Social Media Strategies
April 9, 2013
Social media is not just for personal use anymore it has expanded into the business world. The Expert System Cogito Blog piece “Understanding the Strategic Value of Social Media Analysis” talks about how many companies are selling themselves short when it comes to using social media.
“I have often said that companies are missing out on the real value of social media analysis. More often than not, even the big players don’t have the processes or models in place to really make use of the data gained from the analysis. As a result, social media analysis has a limited impact on the business, not to mention the budgets assigned to such projects.”
However, despite the usual oversights the author talks about a recent encounter with the head of customer experience at a well-known bank. They were going to discuss the tools they would need to support social media analysis but instead of going through the usual song and dance the manager was actually prepared to discuss exactly what they needed from them. Even more surprising the customer was actually able to provide specific examples of quantitative as well as qualitative data that she wanted to be able to extract from the streams of data. This made it easier to talk about semantics and how it can bring value to their company. Strategies such as focusing on extracting relationships between monitored entities and relieving some of the social media noise through deep analysis and contextualization can help to improve product visibility as well as market trends. The author ends by nothing that they are sure that they haven’t seen the last of their “usual pitch” because many organizations do not have a clear and concise strategy when it comes to social media projects. However, as the trend changes and more and more companies are realizing the importance of social media semantic technology vendors better strike fast and learn how to “grab the bull by its horns.”
April Holmes, April 09, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Sword Group and TEMIS Partner
April 2, 2013
TEMIS has already built its reputation as one of the leading providers of Semantic Content Enrichment for Enterprise as well as the SWORD Group and they recently announced a partnership. The Tag Line article “Sword Group Partners with TEMIS to Democratize the Semantic Enrichment in the Business” which was translated using Google talks about the new budding relationship. SWORD Group is now considered a certified “Gold Partner” and now uses the TEXIS Luxid platform.
“Luxid Content Enrichment Platform is a platform for robust semantic enrichment of content, which extracts the relevant business information contained in unstructured documents, and rich metadata. Revealing facets of business information assets, it helps to optimize the management and archiving, dissemination within portals, as well as analysis.”
SWORD Group is a consulting group and they focus on assisting their clients with managing information, analysis and classification. Their technology helps to extract, transform, enrich and also publish information and their Gold Partner collaboration with TEMIS they will be able to obtain a deep knowledge of Luxid and more importantly its uses. Philippe Le Calve, Chief Executive Officer SWORD France made the following statement.
“The signing of this partnership between Gold and TEMIS SWORD follows several years of working on our projects. Good value and robust in natural language processing, TEMIS is a natural ally essential to its strategy SWORD valuation information. Luxid ® platform is a key technology pillars that support the semantic solutions designed by SWORD.”
Luxid aims to be easily integrated into a variety of content management systems and can be connected to a number of different solutions including Microsoft SharePoint Solutions, EMC Documentum and MarkLogic. TEMIS definitely has worked its charm on SWORD looks like they got a good thing going.
April Holmes, April 02, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
New Endeavors On The Semantic Web
March 25, 2013
Pop the Lecons de Choses post, “Ceci N’est Pas Le Web Sémantique” into Google translate and it transformed into “This Is Not The Semantic Web,” an article that explores Google’s Knowledge Graph. Google announced the Knowledge Graph project almost a year ago and while it is important, we have learned that algorithms are not everything. It does present a pretty picture and seamless facts construed with other information, but Google has not embraced semantic Web principles. The blog compares a Knowledge Graph page and a Data.Bnf.fr page after searching for the famous Magritte painting, “The Treachery Of Images.”
At first, everything checks out, Google has more pretty pictures, but there are differences:
“The basic difference is in the semantics formally declared (or not) behind these pages. The URI of the thing described by the form of the BNF is declared explicitly in the RDF which is accessible either via the link at the bottom of the html page, or by content negotiation in HTTP protocol. The data are also BnF distinction, which would undoubtedly pleased the painter between the array itself as an object in the real world, its representation as a concept (authority) in the catalog of the BNF and different formats of these descriptions.”
Google does not have any URI in its open source code. It is somewhere on a Google database, but the user is not identified and it cannot be shared with the rest of the Web. Knowledge Graph is pretty, but it mostly draws on Wikipedia structured descriptions. Google has taken a baby step with its knowledge graph service. In the opinion of the Mondeca analyst, there is a lot of work to do.
Whitney Grace, March 25, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
Bitext: Moving Forward with Enterprise Semantics
March 20, 2013
Antonio S. Valderrábanos, founder of Bitext, recently granted an exclusive interview to the Arnold Information Technology Search Wizards Speak series. Bitext provides multilingual semantic technologies, with probably the highest accuracy in the market, for companies that use text analytics and natural language interfaces. The full text of the interview is available at http://www.arnoldit.com/search-wizards-speak/bitext-2.html.
Bitext provides B2B multilingual semantic technologies with probably the highest accuracy in the market. Bitext works for companies in two main markets: Text Analytics (Concept and Entity Extraction, Sentiment Analysis) for Social CRM, Enterprise Feedback Management or Voice of the Customer; and Natural Language Interfaces for Search Engines and Virtual Assistants. Visit Bitext at http://www.bitext.com. Contact information is available at http://www.bitext.com/contact.html.
Bitext is seeing rapidly growth, including recent deals with Salesforce and the Spanish government. The company has added significant and important technology to its multilingual content processing system.
In addition to support for more languages, the company is getting significant attention for its flexible sentiment analysis system. Valderrábanos gave this example: “flies” may be a noun, but also a verb. We say “time flies like an arrow” versus “fruit flies like bananas.” Bitext believes computers should be able to parse both sentences and get the right meaning. With that goal in mind, they started the development of an NLP (natural language processing) platform flexible enough to perform multilingual analysis just by exchanging grammars, not modifying the core engine.
He told ArnoldIT’s Search Wizards Speak:
Our system and method give us a competitive advantage with regards to quick development and deployment,” Valderrábanos said. “Currently, our NLP platform can handle 10 languages. Unlike most linguistic platforms, the Bitext API ‘snaps in’ to existing software.
Bitext’s main area of research is focused on deep language analysis, which captures the semantics of text. “Our work involves dealing with word meanings and truly understanding what they mean, interpreting wishes, intentions, moods or desires,” Valderrábanos explained. “We just need to know what type of content, according to our client, is useful for her business purposes, and then we program the relevant linguistic structures.” He added:
Many vendors advocate a ‘rip and replace’. Bitext does not. Its architecture allows our system to integrate with almost any enterprise application.”
Bitext already delivers accuracy, reliability and flexibility. In the future, the company will be focusing on bringing those capabilities to mobile applications. “IPads, tablet devices in general, and mobile phones are becoming the main computing devices in a world where almost everybody will be always online. This opens a new whole arena for mobile applications which will have to cater for any single need mobile users may have,” Valderrábanos said.
Donald C. Anderson, March 20, 2013
Ontos Launches News Portal Merges Info Across Sources
February 27, 2013
The Ontos News Portal is really pushing diverse news gathering to a new level with its utilization of its developed semantic technology. The Ontos News Portal, according to their website, filters through the vast amounts of data available from documents, mail and websites that your company works with on a regular basis.
“Our software solutions provide competent and cost-effective support in the central processes of decision-making and knowledge gathering, as well as knowledge management. Furthermore, Ontos products reinforce the improvement of your company’s entire value creation chain and help to speed up sales, marketing and support processes.”
Ontos, developed in 2001, uses its semantics tech to solve a plethora of requests. Generating semantic annotation from unstructured text, summarizing large volumes of annotated texts, maintaining metadata, and triplet technology are all within the realm of Onto’s to deliver.
The new Ontos Live is a sleek and easy way to personalize your feed, kind of like personalizing your homepage for Yahoo! News, only easier and more mature in search ability. All the answers, none of the mumbo jumbo you didn’t ask for.
Leslie Radcliff, February 27, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Hakia to Revolutionize Online Shopping Experience
February 25, 2013
Canadian start-up Flow, is teaming up with Hakia to provide semantic search capabilities within a closed platform and take online shopping into a new realm in terms of product specificity and search capability.
Until now e-commerce sites have followed roughly the same pattern; Ebay and Amazon, both powerhouses in the online shopping experience introduced a platform for “every product” and have made a lot of money in the last decade.
The article from Silicon Angle, “Flow Adds Semantic Search from Hakia to Revolutionize E-Commerce,” lays out how Flow and Hakia are creating a different way to search for the products you are looking for, without having to wade through all the extraneous mumbo jumbo. This new partnership hopes to do is to create a social flow and eliminate the sixth degree of separation.
“eCommerce as we know it is pretty entrenched, but social commerce is slowly emerging to challenge the status quo. It’s a concept that’s evolved from what are probably the two biggest phenomena on the web – online shopping and social media. And it’s a natural evolution too, as it only makes sense for marketers to connect with their customers to better understand their needs and position themselves as the ones to provide it.”
Facebook is probably the biggest example of the social marketplace at the moment. Facebook isn’t a shopping powerhouse because it has no search structure. Utilizing semantic search is going to create a kind of exclusive marketplace that hopes to promote less cutthroat competition; since users will be finding exact matches for their searches there’s no competition for most hits in order to remain at the top.
But can the Flow/Hakia partnership really pull through with those kinds of promises? It seems like a pretty tall order to fill. Functionality and no middlemen sound like a dream come true to eCommerce consumers, but the proof is in the pudding.
Leslie Radcliff, February 25, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Change Comes to Attensity
February 14, 2013
Just as the demand for analytics is ascending, Attensity makes a management change. We learn the company recently named J. Kirsten Bay their head honcho in “Attensity Names New President/CEO,” posted at Destination CRM. The press release stresses the new CEO’s considerable credentials:
“Bay brings to Attensity nearly 20 years of strategic process and organizational policy experience derived from the information management, finance, and consumer product industries. She is an expert in advising both the public and private sector on the development of econometric policy models. Most recently, as vice president of commercial business with iSIGHT Partners, Bay provided strategic counsel to Fortune 500 companies on managing intelligence requirements and implementing customer and development programs to integrate intelligence into decision programs.”
The company’s flagship product Attensity Pipeline collects and semantically annotates data from social media and other online sources. From there, it passes to Attensity Analyze for text analytics and customer engagement suggestions.
Headquartered in Palo Alto, California, folks at Attensity pride themselves on the accuracy of their analytic engines and their intuitive reports. Rooted in their development of tools that serve the intelligence community, the company now provides semantic solutions to many Global 2000 companies and government agencies.
Cynthia Murrell, February 14, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Access Innovations Collaborates with Leading Scientists on Unified Astronomy Thesaurus
February 6, 2013
Astronomy researchers have a powerful new tool, thanks to an important alliance. “Access Innovations Partners with Leading Scientific Organizations for the Launch of a New Thesaurus Created for Astronomy Community,” announces the information management firm. Access Innovations worked with the American Institute of Physics and scholarly publisher IOP Publishing to achieve this landmark.
The new Unified Astronomy Thesaurus will be freely available to members of the astronomy community for development and use. The common vocabulary will be used within NASA’s powerful Astrophysics Data System to improve linking with astronomy research journal articles. The write-up informs us:
“The thesaurus will be used in semantic technologies to enable researchers to execute faster, more accurate information searches and ultimately improve the discoverability of research. With many thousands of resources being published each year in the field of astronomy, these kinds of tools are vital to ensure that researchers continue to be able to find relevant information quickly and ultimately improve the discoverability of research. This applies as much to data, web services and other resources, as it does to the bibliographic resources to which thesauri have traditionally been applied.”
The John G. Wolbach Library at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, in collaboration with the Astrophysics Data System and the International Virtual Observatory Alliance, will continue to develop the thesaurus, enhancing and extending its contents as astronomy research continues to expand.
Graham McCann, Head of Product Management and Innovation at IOP Publishing, remarked:
“This is an exciting and ambitious collaboration that will have real long-term benefits for researchers. IOP’s investment in semantic enrichment is a great example of how publishers serve the scientific community by underpinning the scholarly communications process using the very latest technologies.”
Indeed, it is always a pleasure to see technological advancements lend a hand to other scientific fields.
Founded in 1978 as an information-services company, Access Innovations now offers an extensive line of information management and database construction products and services for academic institutions, government agencies, and industry, as well as specialized taxonomies in a wide range of fields. Their Data Harmony software is at the heart of their thesaurus-construction and database-management tools. The professionals at Access Innovations pride themselves on a culture of hard work, cooperation, and respect that makes them a pleasure to work with.
Cynthia Murrell, February 06, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Detailed Advice on Enterprise Scale Semantic Systems
February 1, 2013
In his AI3 blog, semantic technology pro Mike Bergman presents a new series of articles on “Enterprise-Scale Semantic Systems.” Bergman and his business partner recently gained some eye-opening experience while deploying enterprise-wide semantic systems, and wanted to share their new insights with the world.
The article starts with some history on semantic technology, beginning with the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) adoption of the Resource Description Framework as a standard in 1999. Bergman describes early developments and high hopes for the technology, as well as certain disappointments that followed. Once one turns away from the unrealized grand visions, however, the actual possibilities are quite promising, if not so dramatic. Though information management within the enterprise remains problematic, Bergman sees reason for hope:
“Daily we see success of semantic technologies in multiple locations, and the market is coming to understand the uses and potential benefits. The benefits of graph-based knowledge structures in search and recommendation systems are becoming accepted. We see how basic search is being enhanced with entity recognition and characterization, as well as richer links between entities. The ability of the RDF data model and ontologies to act as integration frameworks is no longer an assertion, but a fact. Despite the despair of some semantic advocates, the market place is increasingly understanding the concepts and potential of semantic technologies.”
While insisting that there is good money to be made in this field, Bergman lists some factors which continue to make implementing enterprise-wide semantics a challenge. For example, many businesses still doubt that it is a wise investment, though he says the demonstration of improved search functionality often seals the deal. Not surprisingly, budget constraints are another prominent hurdle.
If this first article is any indication, expect the series to include a lot of detailed explanations and tips for approaching enterprise-scale semantic systems. A worthwhile read for anyone in that field.
Cynthia Murrell, February 01, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
PolySpot Enables Information Access for Analysts and Business Management
January 28, 2013
The decline in the pricing of RAM and the popularity of cloud computing in conjunction with the need for faster queries has produced a multitude of options for enterprise organizations to increase productivity and efficiency. O’Reilly Radar discusses the demand for technology and tools that facilitate interactive query performance. The article “Need Speed for Big Data? Think In-Memory Data Management” explains how these tools lead to real-time communication and reports.
The article informs us about interactive query performance:
Faster query response times translate to more engaged and productive analysts, and real-time reports. Over the past two years several in-memory solutions emerged to deliver 5X-100X faster response times. A recent paper from Microsoft Research noted that even in this era of big data and Hadoop, many MapReduce jobs fit in the memory of a single server. To scale to extremely large datasets several new systems use a combination of distributed computing (in-memory grids), compression, and (columnar) storage technologies.
We have seen an increase in the amount of technologies available to address engagement and productivity issues in the workplace, but there are none that we have seen to match the user experience and infrastructure technology of PolySpot. This solution enables information access while maintaining data integrity and adding semantic enrichment. What more could an analyst or a decision-maker want?
Megan Feil, January 28, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search.
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