A Twitter Number of Interest
August 14, 2012
Australia’s 9 News reports on a milestone in “Twitter Clocks Half-Billion Users.” This factoid comes courtesy of social media monitoring firm Semiocast, whose recent study analyzed data on time zone, geolocation, and language to determine Twitter trends. The write up also tells us:
“The US accounted for more than 141 million of Twitter users, with Brazil ranking second with 41 million after seeing its number rise by 23 per cent since the start of the year. Japan came in third with 35 million users.
“Americans also posted the highest number of messages on Twitter, with 25.8 per cent of all tweets hailing from the US.”
The study also reveals that Japanese is the second most common language on Twitter after English, and that Japan produced over 10 percent of all tweets over the period studied. Interestingly, Indonesia’s capital Jakarta was found to be the most active Twitter zone.
Also noteworthy—Arabic is now the sixth most common language on the networking site; Twitter’s popularity soared in the Arab world after the events of the Arab Spring. Go figure.
Based in Paris, Semiocast supplies consumer-insight and brand-management solutions that tap into data on the real-time Web. The company was founded in 2009.
Cynthia Murrell, August 14, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Shifts in Industry to Be Discussed at PLM Road Map 2012
August 14, 2012
One of the most attended annual product lifecycle management (PLM) conferences is CIMData’s PLM Road Map. The 2012 PLM Road Map will be featuring Head of Operations for the EADS PLM Harmonization Center, Tristan Gegaden, as the keynote speaker according to the MCAD Café article, “Tristan Gegaden, Head of Operations for the EADS PLM Harmonization Center to Keynote at CIMdata’s PLM Road Map™ 2012”.
It is predicted that Gegaden will be discussing the current PLM culture of global enterprises which is described in the article as:
“While looking for new areas of productivity, competitiveness, and innovation, EADS—the European Aeronautic Defense & Space Company—identified in early 2007 the need to raise PLM to the strategic level of the Group. This change in emphasis was necessary both to avoid any industrial disaster and to accelerate adoption of the new paradigm of increasing collaboration between dispersed engineering, manufacturing, and services locations. From that point forward PLM has been regarded as a strategic asset for EADS, an asset that is firmly rooted at the core of a lean industrial system.”
This new paradigm that is increasingly being recognized by PLM providers is also bringing the focus of PLM back to data management. New data management solutions are being developed by established leaders such as CIMData and newcomers like Inforbix which describes its solutions as “Inforbix apps are integrated cloud solutions for manufacturing companies that tackle everyday tasks such as finding, reusing, and sharing product data without the overhead of traditional data management systems.”
We look for PLM Road Map 2012 to be an exciting conference with many hot topics covered.
Catherine Lamsfuss, August 14, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
New Acquisition Pressures Newsgator
August 14, 2012
A recent Microsoft move may be bad news for NewsGator, ComputerWorld reveals in “Microsoft’s Yammer Buy Raises Questions About NewsGator’s Future.” Yammer and NewsGator are competitors in the SharePoint enterprise social add-on market. Does Microsoft’s acquisition of one spell trouble for the other?
Social Sites is the name of NewsGator’s SharePoint add-on. Since it launched in 2007, it has accumulated an impressive roster of clients. If Microsoft integrates the similarly successful Yammer into SharePoint, that could change. NewsGator CEO J.B. Holston remains optimistic, though, insisting that the two products attract different types of customers. Writer Juan Carlos Perez explains:
“While Yammer is a multi-tenant, cloud-based software, Social Sites is designed for on-premise and dedicated hosted environments, offering IT more controls, [Holston] said.
“‘The fact that Microsoft now owns Yammer doesn’t change the reasons why our clients came to us originally,’ he said, adding that most NewsGator customers aren’t comfortable using this type of software in a multi-tenant cloud. ‘Our customers are hyper-focused on security, governance, scalability and privacy.'”
Not only that, but NewsGator stands out as a developer of applications for specific industries. Will these unique qualities be enough to protect the company? We won’t know for a while, Perez says, since it would take a couple of years for Microsoft to mimic Social Sites with Yammer functionality. If it even chooses to do so at all; Holston thinks Microsoft only loves Yammer for its successful “freemium” business model. Hey, he can hope.
Founded in 2004 and headquartered in Denver, Colorado, NewsGator proclaims a passion for customer satisfaction. The company asserts that they are (so far, I’d add) the social software vendor most deeply integrated into the Microsoft stack.
Yammer launched in 2008, and seems to be very proud to be joining the Microsoft universe. They assert that, with former Facebook innovators on their team, their social products have the advantage of “Facebook DNA.” Interesting.
Cynthia Murrell, August 14, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Autonomy Big Data Solutions Highlighted
August 14, 2012
HP has put forth a new write up about HP Autonomy and Big Data, “Autonomy IDOL Big Data Solutions.” In our opinion, the pre-buy-out Autonomy had more marketing flair. Oh, well.
The article lists a couple of solutions based on HP’s Converged Cloud and Autonomy IDOL 10. The description elaborates:
“*IDOL Powered Hadoop: New capabilities for leveraging IDOL technology within Hadoop deployments.
*Autonomy Optimost Clickstream Analytics: Groundbreaking solution that provides marketers with a single, consistent view of visits, conversions, and customer engagement across all channels.
“Together, these solutions enable businesses to discover new trends, opportunities, and risks, and accelerate revenue growth by understanding and acting on web clickstream, sentiment, and transactional data.”
Next, the write up lists the primary customer benefits of each solution. For IDOL-powered Hadoop, for example, it notes that the IDOL engine can be embedded in each Hadoop node, and that IDOL’s 400 connectors enable the combination of Hadoop data with other enterprise and external data.
Autonomy Optimost lets marketers perform complex queries on complete datasets and in real time. Users can also blend clickstream data with human information and application data. The application is integrated with the Autonomy Promote suite.
Autonomy, originally founded in 1996, was snatched up by HP in 2011. They take pride in building tools that efficiently extract meaning from unwieldy tangles of unstructured data. The technology grew from research originally performed at Cambridge University.
Cynthia Murrell, August 14, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Dragon Systems Fights Back Against Goldman Sachs
August 14, 2012
The New York Times has published an extensive account of the natural-language tragedy, “Goldman Sachs and the $580 Million Black Hole.” The five page article is a very interesting read. The gist, though, is simple enough: Goldman Sachs failed to look out for their client’s best interests. What a surprise.
You have probably heard of the natural language software NaturallySpeaking, developed by Dragon Systems. Dragon Systems is, at heart, the enterprising Jim and Janet Baker, who spent almost twenty years building their innovative software and their company. In fact, their work is considered to have advanced speech technology much faster than anyone expected. Some of it might even have made its way into Apple’s Siri.
When it came time to reap their rewards, the pair turned to Goldman Sachs for advice on the over-half-billion-dollar deal. Back in 1999, it still seemed like a good idea to trust the prominent investment firm. It wasn’t. Reporter Loren Feldman summarizes the trouble:
“With Goldman Sachs on the job, the corporate takeover of Dragon Systems in an all-stock deal went terribly wrong. Goldman collected millions of dollars in fees — and the Bakers lost everything when Lernout & Hauspie was revealed to be a spectacular fraud. . . . Only later did the Bakers learn that Goldman Sachs itself had at one point considered investing in L.& H. but had walked away after some digging into the company.
“This being Wall Street, a lot of money is now at stake. In federal court in Boston, the Bakers are demanding damages, including interest and legal fees, that could top $1 billion.”
Not only did Goldman direct their own dollars away from L.& H., the suit alleges, they also failed to scrutinize L.& H. for their client when Dragon’s CFO pointed out troubling signs. I turns out that the person in charge of such investigations had left Goldman and not been replaced. Oops. That didn’t keep Goldman from keeping the $5 million consultation fee. Naturally.
Meanwhile, companies who picked up pieces of the Bakers’ technology at auction after L.& H. fell have gone on to develop them into lucrative commodities. The couple was left with neither their invention nor any fraction of the money it was worth.
The case is expected to be decided sometime this November. Feldman burrowed into the wealth of legal filings surrounding the case to craft this article. He has found eye-opening insights into Goldman Sachs’ culture and practices. The piece is worth reading for that reason alone.
It is also a moving tale about a tech- and language-savvy couple who put in the time, effort, passion, and smarts to build their business, and who are now fighting to regain what is rightfully theirs. I wish them luck.
Cynthia Murrell, August 14, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Google Now May Make Android 4 1 a Siri Killer
August 14, 2012
The Android Does blog recently posted an interesting write up on what Google knows about people in the article “Google Now: One Step Closer to a Star Trek Future.”
According to the article, Google has some futuristic plans for the next wave of Android products that will allow devices to perform searches and tasks when circumstances prompt it, rather than when a stated query or command does.
The new tool that allows for this is called Google Now and it aims to make the Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean) a fierce competitor of Apple’s Siri.
When explaining Google Now, the article states:
“Google Now is more than an assistant; it tells you today’s weather before you start your day, how much traffic to expect before you leave for work, when the next train will arrive as you’re standing on the platform, or your favorite team’s score while they’re playing. And the best part? All of this happens automatically. Cards appear throughout the day at the moment you need them. I don’t know about you but the possibilities from here are pretty exciting; let us know what you think in the comments.”
Google Now will make Android 4.1 by far the most technologically advanced smartphone personal assistant to date. But are smartphone users ready for technology to be one step ahead of us at all times?
Jasmine Ashton, August 14, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
SharePoint Server 2013 Preview
August 13, 2012
Microsoft posted two documents which we believe merit any SharePoint licensee’s attention. The principal features of the latest SharePoint appear on the Microsoft SharePoint site.
Search will be particularly important because SharePoint 2013 will make it easier to incorporate social content and support mobile access. The new SharePoint will be available later this year or early in 2013. Getting a head start is important if you plan to upgrade.
The SharePoint Server 2013’s enterprise search model provides information we found quite useful. The diagram’s PDF is 560 Kb and available from the Microsoft download center. The PDF covers:
- Search Components, including the application components and the search databases
- Example topologies. The illustrated use case is a medium-sized search farm with 40 million items or content objects in the system
- Scaling out. The diagram includes a proposal model for a search farm which handles 100 million item or content objects.
Of particular value are the details for the hardware required to support the 100 million item farm. A series of tables covers the scaling considerations, detail about the application servers recommended, and a table layout the hardware requirements necessary to handle upticks in the volume of content to be processed.
In the general guidance section, Microsoft points out that one additional crawl database is needed per additional 20 million items. One link database is recommend per additional 60 million items. The schematic’s detail recommends that the system include redundancy.
Bottom line, there is no mistaking the Fast-like functionality described here. Search Technologies has delivered more than 30,000 consultant-days of search implementation services to Fast and SharePoint users since 2005. We believe that this new search functionality will be widely adopted over the next few years, and we look forward to helping our customers to implement it.
Iain Fletcher, August 13, 2012
Sponsored by Augmentext
IntelTrax Top Stories: August 3 to August 9
August 13, 2012
This week, the IntelTrax blog delivered some informative posts that discuss the issues surrounding big data analytics technology in today’s workforce.
While many articles discuss the prevalence of analytics technology in various industries, “Troubling News for the Analytics Needy” looks at those that are not using it.
A recent survey found:
“Fifty-six percent of respondents indicated they will not be deploying big data analytics applications even beyond 2013, the survey of 255 IT professionals found. Half of those surveyed were data storage professionals at the analyst level; the other half comprised IT managers, vice presidents and CIOs…Survey respondents with no plans to roll out Hadoop or other big data analytics software said doing so requires a specific business case, and in most instances they didn’t see a need for it, according to Marco Coulter, managing director of TheInfoPro’s Cloud Computing Practice.”
Another interesting piece is “Big Data Law Might Be Changing.” It discusses the fear that many have of data analytics technology falling into the wrong hands. One suggestion has been to grant the legal right to accessing personal information of third parties as a way to incentivize transparency.
Writer Patrick Roland concludes:
“This is promising news for a population concerned with the potentially invasive nature of data mining and analytics. After last year’s surprising Supreme Court ruling that basically let Vermont sales reps mine doctors’ patient lists, we are pleased to see reasonable thought return to the table. We can only hope they further find ways that help us utilize this strong technology, while still keeping wrongdoers away.”
One industry that is already seeing lucrative returns on its investment in data analytics technology is Wall Street Investors. “Big Data Promises Big Returns for Stock Investors”
references an article that discusses why savvy stock traders should pay attention to the latest analytics technology.
The article states:
“At the heart of the feed from ORATS is the use of “implied dividends” – the dividend levels implied by prices within the options markets. In the case of equities that have both dividends and exchange-traded options on their stock, the dividend price is a major component in the calculation that traders use to compute a fair price for those options. ORATS runs that calculation backwards to compute “implied dividends”, a measure that reveals the broad consensus of all players in the options market about how much a company will pay as a dividend along the entire option expiration calendar”.
All three of these stories provide different avenues to get to the same conclusion. Investing in data analytics technology is an integral way for companies to make the most out of the unstructured data that is being put out on a daily basis. It is important that you find a reputable company with affordable solutions like Digital Reasoning.
Jasmine Ashton, August 13, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext.
To Customize or not to Customize SharePoint
August 13, 2012
Chris Wright discusses the look and feel of SharePoint in his recent CMSWire.com post, “Microsoft Doesn’t Advise You Customize SharePoint 2013.” The author points out that many users get caught up in the “look and feel” of the system when working on SharePoint projects. Wright explains that the vast majority of projects he’s been involved with have had a significant branding and UI element.
He goes on to say this:
In my previously mentioned piece I argued that time spent on such endeavors would be better spent looking at functionality and content. Jeff seems to be advocating a slightly different view, though one that reaches the same conclusions. He is focusing on the importance of providing a stable performant solution, and appears concerned that custom code can be the quickest route to undermining this.
The article may be worth the read to help you stay on track with SharePoint goals and priorities. You may also consider investing in a third party solution that provides a rich SharePoint experience with a user-friendly interface out-of-the-box. One we like is Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise. Mindbreeze Enterprise Search lets you “be well informed – quickly and accurately. The data often lies distributed across numerous sources. Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise gains each employee two weeks per year through focused finding of data (IDC Studies). An invaluable competitive advantage in business as well as providing employee satisfaction.”
Philip West, August 13, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Open Source Solutions Continue to Gain Popularity
August 13, 2012
The H Open recently reported on some new developments for the open source search, discovery and analytics company Lucid Imagination in the article, “Lucid Imagination Becomes LucidWorks.”
According to the article, after continuously having customers confuse the name of the company with its flagship product, Lucid Imagination decided to go along with the customers perceptions and change its name to LucidWorks as means of avoiding further complicating branding efforts.
In addition its two product lines: LucidWorks Search and LucidWorks Big Data, both of which draw from open source products, the company has some additional plans on the horizon:
“LucidWorks has also announced that, in September, it will be setting up a community site called SearchHub.org, which will be oriented at developers. It is planned that this will include a blog from Lucene/Solr committers; of the 35 committers on the project, nine work for LucidWorks. Other planned features include video tutorials, podcasts, a community forum, up-to-date information on Lucene/Solr, and a calendar of enterprise search related hackathons and meetups.”
LucidWorks is an example of a company that has created an enterprise-grade embedded search development solution built on the power of the Apache Lucene/Solr open source search project. As technology continues to advance, companies that utilize open source technology are going to have an edge over their competition.
Jasmine Ashton, August 13, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
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