Pavlovian Marketing: The Automated Business Intelligence Engine
May 22, 2019
If you are following the rapid evolution of smart marketing systems, you will want to keep your eye on Trial Run Media. The company offers consumers free trials like toothpaste linked to automatic data collection. The consumer’s behavior informs the monitor what’s of interest. Then the monitor can push ads and similar offers to the consumer.
The approach is explained in “World’s First Automated Business Intelligence Engines That Offer On-Demand Marketing.” The approach is explained this way:
With Trial Run, consumers are in charge of the marketing experience. They choose the ‘content’ – a free sample of the brand they want to try – by entering a campaign URL into the browser of their smartphones. They are then prompted to enter their name and cell phone number, after which, they effortlessly receive a code to enter into ABIE’s keypad to release the sample.
One of Trial Run’s founders allegedly said:
“When someone has chosen to try your brand, they want to hear your brand story and with Trial Run the possibilities are endless – you can share videos, you can chat in real-time, you can invite consumers to events and even direct them to your online store in the moment when they have your brand in their hand.”
Imagine how useful the system would be, assuming it works well, if harnessed to information.The company’s Web site is http://trialrun.media/. Note that there is a “fractal analytics” company with a similar name. These could be easily confused.
Stephen E Arnold, May 22, 2019
XML Marches On
December 2, 2015
For fans of XML and automated indexing, there’s a new duo in town. The shoot out at the JSON corral is not scheduled, but you can get the pre show down information in “Smartlogic and MarkLogic Corporation Enhance Platform Integration between Semaphore and MarkLogic Database.” Rumors of closer ties between the outfits surfaced earlier this year. I pinged one of the automated indexing company’s wizards and learned, “Nope, nothing going on.” Gee, I almost believed this until a virtual strategy story turned up. Virtual no more.
According to the write up:
Smartlogic, the Content Intelligence Company, today announced tighter software integration with MarkLogic, the Enterprise NoSQL database platform provider, creating a seamless approach to semantic information management where organizations maximize information to drive change. Smartlogic’s Content Intelligence capabilities provide a robust set of semantic tools which create intelligent metadata, enhancing the ability of the enterprise-grade MarkLogic database to power smarter applications.
For fans of user friendliness, the tie up may mean more XQuery scripting and some Semaphore tweaks. And JSON? Not germane.
What is germane is that Smartlogic may covet some of MarkLogic’s publishing licensees. After slicing and dicing, some of these outfits are having trouble finding out what their machine assisted editors have crafted with refined quantities of editorial humans.
Stephen E Arnold, December 2, 2015
Google Admits to Being a Copycat
August 28, 2015
In elementary school one of the biggest insults a child could throw a their fellow classmate was the slur “copycat.” All children want to create original work, but when they feel their skills are subpar the work of another student their feel is superior. Tossing in the old adage that “copying is the sincerest form of flattery” gives way to arguments about patents, theft, and even time outs for those involved. The Techdirt podcast discussed copying in a recent episode and how big tech companies simply copy the ideas of their rivals and put their on name on it. The biggest copycat they could find was Google: “The Failure of Google Plus Should Be A Reminder That Big Companies Very Rarely Successfully ‘Copy’ Startups.”
Techdirt points out the fallacy with big companies trying to steal the little startup’s idea:
“As we’ve discussed, in the rare cases when “copying” succeeds, it’s because the second company doesn’t really copy, but actually comes up with a better product, which is something we should celebrate. When they just copy, they tend to only be able to copy the superficial aspects of what they see, rather than all the underlying tacit thinking that makes a product good.”
The article discusses how Google finally admitted that Google Plus was a copy of Facebook, because they search mogul was fearful of losing profit, users, and Web traffic. The biggest problem that Google Plus had was that it was “forced” on people, like the Star Trek Borg assimilating unsuspecting planets. Okay, maybe that is a bit of a drastic comparison, but startups are still fearful of their ideas being assimilated by the bigger companies. This is when the patent topic comes in and whether or not to register for one.
There is good news for startups: “if a startup is doing something really amazing and innovative that people actually want, you can almost always guarantee that (1) the big companies will totally miss the boat for way too long and (2) once they finally wake up, be clumsy and ridiculous in their attempts to copy.”
Also Techdirt sums everything up in an eloquent paragraph that explains the logic in this argument:
“People think it’s easy to copy because copying seems like it should be easy. But it’s not. You can only copy the parts you can see, which leaves out an awful lot of understanding and tacit knowledge hidden beneath the surface. It also leaves out all the knowledge of what doesn’t work that the originator has. And, finally, it ignores the competing interests within a larger business that make it much harder for those companies to innovate.”
In other words, do not worry about Borg assimilation if your startup has a good idea, but do be on the defensive and arm yourself with good weapons.
Whitney Grace, August 28, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
The Continuing Issue of Data Integration for Financial Services Organizations
January 12, 2015
The article on Kapow Software titled Easy Integration of External Data? Don’t Bank On It shows that data integration and fusion still create issues. The article claims that any manual process for integrating external data cannot really be called timely. Financial services organizations need information from external sources like social media, and this often means the manual integration of structured and unstructured data. A survey through Computerworld.com brought to light some of the issues with data handling. The article explains,
“Integrating internal systems with external data sources can be challenging to say the least, especially when organizations are constantly adding new external sources of information to their operations, and these external websites and web portals either don’t provide APIs or the development efforts are too time consuming and costly… manual processes no longer fit into any financial organization business process. It’s clear these time consuming development projects used to integrate external data sources into an enterprise infrastructure are not a long-term viable strategy.”
Perhaps the top complaint companies have about data is that costliness of the time spent manually importing it and then validating it. 43% of companies surveyed said that they “struggle” with the integration between internal systems and external data sources. The article finishes with the suggestion that a platform for data integration that is both user-friendly and customizable is a necessity.
Chelsea Kerwin, January 12, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
MEGA HOPEX Platform Integrated with dtSearch
December 11, 2014
The article titled dtSearch Engine Help MEGA Customers Gain Instant Access to Vital Information on BWW explores the integration of the dtsearch engine into MEGA’s HOPEX platform. The platform is touted for its ability to unify complex enterprise and offer comprehensive information. The demands on MEGA’s repository only grew as businesses need additional documents in order to meet GRC requirements. MEGA called on dtSearch to aid in their ability to manage search across the ever-increasing volume of information. The article explains how the two programs will work together,
“As the volume of these ‘attached’ documents grew, MEGA asked dtSearch to provide its powerful search engine to help customers instantly explore this large quantity of unstructured textual information. The dtSearch Engine will provide users with a ranked list of hits based on their search terms, helping them find information faster. This is an especially important capability as businesses engage in transformation programs to improve performance and profitability, and connect with customers in new ways.”
The president of dtSearch Corp, David Thede, is quoted in the article praising the abilities of HOPEX in synthesizing the complex difficulties presented by the modern standards for enterprise architecture. dtSearch Engine is also recognized for its support of a range of databases and its ability to search instantly across terabytes of data.
Chelsea Kerwin, December 11, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
SharePoint Integration with MailChimp
May 8, 2014
SharePoint is looking for more ways to increase their influence for businesses of all sizes. The latest announcement seems like great news for smaller or medium sized businesses. Read the full story in the PR Newswire article, “Sharepoint AMS’ Integration of MailChimp to Aid Sharepoint Online Users in Design of High-Caliber Email Marketing Campaigns.”
The article begins:
“This week the innovators of the SharePoint Mobile Sync service released another new service that will help companies using SharePoint Online with email newsletters and marketing campaigns. ‘SharePoint MailChimp Sync’ [the service] auto synchronizes SharePoint lists with MailChimp lists and works with SharePoint 2010, 2013 and SharePoint Online.”
This service is one that will appeal the millions of MailChimp users, many of them small business owners. And it is good news for SharePoint, as they look to appeal to smaller organizations. Stephen E. Arnold has been a lifelong leader in all things search and a frequent contributor to the SharePoint discussion. His Web site, ArnoldIT.com, provides readers with a way to stay on top of the SharePoint feed and manage what is most pertinent.
Emily Rae Aldridge, May 8, 2014
New Data Integration Tool from BA Insight
April 11, 2014
A new data integration platform promises to simplify the process of deploying search-driven applications, save organizations time and money, and improve security. BA Insight posts, “BA Insight Announces Knowledge Integration Platform 2014 for Rapid Implementation of Search-Drive Applications.” No definition of “knowledge” is included, however.
The press release specifies:
“The BAI Knowledge Integration Platform turns enterprise search engines into knowledge engines by transforming the way information is found to get the right information to the right people at the right time. It has the flexibility to function as a comprehensive solution or be implemented in a phased approach to meet growing organizational needs. The platform consists of three robust engines:
*User Experience Engine – drives remarkable user experiences for finding and exploring knowledge or experts via an extensible engine and a library of powerful components
*Content Intelligence Engine – increases findability using automated classification, metadata generation, and text analytics
*Content Connectivity Engine – provides secure connectivity to a wide variety of content systems, enabling unified views of all knowledge assets”
The press release notes that several prominent global companies are using this platform, including the Apache Corporation. (No, that has nothing to do with open source software; it is a huge energy-exploration enterprise.) The write-up also emphasizes that the platform builds on an organization’s existing infrastructure to present users with an integrated view of their data.
BA Insight aims to make enterprise search more comprehensive and easier to use. Founded in 2004, the company is headquartered in Boston with offices in Chicago, Washington, DC, and Sacramento, California.
Cynthia Murrell, April 11, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Tumblr Firehose Now Integrated into Pulsar Platform
March 12, 2014
The social media specialists at Pulsar have incorporated Tumblr’s Firehose data sluice into their platform, we learn from their blog post, “Introducing Tumblr Firehose Data on the Pulsar Platform and a Whole New Interface for Mining Visual Content.” Writer Cierra Buck tells us that access to all of that Tumblr data, real-time and historic, has been integrated into their revamped dashboard. Though many types of data pass through Firehose, most of it is visual. This means Pulsar had to make a few changes. The write-up specifies:
“Working with a platform like Tumblr where 84% of the content is visual, we also realised that researching it meant designing a whole new interface which would allow visual mining. The first step we are taking to support visual mining is re-designing the Results and Conversation Views. This allows Pulsar to display the actual image and video content rather than a preview end enabling endless scrolling rather than organising the content in pages. This allows for easy browsing of rich media social content which, coupled with advanced filtering using all the metadata we generate, is going to give you a powerful mining tool to uncover visual patterns and trends in your dataset. To start with, Pulsar now displays the actual images and video content in the Results View.”
See the post for more details and some screenshots. Boasting a decade of social-data experience, Pulsar counts big names like NBC, Lysol, and ING Direct among its clients. The company maintains offices in the U.S., Europe, and Asia.
Cynthia Murrell, March 12, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Windows 8 Integration with SharePoint
March 3, 2014
The switchover to Windows 8 has left many organizations wondering what to do about SharePoint integration. At first glance, native SharePoint support within the new operating system seems negligible. However, a few features reveal themselves upon further inspection. Search Windows Server covers the news in their report, “What’s New for Windows 8 Integration with SharePoint?”
The article says:
“You may have heard that Microsoft made some changes to the File Explorer in Windows 8.1. Libraries are hidden by default and a link to SkyDrive appears in its place. If you choose to unhide the Libraries, you’ll notice that the Libraries folder contains two Documents folders. One of these folders corresponds to the local PC while the other points to SkyDrive. The point behind all of this is that Microsoft is trying to encourage end users to save documents on SkyDrive rather than on their local computer.”
Stephen E. Arnold is a longtime leader in search and often covers SharePoint on his information service, ArnoldIT.com. Arnold has found that whenever new SharePoint versions are released, or a new Windows OS is released, customers have to adjust to the changes, and user experience often suffers. Focusing on the improvements can often help organizations market the new changes.
Emily Rae Aldridge, March 3, 2014
Corporate Security Concerns Addressed with Intelligence API
August 15, 2013
One of the byproducts of departmental organization in the enterprise has been the invariable occurrence of competing needs between different departments. An article from Exterro, “Aligning E-Discovery Software and Data Management with Enterprise Security Requirements,” presents one of these cases where ideas are at odds.
IT security controls and e-discovery technologies, while they both involve sensitive electronically stored information (ESI), have evolved independent of each other — according to the article.
While IT security has mainly been concerned with protecting networks from unwanted access or tampering, e-discovery systems have been designed with access in mind. Different groups – mostly comprised of legal professionals – need to analyze and manage large volumes of documents. As one analyst recently described, data security has always been the ‘elephant in the e-discovery living room.’
For organizations dealing with this struggle, we recommend implementing a component like Cogito Intelligence API that offers businesses concerned with avoiding risks the confidence in using a solution already embedded with corporate security measures. Expert System has over a decade of experience with semantic technology and creating solutions for businesses that emphasize security concerns while still extending access to appropriate users.
Megan Feil, August 15, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
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