Preparing for SharePoint in the Cloud
January 30, 2014
SharePoint Online is getting good reviews, and it is a tempting move for many organizations. However, it is not as simple as just changing platforms. In order to have a successful transition, a little pre-planning is essential. Read more in the ITWeb article, “Are you Ready for SharePoint in the Cloud?”
The article begins:
“We’ve all heard lately how migrating a business system, application or solution to the cloud is going to make our lives so much easier and save us money, but is this in fact the case? In principle, cloud might already make sense to you, but let’s explore some practical considerations that need to be taken into account if you’re not sure whether you should be moving to SharePoint in the cloud.”
Stephen E. Arnold is a longtime search expert, and a follower of the ups and downs of SharePoint. He shares the latest news and trends through ArnoldIT.com. His SharePoint coverage shows that customers are eager to adopt the Cloud, and the hype is plentiful, but a better-planned switchover will ultimately be the key to an organization’s success.
Emily Rae Aldridge, January 30, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Free Stopword List
January 29, 2014
A happy quack to the reader who alerted me to www.libertypages.com. The site provides a downloadable list of stopwords. You can find the link at http://bit.ly/1fnubsY. It appears that this original list was generated by Dr. Gerald Salton. A quick scan of the list suggests that some updating may be needed. The Liberty Pages Web site redirects to Lextek, developers of Onix. I have a profile of the Onix system. Once the Autonomy IDOL and TeraText profiles are on the Xenky site, I will hunt around for my Lextek analysis. The company is still in business, operating out of a home in Provo, Utah.
Stephen E Arnold, January 29, 2014
Cluuz Offline
January 29, 2014
My Overflight system posted an alert a few days ago that www.cluuz.com was returning null sets. I tried to telephone and email the company, but no one has replied. According to Nick Waddell in February 2012, Sprylogics was founded about seven years ago. The co0founder was Avi Schachar, a former officer in Israeli intelligence. His idea for a relationship analysis system became the principal product of Sprylogics. The software gained some traction in Canada.
Sprylogics went public in 2007. When Mr. Waddell wrote his commentary “Investors Look for Cluuz to Sprylogics [sic] Resurgence”, the share price of Sprylogics dropped to one penny. On January 29, 2014, the share price is $0.49, ticker SPY on the Canadian exchange. An analyst report presents the company as a mobile solution.
In December 2013, a Sprylogics’ presentation to investors circulated. The document is “Sprylogics: Seeing beyond the Obvious Investor Presentation.” That document asserted that the company was focusing on “patented, location-based and cont4ext-sensitive search.” Sprylogics intends to monetize the intersection of mobile messaging and local search. The presentation highlights three differentiators for the company’s technology:
- More functionality within chat
- A method for preventing “users from leaving for third party services”
- Keeps users in context via a sharing function.
The company’s technology plus that of Poynt, a “strategic acquisition”, delivers Sprylogics 2.0. The company’s presentation suggests that it has a war chest of $6 million. The search technology appears to come from Nimbuzz.
The management of the company, according to the presentation, consists of:
- Marvin Igelman, CEO
- Alex Zivkovic, CTO. A 2008 with Mr. Zivkovic is available in the Search Wizards Speak series at http://bit.ly/1egcIlV
- David Berman, CFO
- Bhavuk Kaul, VP product marketing, who was the head of search at Research in Motion.
If you want to contact the company, I would suggest a snail mail letter to 64 Jardin Drive, 2A in Concord, Ontario L4K 3P3.
The ArnoldIT team was quite fond of the Cluuz.com service.
Stephen E Arnold, January 29, 2014
All The Stuff Google Will Do
January 29, 2014
Ray Kurzwell knows how to predict the future. He is not a psychic, but he is Google’s director of engineering and he is designing the technology that will impact the future. Kurzwell has a long list of accomplishments, highlighted on Jimi Disu’s Blog in a recent post: “Google’s Ray Kurzweil Predicts How The World Will Change.”
Kurzwell invented the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, flatbed image scanner, and music synthesizer capable of recreating orchestra instruments. His current projects include the Google Brain and finding a cure for aging. His personal goal is immortality by way of technology. He also predicted the Internet revolution; a computer would beat a human at chess, and the fall of the Soviet Union. One has to give him credit for his accuracy and he has even come up with a timeline for what will happen in the next forty years.
What can we expect? Kurzwell believe we will have self-driving cars, personal assistant search engines, be able to switch off our fat cells, click and print designer clothes at home, full-immersion virtual reality, 100 percent solar energy, and vertical meat and vegetable farms. There are some other ideas listed with Kurzwell’s timeline that supplement his predictions.
His most astounding and lofty aspiration is to stay young forever and he describes the goal has three bridges:
“ ‘Bridge 1 is taking aggressive steps to stay healthy today, with today’s knowledge. The goal is to get to bridge 2: the biotechnology revolution, where we can reprogram biology away from disease. Bridge 3 is the nanotechnology revolution. The quintessential application of that is nanobots — little robots in the bloodstream that augment your immune system. We can create an immune system that recognizes all disease, and could be reprogrammed to deal with new pathogens.’ ”
When does science fiction become a reality and will Google be in charge of all these endeavors? Google is already in charge of thermostats and if events follow Kurzwell’s plan, the world is looking at the company holding our hands from life till death—unless death becomes obsolete.
Whitney Grace, January 29, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Free Book Manager For Google Books
January 29, 2014
For most Apple users, iBooks is the singular app they use for reading, while Amazon Kindle users have an entire tablet dedicated to the action. Google falls somewhere in-between with its Google Books Downloader. Softpedia reviewed the application in “Softpedia Editor’s Review For Free Google Books Downloader” and gave it high marks.
Right off the bat, editor Christina Jitaru says it is very easy to use the application to download books and save them to your computer or other device. Jitaru explains that all a user needs to do is paste the URL address of the selected book, choose where to store the file, and save it as either a PDF or images.
After repeating her explanation about downloading again, Jitaru gets to the one negative aspect of Google Book Downloader:
“However, a downside of the program is that it does not allow you to download multiple books at once. All you have to do is to paste the URL address, then wait until the grabbing process is complete. After that, you can download another Google book.”
Google Book Downloader was designed to be a simple retrieval and management program without any bells or whistles. Simplicity is sometimes the way to go as all of the fancy bells and whistles can complicate matters.
Whitney Grace, January 29, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Facebook Tracks the Evolution of a Meme
January 29, 2014
The article titled Facebook Data Scientists Prove Memes Mutate And Adapt Like DNA on TechCrunch investigates the lifespan of a type of memes he calls “adaptable.” The article explains that Facebook’s data scientists have been tracking memes just as a scientist might follow a genetic mutation. They use the example of the liberal meme “no one should die because they cannot afford health care, and no one should go broke because they get sick. If you agree, post this as your status for the rest of the day”. They supply a chart following all of the paths this one meme took.
The article explains:
“As I wrote in my Stanford Cybersociology Master’s program research paper, memes are more shareable if they’re easy to remix. When a meme has a clear template with substitutable variables, people recognize how to put their own spin on it. They’re then more likely to share their own modified creations, which drives awareness of the original. When I recognized this back in 2009, I based my research on Lolcats and Soulja Boy, but more recently The Harlem Shake meme proved me right.”
This explains the variants such as “no one should die because of zombies if they cannot afford a shotgun”, and “be without a beer because they cannot afford one,” and my personal favorite “be frozen in carbonite because… they couldn’t pay Jabba the Hut.” Each evolution is created due to a shift in audience. Studying the evolution of memes, the article posits, could make Facebook better able to provide and promote new content.
Chelsea Kerwin, January 29, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
SharePoint Mobile Game Gets Serious
January 29, 2014
SharePoint knows that they need to be competitive in mobile in order to stay in the game. And after several dabbles in the mobile arena, many experts are saying that SharePoint’s latest attempts are proving fruitful. Read more in the Search Content Management article, “Is Mobile SharePoint Ready for Prime Time?”
The article sums it all up:
“If we can sum up the state of the SharePoint mobile art in a sentence, that sentence would be, it’s the beneficiary of perfect timing. The cloud is opening up just as HTML5 is arriving, and that makes mobile SharePoint a smart choice. There are still some downsides, but SharePoint is finally in the mobile game for real.”
Stephen E. Arnold, a longtime leader in search, keeps a close eye on all things mobile on his information service, ArnoldIT.com. SharePoint’s mobile features are a key spotlight for Arnold, and so far the reviews are mixed. However, it is clear that SharePoint is making a real effort this time and that a serious mobile functionality will keep them from being lapped by competitors.
Emily Rae Aldridge, January 29, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Deep Mind: Google Search in Flux
January 28, 2014
I scanned the articles about Google’s purchase of Deep Mind, a UK smart software outfit. One interesting comment appears in “Does The Google Acquisition Of ‘Deep Mind’ Herald The End Of SEO As We Know It?” I noted this passage: “… this could be one of their biggest acquisitions that will change the way search works forever.”
Big name Googlers like Jeff Dean and Ray Kurzweil are rumored to be involved with the Deep Mind team.
The question for me is, “Has Google figured out that its search technology is not appropriate for today’s revenue generation goal?”
Google’s search system has become more problematic for those looking for specific information locked in the company’s indexes. If you have struggled to locate answers to queries such as “Ron Sacks Davis technical papers” or “Cuba Libre DC”, you may find the information in www.deeperqi.com helpful.
Is Google a search engine? Perhaps those commenting about Deep Mind are identifying a deal that sheds light on the limits of 15 year old technology, the mobile revolution, and severe erosion of technical focus?
As Business 2 Community suggests, Google wants a cybernetic friend.
Stephen E Arnold, January 28, 2014
AddSearch Scores $650K in Seed Funding
January 28, 2014
Finland’s AddSearch has picked up a hefty investment. A press release over at PRWeb reports, “AddSearch, Instant Search Tool for Websites, Announces $650k Seed Investment and Imminent Launch.” Founded last April, the company has set out to fix what is broken in site search. The write-up tells us:
“AddSearch is a lightning fast hosted search tool for any website, offering instant and accurate search results after the first keypress. AddSearch works across all devices, gives website owners complete control over their search results and is very easy to install….
“‘Website search is broken’, commented Pasi Ilola, AddSearch co-founder and CEO. ‘Existing search solutions for websites offer a very poor and slow user experience, often failing to provide the most relevant search result. Building and maintaining your own search functionality is highly expensive and time-consuming. That is why we created AddSearch – it is easy to set up for the website owners and it just works.'”
We really look forward to site search that functions well and is a pleasure to use, because existing systems really are terrible. Does AddSearch hold the key? The company is based in Helsinki, and is now (I imagine) pleased to be financially backed by Vision+ and Tekes.
Cynthia Murrell, January 28, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Tech Entrepreneur Shares Lessons Learned
January 28, 2014
I’m all for learning from the mistakes of others, and blogger Sergio Schuler shares some of his with remarkable candor in, “Startup Lessons Learned from my Failed Startup.” Of his attempted business, he writes:
“Two years ago, on December 2011, I was generating ideas for a business that would help team managers to not suck so much at managing their teams. I came up with this idea because I had some pretty terrible managers in my life. At the same time I worked for about 5 years with leadership development and had some pretty great teams and team experiences. Exactly January 1st 2012 I registered the domain teamometer.com.”
That seems like a good start; management can always use better tools. However, Schuler outlines some of the rookie moves that doomed his project. He began by trying to assess interest through his website, but mis-translated passing interest into probable sales. He also wishes he had researched user needs before developing his idea, and that expectations had been clearer when he brought in partners.
We were particularly interested in his take on using social media to build a brand. He tells us:
“I wrote a [darn] article every effing day. It made us jump to the first page of Google in several important keywords. How did that translate to sales? Zero. So the lesson is (unless your product is a multi-sided business like Facebook, where users are not paying customers) do not invest time and money to get more traffic. If you do, make sure to TALK to those people, because validating the product is more important than vanity metrics like how many likes you got on Facebook.”
A very good point—clicks are not, in themselves, communication; the goal is to better understand potential customers and help them better understand the product. As this entrepreneur found, courting clicks can actually be a time- and effort-sucking distraction. (We hate to say we told you so….)
Cynthia Murrell, January 28, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
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