Digimind Offers Up Free Social Media Guide
November 21, 2013
The high-paced world of the fashion industry is both glamorous and as vicious as a shark bite. Fashion retailers and designers need to be on top of all the trends and changes, because “one minute you are in, the next you are out.” With the advent of the Internet and social media, that expression has turned into an even quicker time lapse. Digimind is a company that prides itself on providing companies with insights into their social media data and the fashion industry is not any different, so they created a free eBook: “Social Media Survival Guide For The Retail/Fashion Industry.”
The article states:
“Retail & Fashion is a very visual sector. People buy your products based on visual elements like design and packaging and they want an enjoyable shopping experience. Shopping has been social for some time, and is only getting more so, especially with the plethora of e-commerce sites out there. A community manager in this sector should leverage social media platforms that are most focused on design. Thus, the best social media platforms for you would be a Blog, Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest and Instagram. But what is the secret to using these platforms successfully?”
The eBook offers information on recommended social media channels, Google+ insights, best practices for each network, and key statistics and specific case studies. Best of all, unlike fashion, the eBook is free. Follow the same link and you will be treated to more free eBooks from Digimind.
Whitney Grace, November 21, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Tableau Is The Windows 95 Of Analytics
November 21, 2013
Directions Magazine notes that “Tableau Continues Its Visual Analytics Revolution” by using location analytics to improve business processes. How is Tableau making this possible? The company’s visual analytics software is the main key to advancing how users access and understand information.
“Tableau represents a new class of business intelligence (BI) software that is designed for business analytics allowing users to visualize and interact on data in new ways and does not mandate that relationships in the data be predefined. This business analytics focus is critical as it is the top ranked technology innovation in business today as identified by 39 percent of organizations as found in our research.”
Tableau wants data usage and understanding to be seamless without having to configure it to preset niches. The problem is that Tableau’s software is a dream for data scientists, but there is still a barrier for average user interaction. Tableau is making analytics software the equivalent of Microsoft Office, however. Business analysts are noting that Tableau’s software is a business intelligence solution that curb’s IT’s involvement by keeping it down to a minimum as well as demonstrating the quick value of data.
Tableau is making data software for the average user akin to what Microsoft did with Windows 95. What the company is doing needs to be monitored, not because it is alarming, but because it is going to be big.
Whitney Grace, November 21, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Attensity Backtracks To SEO
November 21, 2013
While SEO is a game changer for companies in Internet searches, it is not as big of a major player as it used to be. The SEO Journal highlighted, “Attensity, Amdocs, TOA Technologies Provide A Glimpse Into The Future Through A Catalyst Demonstration At Tm Forum’s Digital Disruption 2013” and that came as a big surprise. Attensity is a respected and recognizable name, so why are they publicizing themselves in the SEO arena? Is the company struggling to brand its identity?
Anyway, Attensity was one of ten companies that collaborated on a demonstration to show the lifecycle of digital services from design to making a profit. There is a spiel about how it is important to understand a client’s needs and that big data analytics are part of that understanding process. The demonstration did point out that people who only use Twitter and Facebook to communicate with providers makes it hard to track data. Attensity has a product called Attensity Respond to translate social media data.
The article states:
“The Catalyst team demonstrated a new solution showing how to proactively monitor, detect and interpret technical device, data and network experience issues and drive effective issue resolution while also monetizing the collected data to drive smart cross/up sell across channels. The team followed the industry standards developed by TM Forum enhancing the Customer Experience Lifecycle Model.”
Attensity did show off a usable product, but the concentration of SEO is still bothering us. Does this relate to a bigger change that is on the horizon? If this is the case, it is a troubling idea.
Whitney Grace, November 21, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Healthcare.gov Blog: Content Gap?
November 20, 2013
Healthcare.gov has a blog. You can find it at this link. There is a link for October posts. There is a link for September posts. I was not able to access the full set of posts for either month. Here’s what I saw:
I thought the content would be at this link.
Oversight, content management problem, content removal, or my error? Interesting. It is tough to search when content is not available for indexing.
I wanted to read the posts to the blog before and after the launch. No joy. Should I be suspicious?
Stephen E Arnold
SharePoint Online Adoption is Slow
November 20, 2013
Although Office 365 SharePoint Online makes the enterprise fully accessible on the cloud, the latest research shows that users are slow to move away from the traditional server model. Redmond Magazine covers the story in their article, “Enterprises Slow To Move to SharePoint Online.”
The article states:
“Office 365 SharePoint Online use was at 15 percent among respondents, according to August 2013 survey results produced by Forrester. That result is up just 3 percentile points from last year’s survey. The survey found that 79 percent were using SharePoint Server 2010. The lag in online adoption has its roots in SharePoint being considered as an on-premises solution historically, but there are other concerns.”
Security may be on reason why organizations are keeping deployments on on-site servers, but the functionality of Office 365 is likely another. Enterprises are slow ships, hard to turn. According to Arnold IT, a leading search news service of Steven E. Arnold, another reason may be that for most organizations, SharePoint is not enough in and of itself. Add-ons keep most SharePoint deployments afloat, and most organizations probably aren’t ready to move so much content, with its patchwork approach to ECM.
Emily Rae Aldridge, November 20, 2013
New Approach to Music Videos from Bing
November 20, 2013
Microsoft is gathering music video tendrils from around the Web and consolidating them in a special section of Bing. The Next Web announces, “Microsoft Revamps Bing Music Video Search with Inline Results from YouTube, Vimeo, MTV, Artist Direct, and More.”
Reporter Emil Protalinski relates:
“The company says [the feature] has been built from the ground up to simplify exploring, discovering, and browsing the best music videos available on the Web. The service showcases content from leading video sites, including YouTube, Vimeo, MTV, Artist Direct and more. Microsoft also notes it features over 1.7 million songs, 70,000 artists, and a half a million albums, which aren’t exactly impressive numbers, but they’re nothing to scoff at either. This release strives ‘to provide the most comprehensive set of videos possible spanning genres, decades and geography.'”
Protalinski provides a couple of screenshots to illustrate the functionality. The write-up explains that one can hover over an entry to see a preview, as well as stream content directly from Bing. It also includes an “album view,” which may seem obsolete to some but is sure to become essential for many music aficionados.
This service sure is nifty, and terrific for music lovers and video fans. But what about more substantive (but less lucrative) content—will other disciplines receive similar Bing treatments? Somehow, I doubt it.
Cynthia Murrell, November 20, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Users Seek Private Search Options After NSA Revelations
November 20, 2013
This is certainly no surprise. CSO reveals, “People Flock to Anonymizing Services After NSA Snooping Reports.” Writer Grant Gross highlights several anonymous search services that have seen usage soar since certain NSA practices have come to light. DuckDuckGo is on the list, as well as Tor and mobile solution Silent Circle. The brand new Disconnect Search saw over 400,000 searches within four days of its launch. Clearly, many people are beginning to cover their virtual tracks. But is it pointless, after all? The article points out:
“Disconnect Search’s FAQ includes information about possible government searches. ‘The reality is the U.S. government may force us to begin logging the search queries of a particular user or group of users,’ the FAQ said. ‘If served with a court order that includes a non-disclosure provision, we may not be able to tell our users about this change for some period of time, possibly forever. And the U.S. government may also have other methods of monitoring user searches which Disconnect Search cannot prevent.'”
Though we now know several prominent firms quietly complied with NSA demands to fork over their records, at least one search service has elected to fold rather than cave. Lavabit made the tough choice to shut down their decade-old organization rather than comply with. . . something. Owner Ladar Levison’s explanation, which is all that is left of the site, laments that he can’t tell us exactly what was demanded of him, but his frustration and ire are apparent in the strongly worded note. He writes:
“I have been forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people or walk away from nearly ten years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit. After significant soul searching, I have decided to suspend operations. I wish that I could legally share with you the events that led to my decision. I cannot. I feel you deserve to know what’s going on–the first amendment is supposed to guarantee me the freedom to speak out in situations like this. Unfortunately, Congress has passed laws that say otherwise.”
So, there’s that. Not exactly encouraging for fans of privacy. Lavison seems to hold at least a sliver of hope for a favorable verdict as Lavabit takes their fight to court. Is even that too optimistic?
Cynthia Murrell, November 20, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
ZooKeeper for Search Applications
November 20, 2013
Looking for Google-style tech to speed up your search app? The AppScale Blog presents us with an affordable option in, “Emulating Google Megastore Using Open Source Technologies.” The article tells us why Apache’s ZooKeeper is even better than Google’s Bigtable (links in the quote are PDFs.):
“The BigTable model is not enough to fully emulate the Google App Engine Datastore API, as it is based on Megastore, which provides the added benefit of transactions on partitioned data. For this AppScale uses ZooKeeper, the open source implementation of Google’s Chubby. ZooKeeper provides a locking API using a variant of the Paxos algorithm.
“To emulate Megastore with open source software, AppScale automatically sets up a datastore for applications to use and provides the mappings from the Google App Engine Datastore API to the Cassandra and ZooKeeper APIs. With both ZooKeeper and Cassandra, whether its a one node, or an eight node deployment, AppScale will create the configuration files, and start the correct processes on each node. Optionally, the AppScalefile (the AppScale configuration file) can dictate the amount of replication the datastore does. This also makes AppScale a great tool to use to automatically set up a Cassandra or ZooKeeper cluster.”
The write-up goes on to address data layout in Cassandra, query types, and ZooKeeper locks. At the bottom are several helpful links for further investigation. Oh, and a brief, unexplained, lukewarm beer review that is apparently part 16 in a series. It is good to have diverse interests.
Cynthia Murrell, November 20, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
The Social Side of SharePoint
November 19, 2013
While SharePoint is the original enterprise solution for most organizations, many also know that SharePoint is struggling to identify itself in the fast changing world. Its newest iteration as a part of Office 365 has many people talking. Business Management Daily has more in “3 Cool Things about SharePoint in Office 365 Enterprise Editions.”
One particular area of interest is SharePoint’s attempt at social functionality:
“With SharePoint 2010, you could follow sites and tag colleagues. In the 2013 flavor, you can have a newsfeed where you can use social features like hashtags (#) and at tags (@) to track ideas and topics and mention people in your posts. In a news feed for a particular team, you might put hashtags on customer names, industry publication names, or create a tag for a particular issue. Then someone can just click the active tag to see all posts relative to that topic. Use the @tag to give shout-outs to co-workers or to alert someone in a discussion, who might be the best person to contact on a particular subject.”
Arnold IT has followed SharePoint for years, noting SharePoint’s many attempts at social functionality and customers response. (Stephen E. Arnold is a longtime search expert, chronicling his efforts at ArnoldIT.com.) His recent findings point to disappointing social results, despite Microsoft’s best efforts. And still others argue that Microsoft should keep the main mission central, leaving social functions to others, as SharePoint is struggling to even stay relevant as an enterprise search platform.
Emily Rae Aldridge, November 19, 2013
Try TextBlob for Sentiment Analysis
November 19, 2013
Sad to say, we have heard rumblings about severe disappointment with Attensity-type and Lexalytics-type sentiment applications. If you want to kick some tires in this interesting search niche, look instead to the open source application TextBlob. OpenShift points out this resource in, “Day 9: TextBlog—Finding Sentiments in Text.” The article is one in an ambitious series by writer Shekhar Gulati, who challenged himself to master one technology a day for a month. Very admirable, sir!
Gulati begins with his experience with sentiment analysis:
“My interest in sentiment analysis is few years old when I wanted to write an application which will process a stream of tweets about a movie, and then output the overall sentiment about the movie. Having this information would help me decide if I wanted to watch a particular movie or not.
“I googled around, and found that Naive Bayes classifier can be used to solve this problem. The only programming language that I knew at the time was Java, so I wrote a custom implementation and used the application for some time. I was lazy to commit the code, so when my machine crashed, I lost the code and application. Now I commit all my code to github, and I have close to 200 public repositories 🙂
“In this blog, I will talk about a Python package called TextBlob which can help developers solve this problem. We will first cover some basics, and then we will develop a simple Flask application which will use the TextBlob API.”
The post does indeed cover the basics, including the installation of Python and virtualenv before we can get going with TextBlob. It then takes us through writing an example application and deploying to the cloud. As he notes above, Gulati has his code safe and sound at Github; the code for this example are posted here, and the js and css files can be found here.
Cynthia Murrell, November 19, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
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