Kelsen Enters Legal Search Field
February 23, 2015
A new natural-language search platform out of Berlin, Kelsen, delivers software-as-a-service to law firms. Basic Thinking discusses “The Wolfram Alpha of the Legal Industry.” Writer Jürgen Kroder interviewed Kelsen co-founder Veronica Pratzka. She explains what makes her company’s search service different (quote auto-translated from the original German):
“Kelsen is generated based on pre-existing legal cases not a search engine, but a self-learning algorithm that automatically answers. 70-80 percent of the global online data are very unstructured. Search engines look for keywords and only. Google has many answers, but you have to look for them yourself thousands of search results together and hope that you just entered the correct keywords. Kelsen, however, is rather a free online lawyer who understands natural language practitioner trained in all areas of law, works 24/7 and is always up-to-date….
“First Kelsen understands natural language compared to Google! That is, even with the entry of long sentences and questions, not just keywords, Kelsen is suitable answers. Moreover, Kelsen searches ‘only’ relevant legal data sources and provides the user with a choice of right answers ready, he can also evaluate.’
“One could easily Kelsen effusive as ‘the Wolfram Alpha the legal industry,’ respectively. We focus on Kelsen with legal data structure and analyze them in order to eventually make available. From this structuring and visualization of legal data not only seeking advice and lawyers can benefit, but also legislators, courts and research institutions.”
Pratzka notes that her company received boosts from both the Microsoft Accelerator and the IBM Entrepreneur startup support programs. Kelsen expects to turn a profit on the business-to-consumer side through premium memberships. In business-to-business, though, the company plans to excel by simply outperforming the competition. Pratzka seems very confident. Will the service garner the attention she and her team expect?
Cynthia Murrell, February 23, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Partition the Web to Manage It
February 22, 2015
I noted that the mid February 2015 Forbes article did not get much coverage. “US Defense Giant Raytheon: We Need To Divide The Web To Secure It” contains a suggestion that could, if implemented, force changes upon Bing, Google, and other Web indexing outfits.
Here’s the passage I highlighted in lovely ice blue:
But some, including Michael Daly, chief technology officer for cyber security at US defense giant Raytheon, believe that the web needs to be divided into communities. As more critical devices, from insulin pumps to cars, connect to the internet, the more likely a genuinely destructive digital attack will occur. To stop this from happening, some people just shouldn’t be allowed into certain corners of the web, according to Daly.
There are some interesting implications in this notion.
Stephen E Arnold, February 22, 2015
Antidot Semi-Pivot to eCommerce Search
February 21, 2015
I wanted to capture Antidot’s semi pivot from enterprise search to eCommerce search. The French company provides a useful description of its afs@store product. If you bang this product name into the GOOG, you find that the American Foundry Society, Associated Food Stores, and the American Fisheries Society push Antidot’s product down the results list. In general, names of search and content processing systems often disappear into search results. Perhaps Antidot has a way to make the use of the “@” sign somewhat less problematic.
The system, according to Antidot, system delivers features that sidestep the unsticky nature of most eCommerce customer visits. Antidot asserts:
- Rich, tolerant and customizable auto complete featuring products, brands, categories…
- Fully typo-tolerant search
- Semantic search that understands your customer’s words
- Dynamic filtering facets to rapidly select desired products
- Web interface to simply monitor and manage your searchandising
the company offers a plug in for Magento, the open source eCommerce system, that enjoyed love from eBay. It is difficult to know if that love is growing stronger with time, however.
I did notice that the “See and read more” panel had zero information and no links. Hopefully this void will be addressed.
Stephen E Arnold, February 21, 2015
Simplifying Google and Microsoft: Okay, Just a Wild Swing
February 20, 2015
I know the feeling. A deadline looms and the “real writer” casts about for a trope, an angle, a hook on which to hang a story. I read “Microsoft Is the New Google, Google Is the Old Microsoft.” The write up is a stuffed with product names and MBAisms. Here’s a passage I noted:
Meanwhile Microsoft makes the point that it is still thinking big with arguably the most interesting moonshot program in all of tech right now: Windows Holographic. Holographic is an eye to the future to excite consumers and investors while the company still remains laser focused on the present.
Prior to 2006, Google wanted to squish Microsoft. After 2006, Google began to show signs of progeroid syndrome. The problems had more to do with management issues than flaws in the company’s engineering. By 2010, engineering showed signs of reduced blood flow to the brain of Google. The manifestation of these problems were evident in the reorganizations and the drift from the company’s push to capitalize on research computing harvested for ideas that could be integrated into the firm’s information factory. The problems Google faces are rooted in management and engineering. The visible effects are some wild and crazy decisions about products, what the company can do to deal with the non Google world, and the realization that the business model inspired by GoTo, Overture, and Yahoo was getting long in the tooth.
Microsoft, on the other hand, had its own set of problems. These ranged from bureaucratic hardening of the arteries to really bad engineering. Toss in the shift from the desktop monoculture to a more diverse ecosystem. Microsoft became a value stock and uninteresting to all but the most devoted resellers, Windows lovers, and corporate information technology gurus certified by Microsoft. After much thrashing, the company moved from Gates Ballmer to a manager less inclined to chase his tail without snagging it.
Net net: Both companies have challenges, but there firms have not swapped outfits like twins in a slapstick comedy. Both companies are making decisions in an effort to maintain their revenue and profitability. It is unclear how each company will deal with the challenges in enterprise markets, consumer markets, non US markets, and management processes.
Forbes wants to paint a simple word picture for these two large and deeply stressed organizations. My focus is search. So consider that utility function. Neither company delivers high value findability for its constituents. When two firms whiff at bat, one must look beyond the appearance of failure to identify the root cause. Why has Google search gone off the rails? What’s up with the Bing thing? Is a failure with a utility function a manisfestation of more substantive issues?
For now, considered analyses of the weakness of Google and Microsoft is what I want to find in “real journalism”, not generalizations about goofy products or “moon spoon” metaphors. Even I tire of referencing the Loon balloon.
Stephen E Arnold, February 20, 2015
More Open Source Search Excitement: Solr Flare Erupts
February 20, 2015
I read “Yonik Seeley, Creator of Apache Solr Search Engine Joins Cloudera.” Most personnel moves in the search and retrieval sector are ho hum events. Seely’s jump from Heliosearch to Cloudera may disrupt activities a world away from the former Lucid Imagination now chasing Big Data under the moniker “LucidWorks.” I write the company’s name as LucidWorks (Really?) because the company has undergone some Cirque du Soleil moves since the management revolving door was installed.
Seeley was one of the founders and top engineers at Lucid. Following his own drum beat, he formed his own company to support Solr,. In my opinion, Seeley played a key role in shaping Solr into a reasonable alternative to proprietary findability solutions like Endeca. With Seeley at Cloudera, Lucid’s vision of becoming the search solution for Hadoop-like data management systems may suffer a transmission outage. I think of this as a big Solr flare.
Cloudera will move forward and leverage Seeley’s expertise. It is possible that Lucid will move out of the Big Data orbit and find a way to generate sustainable revenues. However, Cloudera now has an opportunity to add some fuel to its solutions.
For me, the Seeley move is good news for Cloudera. For Lucid, Seeley’s joining Cloudera is yet another challenge to Lucid. I think the Lucid operation is still dazed after four or five years sharp blows to the corporate body.
The patience of Lucid’s investors may be tested again. The management issues, the loss of a key executive to Amazon, the rise of Elasticsearch, and now the Seeley shift in orbit—these are the times that may try the souls of those who expect a payoff from their investments in Lucid’s open source dream. Cloudera or Elasticsearch are now companies with a fighting chance to become the next RedHat. Really.
Stephen E Arnold, February 20, 2015
Need to Find a Simpsons’ Quote?
February 19, 2015
I often seek the wisdom of Homer, Homer Simpson that is. To locate a specific quote from the television series, enter a string like “doh” and you get a list of hits. Give it a whirl at www.simpsonquotes.com. Findability marches on. D’oh.
Stephen E Arnold, February 19, 2015
You Can Be a Private Eye
February 19, 2015
These days, anyone can be a private investigator; all you need are the Internet and some know-how. CNet lays out “5 Tips for Finding Anything, About Anyone, Online.” Writer Sarah Jacobsson Purewal begins:
“I think everyone should have decent online stalking skills. Not because I condone stalking, but because knowledge is power—if you don’t know how to find people online, how do you know what people can find about you online? Googling yourself is like checking your credit report for inaccuracies: it’s only effective as a preventative measure if you do it thoroughly and routinely. Whether you’re looking for yourself or a friend (no judgment), here are five tips for finding out anything, about anyone, online.”
Purewal begins with the logical first step—Google. She helpfully links to a video on advanced Google search techniques. She also advises do-it-yourself sleuths to “type in everything you know about the person in keyword format.” Next is Facebook’s People Search tool. Here, the write-up reminds us we can go through friends and family to find someone who’s using a fake Facebook name. Under the heading “Make connections,” Purewal advises searchers they will have to do some thinking:
“Once you have several facts about your subject, you’ll need to use your brain to make connections and fill in the blanks. For example, if you know your subject’s name, job title, and location, you can probably find their LinkedIn profile. On their LinkedIn profile, they’ve probably listed their undergraduate degree and when they graduated from college, which means you can work backward to figure out approximately how old they are.”
The list goes on to note, “Remember people are not very creative;” many unwisely use the same username and even password at many websites. One can use that clue to hunt someone down in social networks and community forums. Finally, we’re reminded that “A picture is worth a thousand words.” Purewal recommends snagging a Facebook or Twitter profile picture and taking it over to TinEye or Google Images for a reverse lookup. Isn’t technology wonderful?
Cynthia Murrell, February 19, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Teaching Information Literacy
February 18, 2015
A big push for universities is teaching undergraduate students how to conduct research. Most of them simply go to Google or Wikipedia and think their work is done. Wrong! Research involves more than a few spins around the search engine and most students find themselves deficient in that area. LearnU wrote an article, “Get Your Search On: 40 Of The Best Search Engines For Students And How To Use Them.”
The article includes a brief spiel about information literacy and its importance. What is nice is it explains how search engines work:
1. “Internet user enters desired inquiry into the search engine’s search bar.
2. The search engine’s software gets to work and starts sorting through the millions of pages residing within its database in an attempt to find the best fit for the original inquiry.
3. Once all the action takes place behind the scenes, all relevant results are generated for the searcher and presented. Results are listed in order with the most relevant first.”
What is even better is that the article does not ban Google entirely from the approved academic search engine list. Google used to be a no-no in academic research, but now it is a useful tool with different features specifically geared towards academics. There are even nods to video and social media search engines. The article does forget to mention Blekko and Yandex as major search engines and they also forget to mention Google Video as a media search system.
Oh well, nothing is perfect and at least most of these are free compared to scholarly databases.
Whitney Grace, February 18, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
In Google We Trust
February 18, 2015
According to a recent report, it appears that people trust the aggregator more than the sources it aggregates. Wait, what? Search Engine Journal (SEJ) informs us that “Google Is a More Trusted Source of News than Traditional Media [Report].” Of the 27,000 people surveyed for the report (published by Quartz), 72% trust “online search engines,” 64% trust traditional media, and 59% trust social media. (Personally, I find that last figure most troubling; but I digress.) Writer Matt Southern tells us:
“Where the trust stems from is a search engine’s ability to give users an at-a-glance look at news and information from a variety of sources. That is, apparently, more dependable for most people than getting news and/or information from a single source.
“What this really means is getting news from more than one source is preferable compared to putting sole trust in the reporting of one publication….
“On the other hand, you must also consider that Google’s algorithm takes into account your search history when serving up search results. So, for example, if you often come to SEJ for your SEO news then you’ll see more results from SEJ when conducting a search.”
We seem to be choosing ease-of-use over being well-informed from a wide range of viewpoints. Some people make that trade-off knowingly. Others, apparently, believe their personalized “variety” of sources actually give them the full picture. Let us not mistake convenience for trustworthiness; being well-informed sometimes takes a little effort.
Cynthia Murrell, February 18, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Finding Elusive Image Libraries
February 17, 2015
In order to build a fantastic Web site these days, you need eye-catching graphics. While creating a logo can be completed with Fiverr, making daily images for your content feed is a little bit more difficult. It is not cost efficient to hire a graphic designer for every image (unless you have deep pockets), so it helps to have an image library to retrieve images. The problem with typing in image library into a search engine means you have to sift through results and assess each possible source.
Graphic designer Ash Stallard-Phillips collected “25 Awesome Sites With Stunning Free Stock Photos.” He rounded up the image libraries, because:
“As a web designer myself, I always find it handy to have an image library that I can use for dummy images and testing. I have compiled a list of the best sites offering free stock photos that you can use for your projects. “
Ash evaluates each resource, listing the pros and cons. Many of the image Web sites he lists are ones we have not used before and will be useful as we create content. There is an increase in the number of articles like Ash’s on the Internet and they are not just for photo libraries. They are lists that have tons of helpful information that you would usually have to sift through search results for. It saves time on searching and the evaluation process.
Whitney Grace, February 17, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
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