Semantics Is So Tomorrow
February 19, 2011
So, we all know Web 2.0 is totally yesterday and Semantic technology is the wave of the future. But what’s happening right now? How are Semantics changing the landscape of content analytics?
According to “Semantics + Intelligence Helps Put Information into Action-Smart Content,” the technology is not yet very compelling for consumers but is very beneficial for businesses. That’s because a semantic search engine works best in a controlled environment (i.e. a company’s information system) with a specific set of data to query.
But can semantics really help corporate decision-makers make better decisions? “Yes” – according to vendors (a Semantic search engine developer and an Intelligence strategist) interviewed for the article:
“Semantic search engines not only help companies save time and money, they help them become more efficient, productive and more engaged with their information … Intelligence takes information and puts it into action, while providing insight so that leadership can make more informed decisions.”
Sounds like a great sales pitch, but marketers and other decision-makers need to know, specifically, what “Semantics + Intelligence” can do for them. The article would have been more convincing if it had given specific examples or “before and after” comparisons.
We have no problem with Semantics and Intelligence technologies, but, in our view, the hassle and expense of implementation (conversion, employee training, etc.) should be weighed against the benefits. These technologies, like plumbing, should work behind the scenes while the interface taps Semantic methods.
If an implementation is too difficult and costly and does not pay off by truly improving the quality of actionable information, Semantics simply are not working for the user.
Robin Broyles, February 19, 2011
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Watson Reddited
February 18, 2011
Short honk: If you are “into” the brave new world of IBM as the leader in search, you will want to navigate to this Reddit thread. Enjoy.
Stephen E Arnold, February 18, 2011
Concept Searching Finds Map Gold
February 18, 2011
The Microsoft Partner Program consists of three levels, the highest represented by the Gold label. Given the diverse array of companies that partner with Microsoft, it has added Competencies to their plan. These must be earned and showcase a level of ability and specialization within the structure of the course. Attaining this grade of certification has long been an arduous process, and it appears the requirements have been elevated. These revisions include employing Microsoft certified individuals, exams for the staff and customer references.
Of course, the benefits have been sweetened too, one of which is the integrity and distinction the logo seems to carry, something numerous businesses find attractive. Additional perks: software packages, bundled technical support and training resources. The list continues.
Concept Searching, a U.K. based metadata generation and classification software company founded in 2002, recently announced their attainment of the gold level. The firm’s freshly gilded conceptClassifier for SharePoint is “the only statistical based classification and taxonomy solution to use concept extraction and conceptual metadata generation to achieve the optimal approach to manage unstructured content”. The company was asked to join the Microsoft Managed ISV Program in 2009, an offer reserved for reportedly 1% of the partners worldwide. The press release goes on to state their technology is being implemented in the search and management fields to solve a broad set of problems.
Sarah Rogers, February 18, 2011
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Semantics, AOL, and the HuffPo
February 17, 2011
Take a huff, a deep huff.
A cursory glance at the recent news heralding the odd coupling of The Huffington Post, arguably a prototype for twenty first century journalism, and AOL, a struggling remnant from the early days of the Internet revolution, presumably leaves the observer unimpressed if not perhaps a little concerned with yet another union in an increasingly deep queue of titanic mergers. “AOL Gets Some Semantics With Its Huffington Post Acquisition” sheds some insight into the deal.
In what current chatter has labeled a last and perhaps impotent attempt at salvation for AOL (see their marriage to Time Warner), it appears that this latest venture could yield some unexpected advantages. HuffPo has been attracting record readership. A report from Google Analytics places the number of unique visitors to the six year old site at forty million for the month of January (though there is contention over the figure). Pair that with its growing roster of respected contributors and one can begin to understand the attraction for AOL.
The Huffington Post has employed semantic Web service for some time. Most recently their purchase of Adaptive Semantics, whose JuLiA technology brings with it automated comment moderation, user profiling as well as a variety of newsgathering implements, seems poised to provide the most benefit to AOL properties. The article states, “In a release announcing the deal, which is expected to close in the spring, the firms said that combining AOL’s infrastructure and scale ‘with the Huffington Post’s pioneering approach to news and innovative community building among a broad and sophisticated audience will mark a seminal moment in the evolution of digital journalism and online engagement.’ ”
Compared to the splicing of Comcast and NBC-Universal, a deal that ignited intense debate and the effects of which remain unclear, the fusion of new media and dated internet access seems tame, if not ill-fitting. Admittedly I consistently read the Post, finding it had sidled up behind The New York Times and the BBC’s online manifestations as a source for news. I remain curious if AOL’s dowry amounts to anything of value in the volatile media landscape. The HuffPo, like its co-founder and namesake, seems uninterested in anything that cannot aid in propelling them to the top of the pile. Can AOL hack it? Time will tell.
Sarah Rogers, February 17, 2011
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A New Way to Connect?
February 17, 2011
We know that the world is changing fast. Attempts to manipulate technological innovations to serve our real and sometimes imagined needs continue to culminate in an expanding and incredibly profitable industry. What is a toy in the hands of some can be a tool for revolution in others.
A key element in the midst of this new world is connectivity, and the charge to control that aspect of the market is being led by semantics based software. Per a post on semanticweb.com, the newest figure to emerge in the fray is Thingworx, freshly launched from the Pennsylvania based company of the same name. On its site, Thingworx is described as
“… a complete, high level application that provides unprecedented efficiency and re-usability, allowing developers to focus on their unique business or vision…”. Russ Fadel, CEO and the company’s cofounder explains “Our search and query tools use semantic definitions to help people discover their way through information …we don’t tell people they are building a semantic model, but that’s what they did, to interact with data and functions of systems in ways that were almost impossible before.”
The idea of connection at this level is certainly exciting, albeit difficult to achieve. With projections for the number of devices in circulation possessing the ability to access one another hovering at the trillion mark over the next fourteen years, interest in conquering the obstacles that could prevent it should have a broad reach. As the way we engage information and how we can employ it evolves, so must the ability to share it. This cannot be accomplished without a major overhaul of the existing infrastructure. While Thingworx has been engineered to accommodate several types of information streams, it is still not ready for primetime. They, however, seem confident in the future of this new software despite the present limitations.
Sarah Rogers, February 17, 2011
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IBM Watson Crushes Humans. Is Google Next?
February 16, 2011
The Web is abuzz with IBM Watson’s victory over humans on the TV game show Jeopardy. In my father’s independent living facility, a number of ageing humans expressed concern that their medical diagnoses would be handled by the human crushing Watson.
Here in the airport, the response to Watson’s victory over humans seems more subdued. I asked one college student sitting next to me if he were worried about IBM’s supercomputer taking over the world. He said, “Eh, what, dude?”
National US media were excited about IBM’s triumph on a TV game show. In “Beyond ‘Jeopardy’: Watson Wins,” MSNBC said:
Watson was built to serve up quiz-show knowledge, but those question-answering capabilities would probably be most valuable in specialized fields such as medicine and law. Watson’s kin could help us puny humans sift through millions of possibilities and come up with the five or six best medical diagnoses, or legal precedents, or chemical configurations, or … well, you name it.
Okay, I will name it: PR.
In a clever attempt to regain the technology champion award, IBM—a $100 billion enterprise—showed its information technology on a TV game show. How appropriate for a company that created STAIRS III, Juru, Web Fountain, and dozens of other search and content processing systems. Most recently, IBM was groping for a solution to clustering in its ageing document management system. Its “flagship” enterprise search system is essentially the open source Lucene system.
My question is, “If IBM’s information retrieval technology is so darned good, what’s up with the clustering issue in its records management system?” And “Why is the IBM enterprise search solution based on Lucene?” And, “What has happened to STAIRS, Juru, et al?”
My view is that IBM does not seem to have much traction in the commercial, enterprise search space with its own technology. The IBM demo approach is marketing, and I think it is great public relations.
But where it counts, IBM is far behind Autonomy, Endeca, Exalead, and dozens of other vendors with enterprise solutions that work and are affordable.
What about Google? Does Watson frighten Messrs. Brin and Page? Are the wizards at Microsoft Oslo shaking in their ski boots?
I don’t think so.
In my opinion, IBM is far behind in search and content processing technology. IBM resells other vendors information technology, acting, it seems to me, more like a consultant than an innovator in information retrieval. After buying Cognos and SPSS to bolster the firm’s data mining business, IBM is going to have to do more than beat meat on feet on a TV game show. IBM now has to win head to head procurements for search in the enterprise. Do you think that might be more difficult than winning a TV game show that is popular among those with whom my father hangs out, napping during commercials and shouting questions to the host’s answers?
I do.
Just my opinion. Honk.
Stephen E Arnold, February 16, 2011
Freebie unlike the costs of producing a TV game show, editing the program, and pumping hyperbole into the info stream.
Man vs. Machine: IBM against Humanness
February 13, 2011
CNN interviewed author Stephen Baker, for a look Behind-the-scenes with IBM’s ‘Jeopardy!’ Computer, Watson. Receiving attention from computer experts and non-experts alike, IBM will put artificial intelligence to the test on the iconic Jeopardy stage.
“The “Watson” IBM computer, which has been in development for four years, will be matched against Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings, two of Jeopardy’s champions. The episodes are scheduled to be aired February 14 to 16.”
As viewers tune in to see how Watson fares against America’s brightest, some will be reminded of the game show scandals of the 1950’s. In “The $64,000 Question,” an IBM sorting machine gave the illusion that questions were randomly selected, but behind the scenes some contestants were being favored with questions chosen to compliment their expertise. The quiz show “Twenty-One” was also rigged; all aspects were choreographed to improve ratings and please sponsors.
With these scandals in the cultural memory, many will remain suspicious if Watson bests his foes, wanting proof that it was indeed a fair fight. One thing is certain: It IS television and everything on TV is real, just like reality programming.
Emily Rae Aldridge, February 13, 2011
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Expert System and Esri Tie Up
February 7, 2011
On their site’s news page, Expert System Announces Its Partnership with Esri Italia. The partnership combines semantic technology with geospatial analysis to effectively support richer, improved decision making.
Expert System, a leader in semantic software, and Esri, at the forefront of worldwide geospatial intelligence, should make for a good team:
“The integration of Esri geo-analysis technology and Expert System’s knowledge management and text mining solutions renders geographic search and analysis activities more efficient. As a result, search results discovered through semantic analysis can be visualized in geographic maps derived from the geo-analysis, providing analysts with a deeper level of detail.”
Read more about Expert System here. If you can read Italian, learn about Esri Italia here.
Cynthia Murrell February 7, 2011
Juru, Watson, I Say, Juru!
February 1, 2011
Quite a heated discussion at lunch today. One of the goslings was raving about Watson. The Jeopardy demo convinced the engineer that IBM had the next big thing in search. A person can ask a question and right away get the answer. Wow. I thought that type of computer system only worked under carefully controlled conditions, in demos, or in motion pictures.
That’s why the goslings were agitated when I said, “It is TV. TV does almost anything—well, anything—for money.” I pointed out that the game shows 21 and the $64,000 Question took some liberties to boost ratings. Have TV times changed that much? I said, “I don’t think so.”
I supported my argument by mentioning Juru. Do you remember that gem from IBM. Here’s what my Overflight system spit out.
Juru is / was a full text search “library” that would make short work of “small and mid-sized corpuses.” Of course, “small” and “mid-sized” are rarely defined either by IBM or other search researchers. The idea was that Java made it easy to run Juru on any platform. Of course, today, I don’t think Juru would work in the Android or IOS environment, but some day maybe.
Juru asserted that the system would:
- Support different document types
- Make use of links just like our every tweakable PageRank-type systems
- On the fly summaries of documents
- Clustering
- Nifty ways to keep the indexes small and, therefore, zippy.
You can get some info at this link. There is some additional color here:
- http://www.itl.nist.gov/iaui/894.01/tests/std/2006/pubdata/pres/IBM-STD-system.ppt
- http://researchweb.watson.ibm.com/haifa/projects/imt/juru/index.html
- http://wiki.apache.org/lucene-java/TREC_2007_Million_Queries_Track_-_IBM_Haifa_Team
I reminded the goslings that IBM rolls out search solutions as part of its global marketing efforts. More to the point, I asked the goslings which vendors’ search systems IBM resells. I did not hear the magic words Autonomy or Endeca. IBM once loved Fast ESP.
If you want search from IBM, what do you get today? A version of the open source search solution Lucene. Why? It works pretty well. Juru, Watson, Web Fountain, et al? Well, make up your own mind with some head to head testing. I won the argument and still had to pay for lunch. Honk.
Stephen E Arnold, February 1, 2011
Freebie
Search Innovators Wanted. Cash Awaits!
January 31, 2011
There are more search entrepreneurs than we can track. Just last week we had a conversation with a self-proclaimed “expert” in next generation search. The system was so secret that we had no idea what it did. Then we got a weird phone call wanting to know if the goslings would talk with the self-proclaimed expert’s dad. Well, we walked away from that sort of craziness. Wow.
If you are a search entrepreneur and no one at Beyond Search will speak with you, then you want to know about MITRE’s unusual program. If you don’t know much about MITRE, well, you will want to do a little home work. We love the outfit, having been in a MITRE office for money several years ago. You can do your own home work here.
DcTechSource.com spreads the word about an important initiative in “MITRE Launches Challenge: Invites Ideas from Industry, Academia, and Individuals.” A not-for-profit, MITRE provides crucial support to the federal government. It’s looking for innovative minds in it’s MITRE Challenge, a contest to provide solutions to specific problems:
” ‘I’m excited about tapping into the best minds to uncover solutions to real-world challenges facing federal government agencies,’ said Keith J. Miller, principal artificial intelligence engineer and project leader of the Challenge. ‘. . . Our hope is that the spirit of collegial competition will fast-track the development of critical innovations.’ “
The first challenge, scheduled to end sometime this spring, could be just the ticket for some search and data fusion vendors. The goal is to create multicultural name matching software, which could help with everything from managing no-fly lists to reuniting families after a disaster. Details can be found here.
We’re curious to see what MITRE will do with these insights once each phase of the contest is over. If you know the self-proclaimed expert, maybe his dad will fill you in. The family obviously knows everything about everything.
Cynthia Murrell January 31, 2011
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