What Might be Left Out of SharePoint 2016
August 25, 2015
When a new version of any major software is released, users get nervous as to whether their favorite features will continue to be supported or will be phased out. Deprecation is the process of phasing out certain components, and users are warily eyeing SharePoint Server 2016. Read all the details in the Search Content Management article, “Where Can We Expect Deprecation in SharePoint 2016?”
The article begins:
“New versions of Microsoft products always include a variety of additional tools and capabilities, but the flip side of updating software is that familiar features are retired or deprecated. We can expect some changes with SharePoint 2016.”
While Microsoft has yet to officially release the list of what will make the cut and what will be deprecated, they have made it known that InfoPath is being let go. To stay on top of future developments as they happen, stay tuned to ArnoldIT.com. Stephen E. Arnold has made a lifetime career out of all things search, and he lends his expertise to SharePoint on a dedicated feed. It is a great resource for SharePoint tips and tricks at a glance.
Emily Rae Aldridge, August 25, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Compare Trump to Lincoln with Watson Personality Insights
August 19, 2015
IBM’s Watson is employing its capabilities in a new and interesting way: BoingBoing asks, “What Does Your Writing Say About You? IBM Watson Personality Insights Will Tell You.” The software derives cognitive and social characteristics about people from their writings, using linguistic analytics. I never thought I’d see a direct, graphically represented comparison between speeches of Donald Trump and Abe Lincoln, but there it is. There are actually some similarities; they’re both businessmen turned politicians, after all. Reporter Andrea James shares Watson’s take on Trump’s “We Need Brain” speech from the recent Republican primary debate:
“You are a bit dependent, somewhat verbose and boisterous. You are susceptible to stress: you are easily overwhelmed in stressful situations. You are emotionally aware: you are aware of your feelings and how to express them. And you are prone to worry: you tend to worry about things that might happen. Your choices are driven by a desire for efficiency. You consider both independence and helping others to guide a large part of what you do. You like to set your own goals to decide how to best achieve them. And you think it is important to take care of the people around you.”
For comparison, see the write-up for the analysis of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address (rest assured, Lincoln does come out looking better than Trump). The article also supplies this link, where you can submit between 3500 and 6000 words for Watson’s psychoanalysis; as James notes, you can submit writing penned by yourself, a friend, or an enemy (or some random blogger, perhaps.) To investigate the software’s methodology, click here.
Cynthia Murrell, August 19, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Chinese Opinion Monitoring Software by Knowlesys
August 18, 2015
Ever wonder what tools the Chinese government uses to keep track of those pesky opinions voiced by its citizens? If so, take a look at “IPOMS : Chinese Internet Public Opinion Monitoring System” at Revolution News. The brief write-up tells us about a software company, Knowlesys, reportedly supplying such software to China (among other clients). Reporter and Revolution News founder Jennifer Baker tells us:
“Knowlesys’ system can collect web pages with some certain key words from Internet news, topics on forum and BBS, and then cluster these web pages according to different ‘event’ groups. Furthermore, this system provides the function of automatically tracking the progress of one event. With this system, supervisors can know what is exactly happening and what has happened from different views, which can improve their work efficiency a lot. Most of time, the supervisor is the government, the evil government. sometimes a company uses the system to collect information for its products. IPOMS is composed of web crawler, html parser and topic detection and tracking tool.”
The piece includes a diagram that lays out the software’s process, from extraction to analysis to presentation (though the specifics are pretty standard to anyone familiar with data analysis in general). Data monitoring and mining firm Knowlesys was founded in 2003. The company has offices in Hong Kong and a development center in Schenzhen, China.
Cynthia Murrell, August 18, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Sprinklr Aims to Conquer Consolidation Market
July 8, 2015
Sprinklr is in a race with the likes of Salesforce as well as fellow social-consolidation startups. Forbes declares, “Sprinklr Acquires NewBrand, the $1 Billion Social Startup’s Seventh Buy in 18 Months.” Back when social media was new, companies scrambled to leverage its potential with a hodgepodge of tools. Now, Sprinklr founder Ragy Thomas sees a wave of consolidation approaching, as companies tire of struggling to unite disparate solutions. Writer Alex Konrad writes:
“Sprinklr is one of a number of companies facing pressure to provide a more complete stack to brands looking to integrate their social marketing and customer support, Thomas says. An obvious example is the Salesforce Marketing Cloud, built off a nucleus of its own acquisitions like ExactTarget, Buddy Media and Radian6. Demand for a more end-to-end solution has intensified in the last year, Thomas argues. That’s why Sprinklr has acquired so much and so quickly, the CEO argues, typically taking the absorbed startup and absorbing its code directly into Sprinklr’s main code. …
“Sprinklr will face competition from also well-financed startups like Percolate as well as from larger suite offerings like Salesforce. ‘We are in a race against time to provide the capability to brands,’ Thomas says. ‘It’s becoming a three or four horse race with a clear set of companies that big brands can bank on moving forward.’”
At the moment, it looks like Sprinklr may be ahead in that race; predictive-analytics/ business-intelligence firm NewBrand is its seventh acquisition since the beginning of 2014. NewBrand launched in 2010, and is based in Washington, DC.
Ragy Thomas founded Sprinklr in 2009. The company is headquartered in New York City, with offices around the world. The other six companies it has snapped up include Scup, Get Satisfaction, Pluck, Branderati, TBG Digital, and Dachis Group.
Cynthia Murrell, July 8, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Predicting Plot Holes Isn’t So Easy
April 10, 2015
According to The Paris Review’s blog post “Man In Hole II: Man In Deeper Hole” Mathew Jockers created an analysis tool to predict archetypal book plots:
A rough primer: Jockers uses a tool called “sentiment analysis” to gauge “the relationship between sentiment and plot shape in fiction”; algorithms assign every word in a novel a positive or negative emotional value, and in compiling these values he’s able to graph the shifts in a story’s narrative. A lot of negative words mean something bad is happening, a lot of positive words mean something good is happening. Ultimately, he derived six archetypal plot shapes.”
Academics, however, found some problems with Jockers’s tool, such as is it possible to assign all words an emotional variance and can all plots really take basic forms? The problem is that words are as nuanced as human emotion, perspectives change in an instant, and sentiments are subjective. How would the tool rate sarcasm?
All stories have been broken down into seven basic plots, so why can it not be possible to do the same for book plots? Jockers already identified six basic book plots and there are some who are curiously optimistic about his analysis tool. It does beg the question if will staunch author’s creativity or if it will make English professors derive even more subjective meaning from Ulysses?
Whitney Grace, April 10, 2015
Stephen E Arnold, Publisher of CyberOSINT at www.xenky.com