Actonomy Joins Belgian HR Group
May 1, 2014
Actonomy’s slogan is: “We simply search smarter!” Actonomy’s claim comes from its semantic technology to optimize human resources recruitment processes and findability. It is a big claim to make and if challenged would Actonomy be able to back it up? The company’s most recent press release, “Actonomy Now Part Of A Larger HR Group” proves that its semantic search technology was one of the leading HR products in the European market.
As a result, Actonomy has joined a Belgian HR Group owned by the Peumans family. The group includes other HR software and service companies, including Cognsis, Prato, and SAP. Actonomy has been a star product for over seven years and it is one of the groundbreaking developers in matching technology and ontology based search. Joining the Belgian HR Group gives them the ability to increase their client list and extend their service offerings:
“Thanks to Actonomy’s technology, Prato can extend its service offering of HRM related processes and include in its service offering Actonomy’s semantic searching and matching technology. Actonomy on the other hand will be able to bring its software to perfection thanks to Prato’s broad know how allowing us to launch a suite of new services packaged on top of our core semantic technology. A win win situation for both companies!”
While these companies will remain separate, they will exchange their technologies to benefit each other. It kind of sounds like open source, except they are remaining proprietary companies.
Whitney Grace, May 01, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
India: The Future of Search
April 28, 2014
I read “New RTI Search Engine Makes the Task Tougher.” A number of government sites have made changes that seem to make finding information more difficult. In some cases, locating information may be almost impossible. When I lived in Washington, DC, as a grade school student, I remember my father stopping at a government agency and walking in to obtain some information. I am not sure how my father’s approach would be received today.
In the Pune Mirror article, I noted this passage about India’s Right to Information finding system:
a new search engine has been put in place that makes it mandatory for visitors to know the specific date, topic, category and sub-category in order to track a particular circular. Also, information like mode of payment for RTI fees, circulars, advertisements and office memorandums, that were up front as per their date of issuance from the year 2005, have gone missing.
In my experience, most users are not able to provide sufficiently narrow terms or provide key details about a needed item of information. As a result, it is now trivially easy for a governmental entity to drop a old-school photographer’s cloak over some information. I noted this comment in the article:
“With the new system in place, you need to know the exact date, topic, category and sub category in order to find the circular. Considering the level of literacy in this country, who will know all details?” he demanded. “We are all stake-holders and they should have asked before making these changes. All political parties have opposed the RTI Act.
The article points to an opinion that the new Indian search system is designed to “harass” users. I don’t agree. More commercial and governmental entities are fearful of user access to some information.
Is the use of the word “transparency” a signal that finding information is not in the cards. For me, I am not too concerned. I have developed a turtle like approach to these “retrieval enhancements.” I no longer look for information online as often as I did when I was but a callow lad.
I am pulling my head in my shell now. There. That’s better. Predictive search delivers pizza and sports scores. What more does a modern person require?
Stephen E Arnold, April 28, 2014
Search Without Words at Yelp
April 28, 2014
This is an interesting option that perhaps only the Millennials and younger are equipped to take full advantage of. Fast Company reports, “Now You Can Use Emoji to Search Yelp.” For those unfamiliar with the term, emoji are like the more familiar emoticons, but provide a much larger vocabulary. The icons originate in Japan, and are built right into many Japanese devices. Reporter Chris Gayomali writes:
“Emoji are great stand-ins when words aren’t cutting it. Which is perfect for a service like Yelp, since sifting through meal options can often lead to paralyzing indecision, leaving you dinner-less and hangry.
“Now, in an update to its mobile app, Yelp allows users to search local businesses using those puzzling, beaming little character faces. That means pizza, beers, ramen, and yes, apparently even the happy-faced turd are fair game for search results.”
The write-up shares a couple of screenshots from emoji-powered searches. One using a cute, smiling pig’s head emoji produces a list of nearby restaurants that feature pork, while one using a bowl of ramen pulls up a list of Japanese dining venues. I suppose this is a sign of the times, though just what it portends is beyond this Gen X goose.
Cynthia Murrell, April 28, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Hewlett Packard: Never a Dull Moment
April 27, 2014
I read “Watch Out! KILLER HP Firmware Update Bricks ProLiant Server Mobos.” I am not sure if the story is spot on, but I find it interesting that HP seems to generate excitement whether it is the Autonomy dust up, promises to the Wall Street worshipful, or nuts-and-bolts hardware lovers.
The article reports:
Sysadmins who download and install the patch on a vulnerable system will shortly discover that the server cannot detect its network adapter, which will be a pain to fix – especially when trying to subsequently load in replacement firmware. For some, the warning HP tacked onto the service pack’s web page came too late in the day: the firmware was released on 18 April, giving unsuspecting IT departments plenty of time to brick their electronics.
For amusement, I navigated to www.hp.com and entered the query “HP Service Pack for ProLiant 2014.2.0.” The result for the query was:
The good news is that I could leave some feedback. That was less helpful than the links to Windows XP.
Perhaps Autonomy’s content processing system might help those HP customers with non functional servers? One question: “What is HP’s real world expertise in information retrieval?”
Stephen E Arnold, April 27, 2014
Alternatives to Google Popping up Everywhere
April 25, 2014
It’s a golden era for search alternatives. For a while there folks were worried about Google monopolizing the internet, but it’s not shaking out that way. Far from it, in fact. We are currently living in a golden age of niche search tools, as we discovered from a recent Virtual Strategy Magazine story, “MaxxCAT Raises the Bar for Search Performance with MaxxCAT 5.0.”
According to the story:
The 5.0 performance enhancements really come into their own when you begin looking at the scalability of our appliance in the enterprise…Sure, if you can build an index for a small amount of data in 5 minutes instead of 10, it’s nice, but it’s just 5 minutes. However, if you can index terabytes of data in 5 hours instead of 10 hours, that’s a huge difference.
MaxxCAT isn’t the only boat on this alternative Google sea, in fact, they aren’t even the biggest of the bunch. It’s not tough to find alternates, there are articles everywhere. The trickier part is finding one that fits your needs. Each serves a purpose, whether it is open source technology or privacy protection, that suits someone and repels others. This trial and error period is part of the fun, in our books.
Patrick Roland, April 25, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Yandex Profit Goes Up
April 24, 2014
Bloomberg’s real journalists reported some Web search news I found interesting. Navigate to “Yandex Profit Rises 19% on Russia Internet Advertising Demand.” Google gets the spotlight. Yandex warrants more attention. The English language search service at www.yandex.com is okay. The gem is the Yandex Russian service at www.yandex.ru. Content in this index is not easily available via US Web indexing services without the searcher’s performing some acrobatics. Yandex, however, is doing the me too thing. My hunch is that its usefulness will erode as the advertising revenue gains more traction. Precision, recall—just a distant memory for Bing and Google. Yandex’s utility may decline as the money rolls in. By the way, what happened to the Yandex search appliance?
Stephen E Arnold, April 24, 2014
New ArnoldIT Search Video: Jargon and Its Impact
April 23, 2014
Stephen E Arnold’s new enterprise search video is no online. You can view the six minute video via YouTube. The lingo and argot generated by enterprise search vendors helps make sales. An unfortunate side effect is confusion and obfuscation. Is a product really a “killer”? Do you need linguistics, semantics, and analytics to find a presentation by the CEO? The short video, based on a talk given by Mr. Arnold at a conference in Boston several years ago, strikes at the heart of a fundamental problem for procurement teams—Figuring out exactly what a system can really do.
Kenneth Toth, April 23, 2014
Hakia Building Momentum Again
April 22, 2014
Hakia has been a little quiet lately, but that doesn’t mean the upstart search engine isn’t still gaining fans. We found a really enthusiastic review in a recent Christiano Kewna post, “Proof! Haika.com Works Better than Google Search on Long Tail Keyphrases.”
According to Kwena:
If you are searching using natural language phrases, then I urge you to check out Hakia.com. You can still revert back to Google for some other searches, but if you have a 10 word phrase that you are searching for, then the big Giant Google will likely take you round and round.
Actually, things aren’t so quiet around Hakia headquarters. According to a recent PR Newswire piece, Hakia partnered with FLOW to work on social media marketing. According to one exec, “We are excited that Flow has chosen to integrate [Hakia] into its social commerce platform. We expect many other technology innovators to move in this direction.” We think the world of Hakia and look forward to them making routine splashes again. This is one of the sharpest enterprise search companies on the block and always worth watching.
Patrick Roland, April XX, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Open Source Search: Just Like Good Old Proprietary Search
April 21, 2014
The last few days have given me some food for thought. I read”Splunk Exec Defects to Tech Disruptor ElasticSearch.” The article points out:
Elastisearch co-founder and chief technology officer, Shay Banon, said the company focus was all about products. “Elasticsearch is building something bigger than any one technology and so I’m excited to have someone like Gaurav [a former Googler] on board, who shares our vision and is going to play an instrumental role in taking our products to the next level,” he said. In the past four months, the company launched its first commercial product, Elasticsearch Marvel….Bloomberg, The New York Times, Facebook, GitHub, Netflix, Yelp, Verizon, McGraw-Hill, WordPress, Atlassian and SoundCloud all use Elasticsearch to store, search and analyze any type of data in real time.
Poor Splunk. The company offers tools to help licensees “listen to their data.” First, Lucid leaves one writer with the impression that felonious behavior is coming down the Information Highway. Splunk was the target of some enthusiastic writer at the IDC combine who apparently became entangled in some Mad Men type of advertising. That article appeared in InfoWorld as “LucidWorks Preps Solr Stack as Splunk Killer.” Now ElasticSearch has allegedly hired a Splunk wizard to herd products down the busy digital trail.
What I find interesting is that open source search is starting to look more like the good old proprietary enterprise search sector. Me too products and executive churn mix with MBA think. The lingering effects of search controversies past like those swirling around Fast Search and Autonomy remain fresh in my mind.
Will ElasticSearch and Lucid Works become the new combatants in the search sector? Today both companies have chosen Splunk as the punching bag.
The more search changes, the more it remains the same it seems. Come to think of it: Most of today’s vendors are following the scripts written for Fulcrum Technologies and Verity who stomped around the C suite in the 1980s. Is the search sector running an endless loop?
Stephen E Arnold, April 21, 2014
Unlocking The Key To YouTube Success
April 18, 2014
YouTube has its own celebrities that have become famous from their videos. It has long been a mystery about how they obtained their Internet celebrity status and how an individual could attain it. Search Engine Watch explains the history and mystery of YouTube content in “YouTube Reveals The Secret Formula To Content Marketing Success.”
Google’s managing director of brand solutions Suzie Reider has given key insight into how to create YouTube content and the future of advertising in The YouTube Creator Playbook For Brands. The new playbook contains updated information and new insights on the best ways to utilize and create content that will be watched.
It doesn’t stop there. The Google Head of Audience Development YouTube Vanessa Pappas offers advice on how to use YouTube for advertising and branding.
“Pappas then says, ‘To demystify what makes these top channels tick and help you better understand how to create a successful strategy for your brand on YouTube, we developed the new YouTube Creator Playbook for Brands. Similar to the Creator Playbook, which has helped over 2 million of our creators grow their audiences, the Creator Playbook for Brands walks you through the steps to help you create, plan, and implement a YouTube content creation strategy; from tips on how to create videos to video promotion.’”
There is not an exact formula for YouTube success, but there are strategic plans budding YouTube stars and organizations can make to increase their video appeal. The best videos, though, are usually short and funny.
Whitney Grace, April 18, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
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