Considerations in SharePoint Hosting
January 20, 2012
Finding an enterprise search solution that works for your organization is no longer just about securing the best solution, it now extends to securing the best hosting option as well. SharePoint is obviously the most widely implemented enterprise solution, but even after choosing a SharePoint installation, a decision must be made whether to host on-site or in the cloud. More and more customers are moving toward cloud hosting for reasons including security and access.
A blog entry, “SharePoint Cloud Hosting Explained,” emphasizes the need to secure an appropriate and smart cloud hosting solution:
When searching for Sharepoint Cloud hosting, companies should be sure that whatever hosting company they choose to work with, is willing to create a system that is tailored-made to their particular needs, if necessary. Some hosting companies will allow businesses to pay as they go or give them the option of purchasing a license. It will also be extremely important that all of a business’ data is stored on servers that are secure.
One third-party solution that has received accolades for its work in the cloud is Fabasoft Mindbreeze. While working as an alternative to SharePoint, or as a compliment to an existing SharePoint infrastructure, Mindbreeze is a smart enterprise solution that works seamlessly on the cloud. Read more on their “Search in the Cloud” page.
Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise and the Cloud fit together perfectly. The Cloud makes your business mobile; Mindbreeze finds its way in the Cloud. This intelligent search is available as a Cloud service. This means that, if you so desire, Fabasoft Mindbreeze can run without any installation whatsoever – we operate the search engine for you. All the data that you manage in the Cloud is made searchable by Fabasoft Mindbreeze. This makes Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise the center of excellence for your knowledge in the Cloud too.
If you desire to cut down on installation and maintenance time and cost, hosting your enterprise solution on the cloud is worth looking into. Check out Fabasoft Mindbreeze and see if their solution and cloud hosting opportunities will work for your organization.
Emily Rae Aldridge, January 20, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Taxonomy Presentation from Project Performance Corporation
January 20, 2012
Talk about taxonomy. Synaptica Central announces, “Taxonomy More Complex than Five Years Ago.” While the title states the obvious, the write up points to a presentation that may be worth a look. We learn from the posting:
Zach Wahl of Project Performance Corporation (PPC) said that the average taxonomy application is deeper and more complex than five years ago, and so the need for more sophisticated taxonomy software tools is becoming widely recognized. PPC is a leading management consultancy with a growing taxonomy practice. Wahl’s comments drew upon observations of the evolution of RFP requirements over the last few years.
The Project Performance Corporation works to bring efficiency to its clients by divining their best management practices and most effective, up-to-date technology. The company strives to treat its employees well, to give back to communities, and to always continue improving.
There is some room for improvement in this example, I’m afraid. We found the presentation, “Taxonomy Tools Requirements and Capabilities,” to be a gathering of truisms and some tough to understand magic. Check it out, but your mileage may vary.
Cynthia Murrell, January 20, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Inforbix Offers Demo for New iPad App
January 20, 2012
Recently we reported on the company Inforbix and their upcoming new application for iPad users which will allow employees access to company documents and files from any i-device. This ingenious technological marvel is a result of a growing demand within the workforce to make company files more accessible and cloud technology. Inforbix, not satisfied with leaving good-enough alone has now introduced a demo for their new app. The article, How to test Inforbix on the web and on the iPad, on Inforbix’s website explains how companies considering the technology can experience the difference the cloud can make.
“The technology behind how Inforbix demos work is exactly the same as what our customers deploy. With one exception. We use our own data-set to emulate what a typical Inforbix customer would be using. That’s it. Everything else is precisely the same: 1. The Demo Data provided by Inforbix is scanned and the meta-data collected is sent to the Inforbix cloud. 2. In the cloud, the meta-data is processed. 3. Users access the demo data either via a web browser…or if they downloaded the new Inforbix iPad app on the App Store and use the demo facility on it.”
Catherine Lamsfuss, January 20, 2012
What Real Journalists Do
January 20, 2012
I am not a journalist. I am not a computer guy. I am not much more than an indexer of Latin sermons so I am baffled by the baloney from MBAs, self appointed experts, and failed Webmasters who are “real” somethings or other.
I did learn one thing today when I read “News Corp Pays Out over Hacking Claims, Said to Admit Coverup.” I learned something about being a real publisher, journalist, informationist, or whatever term applies to a sprawling media empire which includes that font of wisdom, Fox News.
The passage which jumped off the page for me was:
“News Group has agreed to compensation being assessed on the basis that senior employees and directors of NGN knew about the wrongdoing and sought to conceal it by deliberately deceiving investigators and destroying evidence,” the statement said.
I think Mr. Murdoch owns the Wall Street Journal, does he not? That newspaper is starting to be a bit more tabloidy in my opinion. In my little goose pond, the use of News Corp. type methods is not part of my modus operandi. Real journalists, of course, are not 67 year old addled geese. Oh, no. The people who are “real” operate in a far more sophisticated manner than Beyond Search which anchors our viewpoint to Web open sources, accepts advertising, and runs articles which are sponsored by companies like Pandia.com.
I am learning about the “real” journalism thing from a master like Mr. Murdoch. I am not a good student and I know I will fail the class. I am not a real anything. Well, I am real old.
Stephen E Arnold, January 20, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
The Softening: Google Ad Revenues?
January 19, 2012
I don’t have a dog in this fight. No stock. Not working on Google stuff. Zippo. I learned from “Google’s 4Q Earnings Growth Slows as Ad Prices Fall During Holiday Marketing Season”:
Google executives traced part of the decline to technical changes aimed at delivering more ads that attract people’s interest. Those tweaks apparently paid off as the total clicks on Google’s ads increased 34 percent from the previous year. The lower prices still contributed to a dramatic slowdown in Google’s earnings growth. The performance fell well below analyst estimates.
Is this the beginning of a softening at Google? My thought is, “Yes.” The phrase “more ads that attract people’s interest.” Yep. Synonym expansion, off point mobile ads, and various loop the loops such as the self referential Google Plus content.
Softening. No meltdown. Yet.
No further comment needed.
Stephen E Arnold, January 20, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
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MegaSearch: Looking for Excitement?
January 19, 2012
Short honk: Search systems for underground or dark net content such as credit card numbers come and go. If you are interested in this particular type of search excitement, you will want to read “‘MegaSearch’ Aims to Index Fraud Site Wares.” The service points and does not store certain information such as credit card information. We learned:
MegaSearch said that when his site first launched at the end of 2011 and began indexing the five card shops he’s now tracking, those shops had some 360,000 compromised accounts for sale, collectively. Since then, those shops have moved more than 200,000 cards. The search engine currently has indexed 352,000 stolen account numbers that are for sale right now in the underground.
For more information, see “Underground Credit Card Store Operators Aggregate Their Stolen Data.” The link, which may be blocked by certain systems, is MegaSearch.cc. Explore but understand the risks.
Stephen E Arnold, January 19, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
New Image Search Service
January 19, 2012
Marco Vanossi is a young entrepreneur who has been creating quite a buzz thanks to his image recognition technology. According to The Next Web.com article “This 24 Year Old Brazilian Entrepreneur Wants to Disrupt Image Search” this young entrepreneur has already left his footprint in the business world. Vanossi asserts:
“Since I was only 14, my dad came along to the meeting, and Yahoo’s executives initially thought he was the “Marco Vanossi” they had scheduled a meeting with. Little did they know Marco was me, a teenager!”
Recently Marco has been working on an image recognition technology known as Clickpic. “Clickpic is an iOS app that lets users take pictures with their iPhone, which the app is able to recognize.” A new update allows Clickpic to also power face recognition apps. Another attractive option is that the Clickpic technology can also be utilized to recognize sound. Clickpic sounds like it could be useful technology but can’t make a clear cut decision. While the article praises Vanossi and his achievements which are impressive, it barely scratches the Clickpic surface.
April Holmes, January 19, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Protected: More News on How to Migrate Your Content to SharePoint
January 19, 2012
Customization Best Practices for SharePoint Users
January 19, 2012
SharePoint customization has become a whole world, a whole community unto itself. The reason is simple, almost every feature of SharePoint is customizable. Furthermore, many specialists defend that SharePoint is only useful when it is fully customized. Out-of-the-box, SharePoint is simply a blank slate, an infrastructure.
Gale Pomper offers her insights on the topic in “SharePoint Customization Best Practices.” The piece is a white paper offered through Global Knowledge. While written before the SharePoint 2010 release, many of the principles still stand.
Pomper gives an overview of what can and cannot be customized in SharePoint:
It might be easier to define what cannot be customized because almost every aspect of the SharePoint implementation can be customized, including applications, look and feel, and web parts. Some of the more commonly implemented customizations are identified in the table below. But first, let’s discuss one element of SharePoint that cannot be customized – the SQL Server database.
Pomper goes on to offer her top ten suggestions for customization, as the case has already been made for the need for customization. However, the overarching question is why so much customization is needed in the first place. With SharePoint being such a highly used enterprise solution, shouldn’t developers have a good grasp on what is desired and strive to implement those changes?
This brings us to the discussion of third-party solutions. One we particularly like is Fabasoft Mindbreeze. Mindbreeze implements smart features out-of-the-box, saving administrators and end-users time and energy. One smart feature that we will highlight is the Fabasoft Mindbreeze query language.
The Fabasoft Mindbreeze Query Language is a powerful query language by itself. Users can intersect document hits using an AND expression, join hits with an OR expression, restrict queries to metadata, and much more. Despite our powerful query language, sometimes you need to customize the query language to your own domain specific requirements. Because of this Fabasoft Mindbreeze provides an API extension point, which makes it possible to transform a given query. The possibilities are manifold: transformations can replace, extend or even remove parts of query expressions.
This is an example of a smart customization option. What SharePoint offers as customizable features are often features that should be included out-of-the-box. However, with a smart third party solution like Fabasoft Mindbreeze, customization is optimized for an enhanced user experience.
Emily Rae Aldridge, January 19, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
PLM Takes the Checkered Flag
January 19, 2012
Every Sunday from spring to fall NASCAR shows off its best drivers and advertise-ridden cars. However behind the scenes, team engineers could be the difference between taking home the checkered flag or not finishing the race. As discussed in “Every Second Counts at Penske Racing,” the top NASCAR teams are using product lifecycle management (PLM) to assist engineers with difficult time constraints.
Penske Racing uses Parametric Technology Corporation’s (PTC) Windchill PLM software along with Creo CAD software to help “the team and third-party collaborators work together to manage the engineering process from concept to completion.” PLM is important to them because:
Whether work is being done in machine shops, at Penske’s Mooresville, North Carolina, racing facility, or at tracks around the country, the web-based business collaboration software helps Penske Racing manage, develop, and deliver the products created to enhance the team’s performance.
Other teams are seeing the benefit as well. In fact, earlier this fall “Joe Gibbs Racing and Siemens PLM Software Extended Multi-Year Technology Partership” through 2016.
With racing engineers often having only mere hours to develop and create new parts, we wonder how much time they spend gathering data. With innovations like Inforbix software, that search time could be greatly diminished. Their software is a collection of integrated applications that help find, re-use and share data through the company. When every second counts, this might be the next big breakthrough in technology and racing.
Jennifer Wensink, January 19, 2012
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