Compusearch Launches PRISM Business Intelligence Dashboard
February 18, 2011
Why search? Look at the dashboard.
“Compusearch Puts Mission- Critical Information at Agency Fingertips” at redOrbit announces the release of Compusearch’s PRISM Business Intelligence Dashboard. Users can now access information on key performance indicators from within the PRISM software.
This is not, however, a simple point and click search. For confirmation, just take a look at the Dashboard. As the article explains:
“This add-on module to PRISM provides the power to support a wide range of custom report style widgets with drill-down and drill-through capability, as well as robust data visualization features that can be animated and interactive. The PRISM BI Dashboard is based on an open architecture and utilizes XML and web services, which allows data and information from across agency enterprises to be easily monitored, analyzed and reported.”
Compusearch focuses on software and systems integration, mostly for government agencies. The hitch may be that if you look at the dashboard when you drive, you may run over a pedestrian. Is this a risk when performing business intelligence and analysis?
Cynthia Murrell February 18, 2011
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Protected: SharePoint Set Audiences
February 17, 2011
Salesforce and Facebook: Dating Now
February 17, 2011
A year ago, Salesforce.com discovered collaboration. The company hired a former journalist to be an evangelist. We were not sure how the marriage of trendy chat chat would fit with the wild eyed sales orientation of Salesforce.com. We still are not sure.
We did notice that Facebook has a brand new friend and they are working on a project together, so writes Read Write Cloud, “Salesforce.com and Facebook Strengthen Ties Through Force.com Platform.” The two companies are currently looking for an application developer who will maintain and develop Force.com applications for business and external purposes. At the moment, they’ve released the Facebook Toolkit in beta. It still needs tweaking, but both companies have high hopes for it. Items in the Toolkit include Auth 2.0, JSON, pagination, REST API, and extended pagination. According to the story:
“It [The deal with Facebook] shows the value Salesforce.com places on the experience that it wants to provide customers. And for Facebook it opens a new window for the reach of its service and integration with the modern enterprise.”
Salesforce.com is the enterprise cloud champ and Facebook is the social networking king. Does this mean that Salesforce.com’s original strategy was flawed? Is there a benefit to Facebook from this deal that Salesforce.com may not see? Interesting tie up.
Whitney Grace, February 17, 2011
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SysTools Offers New PDF Tool
February 17, 2011
Nifty tools catch our eye in Harrod’s Creek.
SysTools is offering a new PDF Batch Stamp Tool to Add Metadata, manage page order, add labels, format text, insert date and time or other text, and add password protection.
“PDF batch stamp tool . . . can easily modify [any] PDF document . . . and is a multi-lingual program that supports all versions of Adobe Acrobat.”
A demo version can be downloaded for free on the SysTools website and the full version is available for $129. While the software is currently only supported by Windows operating systems, Mac users will recognize that many of these features are already available to them on Preview, the Mac proprietary PDF reader software. For Window users who use Adobe Reader but can’t justify the investment in the full version of Acrobat, the PDF Batch Stamp Tool may be a good solution for basic editing of PDF documents.
Emily Rae Aldridge, February 17, 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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Search Results and Trust
February 17, 2011
Can a user trust results from a public, ad support search engine?
We’re aware of the kerfuffle: Microsoft’s Bing has been accused of stealing Google’s search results after apparently springing Google’s clever gibberish trap. ComputerWorld’s “Lies, Damned Lies and Search Engines” suggests Bing’s are not the only search results worthy of our suspicion:
“The affair also leads me to ask the general public whether they have ever recognized that the results that search engines supply are inherently prone to bias and incompleteness. The extent to which that is true is something that every Web user should grapple with.”
The article goes on to discuss phenomena like Europe’s “right to be forgotten” push and government censorship around the world. More reasons to take search results with a grain of salt.
We agree. More factors to consider are selectivity, hit boosting, and scope. Also, look to the source sites themselves: hidden editorial policies mean you can’t trust much online, anyway. I always trust everything an advertiser says. Don’t you?
Cynthia Murrell February 11, 2011
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
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Exclusive Interview: Abe Music, Digital Reasoning
February 16, 2011
Digital Reasoning, based in Franklin, Tennessee, is one of a handful of companies breaking a path through the content jungle. The firm’s approach processes a wide range of “big data”. The system’s proprietary methods make it easy to discern trends, identify high-value items of data, and see the relationships among people, places, and things otherwise lost in the “noise” of digital information.
In addition to a number of high-profile customers in the defense and intelligence communities, the company is attracting interest from healthcare and financial institutions. Also, professionals engaged in eDiscovery, and practitioners in competitive intelligence are expressing interest in the company’s approach to “big data”. The idea of “big data” is large volumes of structured and unstructured content such as Twitter messages, Web logs, reports, email messages, blog data and system generated numerical outputs is increasingly important. The problem is that the content arrives continuously and in ever increasing volume.
Digital Reasoning has created a system and an interface that converts a nearly impossible reading task into reports, displays, and graphics that eliminate the drudgery and the normal process of looking at only a part of a very large collection of content. Their flagship product, Synthesys® essentially converts “big data” into the underlying facts, connections and associations making it possible to understand large scale data by examining facts instead of reading first.
I spoke with senior software engineer, Abe Music about Digital Reasoning’s approach and the firm’s activities in the open source community. Like some other next-generation analytics companies, Digital Reasoning makes use of open source software in order to reduce development time and introduce a standards-based approach into the firm’s innovative technology.
The full text of my interview with Abe Music appears below.
When did you first start following open source software?
I originally began learning about open-source software while in college. At Western Kentucky University we had a very prominent Linux users group that advocated open-source software wherever possible. This continued throughout my college career in any project that would allow it and after, where in my first job out of school, Python was the language of choice.
How does Digital Reasoning create a contribution to Open Source community through github?
Currently, PyStratus is the only contribution through github although more contributions are underway.
What is github?
Good question. github is a Web-based hosting service for open source software projects that use a revision control system. github offers both commercial plans and free accounts for open source projects, and it is a key community resource for the open source developers.
What is PyStratus?
Here at Digital Reasoning, we were using a set of Python scripts from Cloudera’s Hadoop distribution to manage our Hadoop clusters in the cloud.
Soon after, we had the need to easily manage our Cassandra clusters as well. We decided to leverage the work Cloudera had already done by converting the Cloudera Distribution of Hadoop or CDH scripts into an all-in-one solution for managing Hadoop, Cassandra and hybrid Hadoop/Cassandra clusters.
For us, we did a complete refactoring of the CDH scripts into an easily extensible Python framework for managing our services in the cloud.
What’s “refactoring”?
“Refactoring” to me is the process of changing a computer program’s source code without modifying its external functional behavior. Here at Digital Reasoning, when we refactor were are improving some of the attributes of the software such as performance or resource consumption, etc.
Thank you. Why are some firms supporting open source software?
I personally don’t see any downside to open-source software, but, of course, I am quite biased.
I can see, from the business side, a reason to stay closed if you had developed your business around some intellectual property that you wanted to control.
But I believe that open-source software really fills a void in the tech community because it allows anyone to take the software and extend it to fit their individual requirements without having to reinvent the wheel.
I also think it is important to use open-source software as a reference to learn some new technology or algorithm.
Personally I think that working with open source software is a great way to learn and I would recommend anyone writing code to consider using open source as a way to add to their personal coding knowledge base.
What are the advantages of tapping into the open source software trend that seems to be building?
One of the major advantages I see from using open-source software is that it makes possible taking some outstanding work from a community of developers. With open source software, I can put software to work immediately without much effort.
As a developer leveraging that technology — and not developing it yourself — you get the added benefit of very minimal maintenance on that piece of your software. If there is a bug, the community taps the collective pool of expertise. When someone adds to a project, everyone can take advantage of that innovation. The advantages of this approach range from greater reliability or a more rapid pace for innovation.
And I would definitely recommend giving back to the community wherever possible.
When you want to use open source software, what is your process for testing and determining what you can do with a particular library or component?
That’s a very good question. This is my favorite part actually.
Because there are so many great open-source technologies out there I get to play with all of them when considering which component(s) to use. I don’t have a particular process that I use to evaluate the software. I have a clear idea of what I need out of the component before I begin the evaluation. If there are similar components I will try to match each of them up to one another and determine which one fits my requirements the best.
Is this work or play? You seem quite enthusiastic about what strikes me as very complicated technical work?
To be candid, I find exploring, learning, and building enjoyable. I can’t speak for the other technologists at Digital Reasoning, but I find this type of problem-solving and analytical work both fun and rewarding. Maybe “play” is not the right word, but I like the challenge of this type of engineering.
Quite a few companies are supporting open source, including IBM. in your view will more companies be developing with open source in mind?
Yes, I definitely believe that more and more companies will begin supporting the open-source community simply because of the vast amount of benefits they can gain.
As a strategic move to support open-source a company could easily reduce development costs by “outsourcing” development to a particular piece of community-supported technology rather than developing it themselves.
The use of open source means that an organization not only get access to a piece of software that is not completely developed by them, but they also get to interface with some potential candidates for employment, contribute to fostering new ideas, and work within a community that is very passionate about what they are contributing to.
What next for Digital Reasoning and open source?
Our commitment to open source is strong. We have a number of ideas about projects. Look for further announcements in the future.
How can a person get more information about Digital Reasoning?
Our Web site is www.digitalreasoning.com. I know that you have interviewed our founder, Tim Estes, on two separate occasions, and there is a great deal of detailed information in those interviews as well. We have also recently announced Synthesys® Platform as a beta program allowing API access to our “big data” analytics with your data where we take complete responsibility for managing the cloud resources. More information about his new program can be found at http://dev.digitalreasoning.com.
Beyond Search Comment
A number of companies have embraced open source software. In an era of big data, Digital Reasoning has identified open source technology that helps cope with the challenges of peta-scale flows of structured and unstructured content. The firm’s new version of its flagship Synthesys service delivers blistering performance and easy-to-understand outputs in near-real time. Open source software has influenced Digital Reasoning and Digital Reasoning’s contribution to the open source community helps make useful technical innovations available to other developers.
Our view is that Digital Reasoning is taking a solid engineering approach to service its customers.
Stephen E Arnold, January 12, 2011
Nadella Ascends, Search Fuzzy
February 16, 2011
The Microsoft Search Head Gets a Big Promotion after 19 years of service in the Online Services Division.
“Microsoft announced today that Satya Nadella has been promoted, gaining the title ‘President of Microsoft’s Server and Tools Business.’” He is moving up to “oversee the overall strategy, engineering, marketing and product development for Microsoft’s server, tools and cloud platform efforts.”
In his previous position with Online Services, Nadella oversaw several Microsoft breakthroughs such as the release of Bing, new releases of MSN, and the assimilation of Yahoo! across Bing and adCenter.
Nadella’s seeming success with Bing has given him the opportunity to oversee Microsoft’s new venture into cloud computing, the subject of their latest major ad campaign. The “cloud” is being widely marketed to consumers, and Nadella’s promotion signals that Microsoft is looking for Bing –style success in their drive to push cloud computing software and services forward.
What’s this mean for search at Microsoft? We think the home grown search system in SharePoint is probably going to be killed. The future, bright as it will be, depends on Fast Search & Transfer’s ageing technology. How will search look from Mr. Nadella’s lofty perch? Probably not too important is our guess.
Emily Rae Aldridge, February 16, 2011
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