Smartlogic and SmartLogic: Brand Clash
February 26, 2015
I am a simple person, gliding slowly into the assisted living facility. I know I cannot keep up with the management wizards in the search and content processing sectors. (I do bristle when “experts” address parental instructions toward me in their LinkedIn posts.)
I ran a query for SmartLogic. The Smartlogic I know a bit about is an outfit that performs automated indexing. The company’s hook is “the content intelligence company.” The idea is that if a document is indexed, then the content becomes smarter. This is a claim I have heard repeated from prescient thinkers like Dr. Ron Sacks Davis, the person making possible the TeraText system. Dr. Sacks Davis floated this idea in 1975. Down the line, CALS and then SMGL advocates pitched the advantages of tagging structural elements, stuffing the components and the tags into a database, and discovering the joys of scripted content slicing and dicing. In the modern era, many companies, including Smartlogic, have dusted off the intelligent content moniker as a way to generate interest in automated index, the joys of taxonomies, and slipping a data management system into a company under the cover of metadata. LinkedIn experts are thrashing about this Trojan Horse maneuver as I write this blog item.
Run a query for Smartlogic, however, and one sees that there are two Smartlogics. One uses a lower case “l” in its spelling; the other, an upper case “L.” When I run the query for “smartlogic” on Google, this is what the GOOG displays:
Yep, two Smartlogics. One has a dot com domain and the other a dot io domain. The big “L” outfit is doing a much better job of getting its brand into the various electronic media. When i run the query “smartlogic Baltimore”, the heavens open and rain links to helping other companies, writing software, and making the Baltimore business scene vibrant.
Here’s the newer (upper case “L”) SmartLogic.io. Pretty snappy design I would suggest.
About one year ago, the content intelligence flavor of Smartlogic was the Big Dog in the Google index. Today, not so much. Here’s what the indexing Smartlogic’s Web site (lower case “l”) looks like on February 25, 2015:
Understated in comparison to the upper case “L” outfit I perceive.
Questions I formulated are:
- How has Smartlogic marketing squandered its grip on the name “smartlogic”?
- How is the SmartLogic.io company dominating social media?
- What happens to Web site traffic and over the transom questions from potential customers who want indexing and end up looking at a services firm in Baltimore?
When search vendors lose control of their brand, I often hear, as I did from Brainware before it was acquired by Lexmark, “You cannot provide links to videos via the keyword “brainware.” The videos are inappropriate.” Mismanaging a company name is my fault?
Get real, Brainware.
I see this erosion when I search for Connotate, Thunderstone, and now Smartlogic and others. I track this via my public Overflight pages.
Fascinating insight into what content processing executives perceive as important.
Stephen E Arnold, February 26, 2015
Partition the Web to Manage It
February 22, 2015
I noted that the mid February 2015 Forbes article did not get much coverage. “US Defense Giant Raytheon: We Need To Divide The Web To Secure It” contains a suggestion that could, if implemented, force changes upon Bing, Google, and other Web indexing outfits.
Here’s the passage I highlighted in lovely ice blue:
But some, including Michael Daly, chief technology officer for cyber security at US defense giant Raytheon, believe that the web needs to be divided into communities. As more critical devices, from insulin pumps to cars, connect to the internet, the more likely a genuinely destructive digital attack will occur. To stop this from happening, some people just shouldn’t be allowed into certain corners of the web, according to Daly.
There are some interesting implications in this notion.
Stephen E Arnold, February 22, 2015
Enterprise Search: NGIA Vendors Offer Alternative to the Search Box
February 4, 2015
I have been following the “blast from the past” articles that appear on certain content management oriented blogs and news services. I find the articles about federated search, governance, and knowledge related topics oddly out of step with the more forward looking developments in information access.
I am puzzled because the keyword search sector has been stuck in a rut for many years. The innovations touted in the consulting-jargon of some failed webmasters, terminated in house specialists, and frustrated academics are old, hoary with age, and deeply problematic.
There are some facts that cheerleaders for the solutions of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s choose to overlook:
- Enterprise search typically means a subset of content required by an employee to perform work in today’s fluid and mobile work environment. The mix of employees and part timers translates to serious access control work. Enterprise search vendors “support” an organization’s security systems in the manner of a consulting physician to heart surgery. Inputs but no responsibility are the characteristics.
- The costs of configuring, testing, and optimizing an old school system are usually higher than the vendor suggests. When the actual costs collide with the budget costs, the customer gets frisky. Fast Search & Transfer’s infamous revenue challenges came about in part because customers refused to pay when the system was not running and working as the marketers suggested it would.
- Employees cannot locate needed information and don’t like the interfaces. The information is often “in” the system but not in the indexes. And if in the indexes, the users cannot figure out which combination of keywords unlocks what’s needed. The response is, “Who has time for this?” When a satisfaction measure is required somewhere between 55 and 75 percent of the search system’s users don’t like it very much.
Obviously organizations are looking for alternatives. These range from using open source solutions which are good enough. Other organizations put up with Windows’ search tools, which are also good enough. More important software systems like an enterprise resource planning or accounting system come with basis search functions. Again: These are good enough.
The focus of information access has shifted from indexing a limited corpus of content using a traditional solution to a more comprehensive, automated approach. No software is without its weaknesses. But compared to keyword search, there are vendors pointing customers toward a different approach.
Who are these vendors? In this short write up, I want to highlight the type of information about next generation information access vendors in my new monograph, CyberOSINT: Next Generation Information Access.
I want to highlight one vendor profiled in the monograph and mention three other vendors in the NGIA space which are not included in the first edition of the report but for whom I have reports available for a fee.
I want to direct your attention to Knowlesys, an NGIA vendor operating in Hong Kong and the Nanshan District, Shenzhen. On the surface, the company processes Web content. The firm also provides a free download of a scraping software, which is beginning to show its age.
Dig a bit deeper, and Knowlesys provides a range of custom services. These include deploying, maintaining, and operating next generation information access systems for clients. The company’s system can process and make available automatically content from internal, external, and third party providers. Access is available via standard desktop computers and mobile devices:
Source: Knowlesys, 2014.
The system handles both structured and unstructured content in English and a number of other languages.
The company does not reveal its clients and the firm routinely ignores communications sent via the online “contact us” mail form and faxed letters.
How sophisticated in the Knowlesys system? Compared to the other 20 systems analyzed for the CyberOSINT monograph, my assessment is that the company’s technology is on a part with that of other vendors offering NGIA systems. The plus of the Knowlesys system, if one can obtain a license, is that it will handle Chinese and other ideographic languages as well as the Romance languages. The downside is that for some applications, the company’s location in China may be a consideration.
A Glimpse of Enterprise Search in 24 Months
February 3, 2015
The enterprise search sector faces one of its most critical periods in the next 24 months. The open source “commodity” search threat has moved into the mainstream. The value added indexing boomlet has helped make suggestions, point-and-click queries, and facets standard features. Prices for traditional search systems are all over the place. Proprietary technology vendors offer useful solutions for a few hundred dollars. The gap between the huge license fees of the early 2000s is, in theory, closed by the vendors’ consulting and engineering services revenue.
But the grim reality is that most systems today include some type of information access tool. Whether it is Google’s advertiser-energized model or Microsoft’s attempts to provide information to a Bing user before he or she knows she wants that information suggest that the human query is slowly being eased out of the system.
I would suggest you read “Replacing Middle Management with APIs.” The article focuses on examples that at first glance seem far removed from locating the name and address of a customer. That view would be one dimensional. The article suggests that another significant wave of disintermediation will take place. Instead of marginalizing the research librarian, next generation software will have an impact on middle management.
Humans, instead of performing decision making functions, become “cogs in a giant automated dispatching machine.” The example applies to an Uber type operation but it can be easily seen as a concept that will apply to many intermediating tasks.
Here’s the passage I highlighted in yellow this morning:
What’s bizarre here is that these lines of code directly control real humans. The Uber API dispatches a human to drive from point A to point B. And the 99designs Tasks API dispatches a human to convert an image into a vector logo (black, white and color). Humans are on the verge of becoming literal cogs in a machine, completely anonymized behind an API. And the companies that control those APIs have strong incentives to drive down the cost of executing those API methods.
What does this have to do with enterprise search?
I see several possible points of intersection:
First, software can eliminate the much reviled guessing game of finding the keywords that unlock the index. The next generation search system presents information to the user. The user becomes an Uber driver, executing the tasks assigned by the machine. Need a name and address? The next generation system identifies the need, fetches the information, and injects it into a work flow that still requires a human to perform a function.
Second, the traditional information retrieval vendors will have to find the time, money, and expertise to overhaul their keyword systems. Cosmetics just will not be enough to deal with the threat of what the author calls application programming interfaces. The disintermediation will not be limited to middle managers. The next wave of work casualties will be companies that sell old school information access systems. The disintermediation of companies anchored in the past will have significant influence over the success of search vendors marketing aggressively 24×7.
Third, the user in the Gen X, Millennial, and Gen Y demographics have been conditioned to rely on smart software. Need a pizza? The Apple and Google mapping services deliver in a manner of speaking. Keywords are just not ideal on a mobile device.
The article states:
And I suspect these software layers will only get thicker. Entrepreneurial software developers will find ways to tie these APIs together, delivering products that combine several “human” APIs. Someone could use Mechanical Turk’s API to automate sales prospect research, plug that data into 99designs Tasks’ API to prepare customized infographics for the prospect sent via email. Or someone could use Redfin’s API to automatically purchase houses, and send a Zirtual [sic] assistant instructions via email on how to project-manage a renovation, flipping the house completely programmatically. These “real-world APIs” allow complex programs (or an AI in the spooky storyline here), to affect and control things in the real-world. It does seem apropos that we invest in AI safety now. As the software layer gets thicker, the gap between Below the API jobs and Above the API jobs widens. And economic incentives will push Above the API engineers to automate the jobs Below the API: self-driving cars and drone delivery are certainly on the way.
My view is that this API shift is well underway. I document a number of systems that automatically collect, analyze, and output actionable information to humans and to other systems. For more information about next generation information access solutions, check out CyberOSINT, my most recent monograph about information access.
For enterprise search vendors dependent on keywords and hyperbolic marketing, APIs may be one of the most serious challenges the sector has yet faced.
Stephen E Arnold, February 3, 2015
CyberOSINT and the Associated Press
January 31, 2015
Remember the days when there were Associated Press stringers? Remember when the high value AP service was information gathered at state capitols? Remember when humans did this work?
Enter cyber information or as I dub this stuff Cyber OSINT.
Navigate to “AP’s Robot Journalists Are Writing Their Own Stories Now.” I would have added the subtitle “And the Obituaries of Stringers”. The idea is simple: Smart software assembles sentences that comprise a “news story.” Here’s the passage I noted:
Philana Patterson, an assistant business editor at the AP tasked with implementing the system, tells us there was some skepticism from the staff at first. “I wouldn’t expect a good journalist to not be skeptical,” she said. Patterson tells us that when the program first began in July, every automated story had a human touch, with errors logged and sent to Automated Insights to make the necessary tweaks. Full automation began in October, when stories “went out to the wire without human intervention.” Both the AP and Automated Insights tell us that no jobs have been lost due to the new service. We’re also told the automated system is now logging in fewer errors than the human-produced equivalents from years past.
The shift from humans to software is just beginning. To get a glimpse of how industrial strength systems perform far more sophisticated operations automatically, you will want to read CyberOSINT: Next Generation Information Access.
Forget traditional search and information gathering, the world has shifted. You know it when a stodgy, collectively owned outfit like the AP goes public with cyber tools.
When will the enterprise search vendors flogging consulting services and keyword systems figure it out? Perhaps search and indexing companies are the heirs to the cluelessness of news gathering organizations.
Stephen E Arnold, January 31, 2015
Enterprise Search Problems: Why NGIA Systems Push Beyond Traditional Information Access Methods
January 29, 2015
Enterprise search has been useful. However, the online access methods have changed. Unfortunately, most enterprise search systems and the enterprise applications based on keyword and category access have lagged behind user needs.
The information highway is littered with the wrecks of enterprise search vendors who promised a solution to findability challenges and failed to deliver. Some of the vendors have been forgotten by today’s keyword and category access vendors. Do you know about the business problems that disappointed licensees and cost investors millions of dollars? Are you familiar with Convera, Delphes, Entopia, Fulcrum Technologies, Hakia, Siderean Software, and many other companies.
A handful of enterprise search vendors dodged implosion by selling out. Artificial Linguistics, Autonomy, Brainware, Endeca, Exalead, Fast Search, InQuira, iPhrase, ISYS Search Software, and Triple Hop were sold. Thus, their investors received their money back and in some cases received a premium. The $11 billion paid for Autonomy dwarfed the billion dollar purchase prices of Endeca and Fast Search and Transfer. But most of the companies able to sell their information retrieval systems sold for much less. IBM acquired Vivisimo for about $20 million and promptly justified the deal by describing Vivisimo’s metasearch system as a Big Data solution. Okay.
Today a number of enterprise search vendors walk a knife edge. A loss of a major account or a misstep that spooks investors can push a company over the financial edge in the blink of an eye. Recently I noticed that Dieselpoint has not updated its Web site for a while. Antidot seems to have faded from the US market. Funnelback has turned down the volume. Hakia went offline.
A few firms generate considerable public relations noise. Attivio, BA Insight, Coveo, and IBM Watson appear to be competing to become the leaders in today’s enterprise search sector. But today’s market is very different from the world of 2003-2004 when I wrote the first of three editions of the 400 page Enterprise Search Report. Each of these companies is asserting that their system provides business intelligence, customer support, and traditional enterprise search. Will any of these companies be able to match Autonomy’s 2008 revenues of $600 million. I doubt it.
The reason is not the availability of open source search. Elasticsearch, in fact, is arguably better than any of the for fee keyword and concept centric information retrieval systems. The problems of the enterprise search sector are deeper.
Smartlogic Brand Has Semantic Nibblers Munching Away
January 25, 2015
http://www.vizualogic.com/smartlogic-product-info
I flipped through my Overflight about Smartlogic and noticed that the company has dropped off the radar in terms of the information services I monitor. A bit of investigation revealed the type of challenge that “Brainware” and “Thunderstone” faced; namely, other companies pick up the “name” and apply it to other services. Brainware found itself sucked into a vortex of unsavory links on YouTube and Thunderstone has become enmeshed in game references. With truncation and soundex routines, near matches are included in results list.
Smartlogic, an indexing software company, finds its “name” used by:
- An Android headset. http://www.vizualogic.com/products/smartlogic.html
- Automation software http://www.smartlogic-ltd.com/
- Baby rear search http://www.vizualogic.com/smartlogic-product-info
- Information technology services http://smartlogic.co.nz/
- Process water management http://kontekecology.com/our-brands/smartlogic/
- SEO consulting http://www.smartlogicweb.com/
- Smartlogic Software. http://smartlogicsoftware.com
- Smartlogixinc fuel tracking. http://www.smartlogixinc.com/smart-products/smartank.asp
- Software outsourcing http://www.smartlogic.by/
- Software testing http://smartlogic.io/
- iPad type tablets http://smartlogictablet.com/
Smartlogic has a blog called “Life with Semaphore,” but it too can be difficult to find. The dates of the last four posts are January 19, 2015, November 28, 2014, November 19, 2014, and October 6, 2014. The frequency suggests to some indexing services that frequent spidering is not required.
From a practical point of view, how does a potential customer looking for an indexing system get to the “right” Smartlogic? Without effort, a “name” can be eroded. Depending on the company’s circumstances, this can be a good thing (Brainware is now part of Lexmark, a printer company) or a not so good thing (Thunderstone’s John Turnbull is posting search related information on LinkedIn fora).
Smartlogic’s name erosion is an indication that content processing vendors can lose control of a “name” without care and feeding of the digital indexing systems. Are there fixes to brand erosion? Yep, use Augmentext techniques and keep messaging on point with appropriate brand cultivation.
Stephen E Arnold, January 25, 2015
Zaizi: Search and Content Consulting
January 13, 2015
I received a call about Zaizi and the company’s search and content services. The firm’s Web site is at www.zaizi.com. Based on the information in my files, the company appears to be open source centric and an integrator of Lucene/Solr solutions.
What’s interesting is that the company has embraced Mondeca/Smartlogic jargon; for example, content intelligence. I find the phrase interesting and an improvement over the Semantic Web lingo.
The idea is that via indexing, one can find and make use of content objects. I am okay with this concept; however, what’s being sold is indexing, entity extraction, and classification of content.
The issue facing Zaizi and the other content intelligence vendors is that “some” content intelligence and slightly “smarter” information access is not likely to generate the big bucks needed to compete.
Firms like BAE and Leidos as well as the Google/In-Tel-Q backed Recorded Future offer considerably more than indexing. The need is to process automatically, analyze automatically, and generate outputs automatically. The outputs are automatically shaped to meet the needs of one or more human consumers or one or more systems.
Think in terms of taking outputs of a next generation information access system and inputting the “discoveries” or “key items” into another system. The idea is that action can be taken automatically or provided to a human who can make a low risk, high probability decision quickly.
The notion that a 20 something is going to slog through facets, keyword search, and the mind numbing scan results-open documents-look for info approach is decidedly old fashioned.
You can learn more about what the next big thing in information access is by perusing CyberOSINT: Next Generation Information Access at www.xenky.com/cyberosint.
Stephen E Arnold, January 14, 2015
Did You Know Oracle and WCC Go Beyond Search?
January 10, 2015
I love the phrase “beyond search.” Microsoft uses it, working overtime to become the go-to resource for next generation search. I learned that Oracle also finds the phrase ideal for describing the lash up of traditional database technology, the decades old Endeca technology, and the Dutch matching system from WCC Group.
You can read about this beyond search tie up in “Beyond Search in Policing: How Oracle Redefines Real time Policing and Investigation—Complementary Capabilities of Oracle’s Endeca Information Discovery and WCC’s ELISE.”
The white paper explains in 15 pages how intelligence led policing works. I am okay with the assertions, but I wonder if Endeca’s computationally intensive approach is suitable for certain content processing tasks. The meshing of matching with Endeca’s outputs results in an “integrated policing platform.”
The Oracle marketing piece explains ELISE in terms of “Intelligent Fusion.” Fusion is quite important in next generation information access. The diagram explaining ELISE is interesting:
Endeca’s indexing makes use of the MDex storage engine, which works quite well for certain types of applications; for example, bounded content and point-and-click access. Oracle shows this in terms of Endeca’s geographic output as a mash up:
For me, the most interesting part of the marketing piece was this diagram. It shows how two “search” systems integrate to meet the needs of modern police work:
It seems that WCC’s technology, also used for matching candidates with jobs, looks for matches and then Endeca adds an interface component once the Endeca system has worked through its computational processes.
For Oracle, ELISE and Endeca provide two legs of Oracle’s integrated police case management system.
Next generation information access systems move “beyond search” by integrating automated collection, analytics, and reporting functions. In my new monograph for law enforcement and intelligence professionals, I profile 21 vendors who provide NGIA. Oracle may go “beyond search,” but the company has not yet penetrated NGIA, next generation information access. More streamlined methods are required to cope with the type of data flows available to law enforcement and intelligence professionals.
For more information about NGIA, navigate to www.xenky.com/cyberosint.
Stephen E Arnold, January 10, 2015
OpenText: IGC Joins Nstein and BRS
January 6, 2015
I read a news release with the click bait free headline “Open Text Acquires Informative Graphics Corporation.” I quite like that “informative graphics” idea. Quite a few graphics I see are not informative. Graphics are eye candy for some folks like generals and admiral giving briefings to the denizens of the Pentagon and White House. Graphics are useful in Hollywood. Where would commercials be without After Effects?
OpenText is a mash up of content centric businesses. Somewhere deep in the company is the original Tim Bray SGML data management system. The remnants of his pre-sell out search system are probably chugging along as well. OpenText owns content management companies, indexing companies, and search and retrieval companies. OpenText owns Fulcrum and that late 1980s systems is still in use, which is not too surprising. OpenText offers BRS, an older information retrieval software, BASIS (also an old school system with search functionality), and other interesting technologies like content management software.
The new purchase, according to the news release, “strengthens its capabilities for secure access to any content, on any device, on premises and in the cloud.”
IGC was an OpenText partner. IGC offers products and services that seem to overlap with OpenText’s. My hunch is that OpenText bought a partner who could make sales.
Stephen E Arnold, January 6, 2015
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