Hakia to Revolutionize Online Shopping Experience
February 25, 2013
Canadian start-up Flow, is teaming up with Hakia to provide semantic search capabilities within a closed platform and take online shopping into a new realm in terms of product specificity and search capability.
Until now e-commerce sites have followed roughly the same pattern; Ebay and Amazon, both powerhouses in the online shopping experience introduced a platform for “every product” and have made a lot of money in the last decade.
The article from Silicon Angle, “Flow Adds Semantic Search from Hakia to Revolutionize E-Commerce,” lays out how Flow and Hakia are creating a different way to search for the products you are looking for, without having to wade through all the extraneous mumbo jumbo. This new partnership hopes to do is to create a social flow and eliminate the sixth degree of separation.
“eCommerce as we know it is pretty entrenched, but social commerce is slowly emerging to challenge the status quo. It’s a concept that’s evolved from what are probably the two biggest phenomena on the web – online shopping and social media. And it’s a natural evolution too, as it only makes sense for marketers to connect with their customers to better understand their needs and position themselves as the ones to provide it.”
Facebook is probably the biggest example of the social marketplace at the moment. Facebook isn’t a shopping powerhouse because it has no search structure. Utilizing semantic search is going to create a kind of exclusive marketplace that hopes to promote less cutthroat competition; since users will be finding exact matches for their searches there’s no competition for most hits in order to remain at the top.
But can the Flow/Hakia partnership really pull through with those kinds of promises? It seems like a pretty tall order to fill. Functionality and no middlemen sound like a dream come true to eCommerce consumers, but the proof is in the pudding.
Leslie Radcliff, February 25, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Twitter Expands Search Reservoir
February 25, 2013
Twitter, now with more tweets! I suppose that’s a real plus for some. ComputerWorld announces, “Twitter Search to Show Tweets More Than a Week Old.” Writer Jeremy Kirk explains:
“Twitter is modifying its search engine to include tweets more than a week old, a move it said will help users uncover better content.
“Over the next few days, searches will return ‘a fairly small percentage of total tweets ever sent’ but that will increase over time, wrote Paul Burstein, an engineer who works on Twitter’s search infrastructure, on a company blog.
“‘We look at a variety of types of engagement, like favorites, retweets and clicks, to determine which tweets to show,’ Burstein wrote. ‘We’ll be steadily increasing this percentage over time, and ultimately, aim to surface the best content for your query.'”
I suppose a wider search results field is better, whatever the platform. The expansion was announced alongside Twitter‘s updates to its search function in its iOS and Android mobile apps. These apps now return tweets, photos, and people in a single results stream rather than separate tabs. One other change saves users a step by letting them go directly to a linked Web site without opening the corresponding tweet. Ah, the relentless march of progress—now saving us a few seconds at a time.
Cynthia Murrell, February 25, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Journal Authors Choose Open Access Lite
February 25, 2013
I suppose this is good news for the traditionalists. The weekly scientific journal Nature has found that “Researchers Opt to Limit Uses of Open-Access Publications.” The wheels are slowly creaking toward a consensus in academia that publicly-funded research should be freely available. However, recent data indicates that even authors who publish in open-access journals desire at least some control over the ways content is used.
Open-access advocates accuse such researchers of failing to understand how publishing licenses affect research papers, and that if they only knew, they would all opt for the least restrictive Creative Commons license, the CC-BY license. They also suggest that free papers should carry their licenses attached, making the re-use parameters crystal clear. I have to say that last part seems like common sense.
One open-access journal, Scientific Reports (which, by the way, is put out by the same publisher as Nature), maintains a licensing system with three levels of restriction: the CC-BY, the more restrictive CC-BY-NC-SA, and the even more limiting CC-BY-NC-ND. Records show that about 95 percent of their authors chose one of the latter two, with 68 percent picking the most locked-down option. (See here for descriptions of all the Creative Commons licenses.) Are these choices really the result of ignorance?
Ross Mounce of the Open Knowledge Foundation in Cambridge thinks offering researchers a menu of licenses leads to the reflexive choice of the most restrictive option. However, the issue might not be so simple. Journalist Richard Van Noorden writes:
“Many publishers are also arguing against CC-BY, concerned in part about the loss of income if others can resell open-access works. Indeed, the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers, a global trade organization based in Oxford, UK, is working on an alternative open-access licence that does not allow commercial or derivative use in reprints, abstracts or adaptations, but explicitly allows text-mining and translations.
“The problem is that adding restrictions to the re-use of work — even with good intentions — can create complex legal issues, explains Martin Hall, vice-chancellor of the University of Salford in Manchester, UK, and a co-author of the ‘Finch report’, an influential study on open access commissioned by the UK government.”
Here’s a link [PDF] to that Finch report, in case you’re curious. Yes, like anything involving legal distinctions, the issue is easily complicated. However, it will benefit us all if publishers, researchers, and open-access advocates can see their way through this thorny thicket. Together.
Cynthia Murrell, February 25, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Autonomy: An Anomaly or Bellwether for Search?
February 24, 2013
I don’t pay much attention to the corporate calisthenics at Hewlett Packard. I noted the chatter about layoffs at Autonomy. (See “Layoffs, Hiring to Come at HP’s Autonomy Unit.”) I chuckled at the notion that HP’s management team would write off billions and then try to sell Autonomy. (See HP: “Jefferies Analyst Says CEO Whitman Unlikely To Sell Autonomy, EDS.”)
Allegedly HP is in profit making mode, has its act together, and now sees Android as a way into the booming mobile market. Too late? No, never to late for a giant company which has tilled the ground for generations of MBA students to analyze and discuss. Few companies are quite the case study breeder reactor which HP has become.
The larger question is, “Is Autonomy an anomaly or a bellwether for search, analytics, and content processing?”
A happy quack to this outstanding surprise image from Jokeroo. See http://www.jokeroo.com/pictures/funny/very-unpleasant-surprise.html
Let’s look at the upside. Some folks at HP obviously perceived Autonomy’s technology, industry stature, and customer list as having value. The dollar amount assigned to the “value” is a subject of discussion. The point is that search such looked tempting and too good to pass up. HP talked to wizards, gurus, and poobahs. The information added up to $10 or $11 billion for the deal. The number, after the oddball write off, should have been closer to $2 billion. One cannot argue with the powerful enervating effect talk about the payoff from search and line extensions causes among “rational” managers.
In Q Tel Portfolio
February 24, 2013
In-Q-Tel supplies us with an updated list of US government-supported companies in its IQT Portfolio. The company dedicates itself to identifying emerging companies that offer technology of potential use to the U.S. intelligence community, and helping them reach that important market. The firm’s Mission page states:
“Launched in 1999 as an independent, not-for-profit organization, IQT was created to bridge the gap between the technology needs of the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) and new advances in commercial technology. With limited insight into fast-moving private sector innovation, the IC needed a way to find emerging companies, and, more importantly, to work with them. As a private company with deep ties to the commercial world, we attract and build relationships with technology startups outside the reach of the Intelligence Community. In fact, more than 70 percent of the companies that IQT partners with have never before done business with the government.”
The unique firm makes investments, of both capital and guidance, in startups with technology expected to benefit our intelligence agencies within 36 months. In-Q-Tel proudly attracts significant co-investments from the private sector, effectively lowering our government’s research costs.
See the list for the latest companies benefiting from In-Q-Tel’s support.
Cynthia Murrell, February 24, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Another Palantir Push: But Little Hard Financial Data. Why Not?
February 23, 2013
I was reading about the TED Conference’s yo-yo presentation. My eye drifted across an expanse of cellulose and landed on “The Humane Way to Crack Terrorists.” (This link will go dead so be aware that you may have to pay to read the item online.) The subtitle was one of those News Corp. Google things: “Big data may make enhanced interrogation obsolete.” The source? Some minor blog from America’s hinterland, Silicon Valley? Nope. The Wall Street Journal, February 23, 2013, page C 12.
What’s the subject – really? The answer, in my opinion, Palantir. If you monitor the flagship, traditional media, Palantir has a solid track record of getting written about in print magazines. I suppose that the folks who have pumped about $150 million into the “big data” company read those magazines and the Wall Street Journal type publications each day. I know I do, and I am an addled goose in rural Kentucky, the high tech nerve center of the new industrial revolution. After February 28, 2013, I am not sure about the economy, however.
Here’s the passage I noted:
There’s a tellingly brief passage in “The Finish: The Killing of Osama bin Laden” by Mark Bowden. “The hunt for bin Laden and others eventually drew on an unfathomably rich database,” he writes. “Sifting through it required software capable of ranging deep and fast and with keen discernment—a problem the government itself proved less effective at solving than were teams of young software engineers in Silicon Valley. A startup called Palantir, for instance, came up with a program that elegantly accomplished what TIA [Terrorism Information Awareness program, set up in 2002] had set out to do.” When I met the chief executive and co-founder of Palantir, Alex Karp, recently, he was straightforward: “It is my personal belief that flawless data integration at any kind of scale, with a rigorous access control model, allows analysts to perform operations that are only intrusive on the data. They are not intrusive on human beings.” Obviously, Palantir doesn’t comment on classified work. But its technological phalanx—processing countless leads, from flight manifests to tapped phone calls, into one resource for people to interpret—is known to have been key in locating bin Laden. The company, founded in 2004, has large contracts across the intelligence community and is enterprise-wide at the FBI. Its first client was the CIA.
Nifty stuff. Palantir has high profile clients like intelligence and law enforcement outfits. But where is a hedge fund or a consumer products company? Allegedly the fancy math technology can work wonders. The implication is that outfits like Digital Reasoning, Recorded Future, and even Tibco are not in Palantir’s league. Oh, really? What about outfits like IBM and Oracle and SAS? Nah. Palantir seems to be where the good stuff happens in the context of this Wall Street Journal article.
In my view, the write up triggered several notes on my ubiquitous 4×6 paper note cards, just like the ones I used in high school debate competitions:
First, what about that legal dust up with i2 Group? Here’s a link to refresh one’s memory. I recall that there was also some disagreement, a few real media stories, and then a settlement regarding sector leader i2. Note: I did some work years ago for this out, which is now owned by IBM. Oh, and after the settlement silence. Just what was that legal dispute about anyway? The Wall Street Journal story does not touch on that obviously trivial issue related to the legal matter. Why not? The space in the newspaper was probably needed to cover the yo-yo guy.
Second, can software emulate the motion picture approach to reality? In my experience, numerical recipes can be useful, but they can also provide some points which are subject to contention. A recent example is the gentleman’s disagreement about an electric vehicle. Data, analyses, and interpretations—muddled. Not like the motion pictures’ tidiness and quite final end point. “The end” solves a lot of fictional problems. Life is less clear, a lot less clear in my experience.
Third, how is Palantir doing as a business? After all, the story ran in the Wall Street Journal, which is about business. I appreciate the references to a motion picture, but I am curious about how Palantir is doing on its march to generate a billion or more in revenues. At some point, the investors are going to look at the money pumped into Palantir, the time spent developing the magical technology which warrants metaphorical juxtaposition to Hollywood outputs, and the profitability of the company’s sales. Why doesn’t the Wall Street Journal do the business thing? Revenue, commercial customers, and case studies which do not flaunt words which Bing and Google love to consume in their indexing systems?
It is Saturday, and I suppose I there are lots of 20 somethings working at 0900 Eastern as I write this. They will fill the gap. I will have to wait. I wonder if the predictive algorithms from Palantir can tell me how long before hard facts become available?
One final question: If this Palantir type of system worked, why aren’t the firms in this Palantir-type software sector dominating in financial services, marketing, and consumer products? I wonder if the reason is that fancy math generates high expectations and then creates some situations in which reality does not work just like a cinema thriller?
Stephen E Arnold, February 23, 2013
Information Builders Recognized in Annual Gartner BI Report
February 23, 2013
Yep, it is the good old magic quadrant. One firm is trumpeting its inclusion in Gartner Research‘s annual BI report, we learn from “Information Builders Positioned as a Leader in the Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms,” posted at Reuters. The well-established Information Builders was happy to find itself in the Leaders Quadrant of that report, based on an evaluation of its WebFOCUS BI suite. The press release reveals:
“According to the report, the BI and analytics platform is ‘a software platform that delivers 15 capabilities across three categories: integration, information delivery, and analysis.’ In the report, Gartner states: ‘This emphasis on data discovery from most of the leaders in the market—which are now promoting tools with business-user-friendly data integration, coupled with embedded storage and computing layers (typically in-memory/columnar) and unfettered drilling—accelerates the trend toward decentralization and user empowerment of BI and analytics, and greatly enables organizations’ ability to perform diagnostic analytics.'”
The WebFOCUS suite is integrated with the company’s iWay data adapters, and both are increasingly available on mobile devices. Founded in 1975 and headquartered in New York City, Information Builders supplies data-management and analysis solutions to organizations worldwide. The company prides itself on innovation and superior customer service.
Cynthia Murrell, February 23, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Sinequa Highlighted by Yandex
February 22, 2013
I noticed this morning that Sinequa, a vendor which provides a unified information access solution has been moved to the top of the Yandex results list. I was poking around the Yandex system to see how the Google challenger was handling some European analytics, content processing, business intelligence, and search vendors.
On a previous test, Yandex displayed a link to a site offering translations of Latin phrases. (Sinequa, as you may recall from your school days, can be translated as “an essential component or element.” I had one Latin teacher suggest that sinequa indicated “none higher.” Yet another of the specialists who with whom I studied boiled the connotation down to “excellence.”)
CrunchBase describes the company this way:
Sinequa helps companies and organizations to cope with the data explosion and enterprise transformation. Sinequa’s unique value proposition is to provide an out-of-the-box enterprise search solution leveraging all enterprise content, resulting in significant savings for large organizations. Sinequa’s customers are some of the most innovative companies in the world including Siemens, Mercer, EADS, Saint-Gobain, SalesForce.com, Bouygues, SFR, Atos Origin, Loreal, LCF Rothschild, Credit Agricole, the French Ministry of Defense, Groupe Figaro.
You can obtain more information about the company at www.sinequa.com. As an aside, I find the Yandex results increasingly useful. Check the system out at www.yandex.com.
Stephen E Arnold, February 22, 2013
Businesses Require Scalability Seen in PolySpot Solutions for Big Data Needs
February 22, 2013
Whether companies are in the exploratory phase or have already implemented their initiatives, they are talking about big data to some extent. CIO points out an interesting dilemma some companies may be facing in their recent article, “Big Data is a Solution Looking for a Problem.” With all the hype, some companies may have forgotten to ask what problem they wanted to solve by using big data.
Big Data is forecasted to drive $34 billion of IT spending in 2013 and create 4.4 million IT jobs by 2015. In light of those numbers, there must be some major problems that companies want to address.
One of the biggest variables companies are looking at is how much data they need to hold onto for storage and analysis:
A lot of other industries are simply looking for ways to manage and monetise their data assets – and Big Data is not always the answer, according to Logan. There are plenty of off-the-shelf software programs that can visualise large data sets, and in some cases the best solution may be to simply throw some of the data away.
Finding a big data solution with the capacity for scaling will help increase the company’s ROI. An organization may not have petabytes of data to undergo analytics today but they might need that capability tomorrow. Solutions like PolySpot have scaling capabilities that growing businesses require as they are increasingly driven to find more opportunities and insights from their data on hand.
Megan Feil, February 22, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search.
Pay for Open Source for Multiple Reasons
February 22, 2013
Open source software is free to use, so many would wonder why it would make sense to pay for this usually free technology. CIO answers this very question in their article, “6 Reasons to Pay for Open Source Software.”
The article begins with an example of the industry’s most notable open source offering, Red Hat:
“Red Hat’s engineers contribute to the OpenStack project, and the company is an old-hand at productizing open source projects and offering them on a subscription basis. It is probably best known for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), a productized version of the open source Fedora Linux operating system, as well its JBoss Enterprise Middleware, based on JBoss community projects. Companies such as Red Hat make a lot of money selling products based on open source projects. But if the underlying software is free, what exactly are you paying for when you subscribe to these products?”
And that is a good question, what are you paying for when subscribing to seemingly free software? The article goes on to list several things, including: enterprise-grade support, input into future development, stable software, extra functionality, integrated hardware and software, and low cost platforms for proprietary products. These LucidWorks is a good example of a value-added solution built on open source software. It offers all of the above benefits, but is most notable for its excellent training and support.
Emily Rae Aldridge, February 22, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
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