will make a company stronger.
For me, the most interesting point in the write up by “inquiring minds” was:
Companies continue to spend approximately 80% of their support budgets and focus all of their support metrics on agent-assisted support. However, the growing reality is 90% of their inquiries are being initiated online today without any agent intervention—and that figure is only increasing as Gen Y makes up a bigger percentage of the buying population.
Well, I looked for the information I wanted about the HSPA 3G service. I was able via Google to locate a coverage map. It was illegible and there was no single list of areas or zip codes in which the service was available. Then I looked for information about the modem’s surcharges when the modem is used in another country like Germany, allegedly where the T Mobile brain trust resides. Nope. At least I couldn’t find what I wanted.
The notion that the Web and clueless humans in a telephone holding pen will provide useful information is baloney.
The larger issue is the focus of executives on cutting costs and doing whatever is required to deflect inquiries. Within the organizations, many executives are too busy running from Outlook scheduled meeting to Outlook scheduled meeting to take responsibility for getting information where it is needed.
T Mobile is not alone in its seemingly clueless thrashing. Same problem in many businesses. Search is not going to fix the problem of flawed management. When each customer support avenue fails, what’s that tell me?
Stephen E Arnold, July 8, 2010
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