Why Not Up Funding for Search Technology?
September 14, 2013
I read “NASA Identifies 3 Potential Asteroid Targets to Catch With Space Lasso.” The idea sounds interesting. But given the findability problems which are causing many—including NASA scientists—to wring their hands, why not fund more research into search technology. I understand that NASA has some bold ideas, but a here-and-now challenge is information retrieval. If one cannot find pertinent technical information, will that asteroid roping plan work? Yippy ki-yay.
Stephen E Arnold, September 14, 2013
Autonomy: Saddled with HP and Burdened with Real Stories
September 12, 2013
I read “HP/Autonomy Strategy – Still Buy Instead of Build?” Pretty darned amazing. I did not know HP had a strategy. I do know the company has been struggling with outfits ranging from the New York Stock Exchange to its interesting acquisitions. (Anyone remember EDS?)
The write up presents the view of one of the world’s leading experts in content management and related disciplines:
My reaction is this: when software vendors try acquire their way out of chronic product engineering problems, customers lose. I suspect most Interwoven and Autonomy customers would agree. After all, they saw Interwoven use its post-IPO equity windfall to acquire a plethora of other firms, rather than modernize its flagship TeamSite platform, which at its core remains a circa 1997 file management system. Similarly Autonomy went on an acquisition binge (at a time when Apache Lucene was fast overtaking the Autonomy IDOL search platform), ultimately rolling up the Interwoven roll-up, among others.
Yikes. Old news.
The issue is not what Autonomy was. The issue is a now problem for HP. The company paid dearly for Autonomy, watched its founder leave, and gutted the Autonomy marketing machine.
Who or what is lost in space? Management expertise, technology, business savvy? Image from http://urbanshakedowns.wordpress.com/2011/07/06/lost-in-space/
Is Autonomy “lost in space” and drifting? Like it or not, Autonomy was one of the leading vendors generating revenue in search and content processing. Today’s problem is not Autonomy’s. Today’s problem boils down to failed webmasters, poobahs, lax procurement teams, and managers who think search is easy. These folks now face a hard reality: Search and content processing is not for those without technical, marketing, and financial expertise.
Did Interwoven really work? Did neurolinguistic processing work? Some say yes and some say no. The reasons have more to do with managers who think do not consider, “We don’t know what we don’t know.” Now some folks known content processing and findability are not the easy-as-pie solutions marketers, azure chip consultants, and MBA-inspired experts believed.
The problem at HP is more than strategy, and thee may be no happy solution to this calculus problem. You can post that note in your iManage Outlook file and then try to find it after a crash. Don’t forget to use a cloud solution and tuck your data in a proprietary content management system.
Stephen E Arnold, September 12, 2013
Dassault Reaches to Australia New Zealand
September 12, 2013
I have lost track of Dassault, a firm which acquired Exalead a few years ago. Exalead dropped off my radar with its cloud approach to 360 degree information access. I do get an annual request for me to listen without compensation to a “briefing” about the Exalead technology. I have severe webinar fatigue, and I have a tough time differentiating the marketing pitches from different search vendors. As I approach 70 years of age, the diagrams strike me as interchangeable. The terminology used reminds me of a cheerleading session. The PowerPoints are little more than placards saying, “Big Data, Analytics, NoSQL, CRM. Go Team.” The only thing missing from the briefings is a band and hard data about strong revenue and profits generated by the company’s must-have products.
Search is repositioning in an effort to avoid marginalization. Most of the go-to customers already have up to five enterprise search systems. My hunch is that most large organizations are unaware of the total number of “findability” and “business intelligence” systems in their organizations.
Vendors, recognizing a saturated market, have had to either sell out (Brainware, Endeca, Exalead, Fast Search & Transfer, ISYS Search, and Vivisimo) or jump from one buzzword to another in a quest for additional venture funding and revenue.
Cheerleading is show business. Image courtesy of the US Department of Defense at http://www.defense.gov/News/NewsArticle.aspx?ID=44522
I read “Firstservis Partners Dassault Systèmes to Push Big Data App.” The write up said:
The 3DEXPERIENCE platform brings structure, meaning and accessibility to data across the heterogeneous enterprise information cloud and combines the sophisticated search, access and reporting typically associated with databases with the speed, scalability and simplicity of the Web.
More interesting to me is the reason for this jump to Big Data. According to the write up:
“Their decision to re-platform their business on EXALEAD applications was then validated by Gartner’s 2013 Magic Quadrant Report where the brand was named as the most visionary of enterprise search vendors,” he [Firstservis director, Andrew Young] said.
What I find interesting is that an azure chip consulting firm opened the eyes of Dassault to what it could do with Exalead technology. Now Dassault bought Exalead in 2010 for about $160 million. After three years, a third party has guided a scientific company with 11,000 passionate people, 1790,000 customers, 3,500 (3,501 I suppose if I count Firstservis), and “long term strategy” (See http://www.3ds.com/about-3ds/).
With the pundits and poobahs hoarse from repetition of the “Big Data, Analytics, and CRM” cheer, I found the story interesting and indicative of the challenges those with “enterprise search systems” face.
Will the fans show up for the game? Image courtesy of NOAA at http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/GEOID/GSVS11/images/Longhorn_Stadium_Flippable_Seats.jpg
My hunch is that enterprise search remains a problem. The marketing issue becomes a communication problem. When a company cannot find information, enterprise search is the culprit. Most firms have quite a bit of search experience. Dissatisfaction among users is the norm. So a new positioning is required not just by Dassault but by most of the vendors who used to be in the search business.
A Call for Federated Search in Healthcare
September 12, 2013
The general search engines available on the web are simply not adequate for healthcare professionals looking for the latest pertinent information (let alone personalized data on their patients). The Federated Search Blog shares an important Tedx Talk in its piece, “Dr. Karl Kochendorfer: Bridging the Knowledge Gap in Health Care,” which advocates the adoption of federated search for the healthcare industry. I recommend the video not only for those in the healthcare or search fields, but for anyone interested in getting the best care for themselves and their families. The write-up tells us:
“As a family physician and leader in the effort to connect healthcare workers to the information they need, Dr. Kochendorfer acknowledges what those of us in the federated search world already know – Google and the surface web contain so little of the critical information your doctor and his staff need to support important medical decision-making.”
The write-up summarizes highlights from the talk, including the statistic that says a third of clinicians’ time is spent hunting down information. No wonder doctors are spending less time with patients! The article continues:
“And, the most compelling reason to get federated search into healthcare is the sobering thought by Dr. Kochendorfer that doctors are now starting to use Wikipedia to get answers to their questions instead of the best evidence-based sources out there just because Wikipedia is so easy for them to use. Scary.”
Yes, scary is a good word for it. It is true that data reservoirs that feed federated searches can contain errors—a point Kochendorfer does not address in this video. Still, I have to agree with the write-up: the doctor makes a compelling case on this important issue. The video concludes with a call for listeners to support the development of federated healthcare search tools like MedSocket and open standards like Infobuttons. Sounds like a good idea to me.
Cynthia Murrell, September 12, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Image Rendition in Display Template for Content Search on Sharepoint 2013
September 12, 2013
The Sharepoint 2013 blog explains how to enhance image results in the post Sharepoint Search Vegas Style, Display Template with Image Renditions. Sharepoint 2013’s Image Rendition enables one to use specific image renditions combined with Channels. This is particularly important when using mobile devices, since smaller images used with Channels allow for a superior performance on websites for mobile devices. This article focuses on the steps needed to use Image Renditions in Display Template for Content Search web part. The article explains that after creating a page and configuring the web part to display only the images desired,
“I opened SharePoint Designer and made a copy of Item_Pictures3Lines.html.
I called the file Item_Picture3vegasLines.html. At line 50, there is a code: var pictureURL = $getItemValue(ctx, “Picture URL”);
I added: var vegasURL=pictureURL + “?RenditionID=5″;At line 71, I removed a class: <div class=”cbs-picture3LinesImageContainer” id=”_#= pictureContainerId =#_”> This removed class sets image to 100px width and 100px height.
The code looks like this: <div id=”_#= pictureContainerId =#_”>”
From there, the author adds an image title next to the image with the code: <div style=”float:left;margin-bottom:5px;” id=”_#= pictureContainerId =#_”>. (The article also includes the full code for Item_Picture3vegasLines.html.)
Chelsea Kerwin, September 12, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Search via Cascading Style Sheets
September 11, 2013
Short honk: We thought that one of our three or four readers would be interested in a CSS-centric approach to full-text search. The details, code, and a demonstration are available in “Client-Side Full-Text Search in CSS.” Go for it.
Stephen E Arnold, September 11, 2013
Software: Its Dark Side and Search
September 10, 2013
I read “The Dark Side of Software Development That No One Talks About.” Well, excuuuuse me — as Steve Martin the comedian once said — my goslings and I have yammered about “bad” developers and the rise of the nerd kings for years.
A couple of the goslings are/were nerd kings until they discovered one or more of these areas of interests: People of the opposite sex or just interspecies interaction in general, money, power, clients who cannot log in to an email account, automobile racing, weapons. I think I have covered some of the interests. If I omitted some triggers, excuuuuse me.
Well, snacks are available at many high-tech firms. How about an Odwalla and some trail mix? A happy quack to Family Wings for the image: http://familywings.org/from-star-wars-to-heart-wars/come-to-the-dark-side-cookies/
The write up points out, “Software developers are jerks.” The write up explains the jerkiness reasonably well. Among the characteristics mentioned are:
Not everyone has your best interests at heart
Vileness (great word, by the way)
Bloated egos (I thought every CEO needed a jet plain and a trophy nerd)
The “cure”, quite surprisingly, is almost Jungian:
there needs to be more of us—especially those of us who’ve been in the field for awhile—who tell people why they can do it and how easy it really is.
My view is less psychy.
First, since most folks can click a mouse, this expertise immediately converts to technical expertise. Consequently the likelihood that a development project will move forward as if on Teflon is zero. Everyone has an informed opinion, and the folks with “power” dictate what happens. Just look at interfaces which are unusable or odd ball iPad apps which are almost unusable without mindless tapping for evidence.
Second, the split between those who can code and those who cannot is another type of one percent societal split. Talking about a method is different from implementing the method in software. Since it is more fun to talk than work, the process of creating an innovation effectively stops. Does the world need another wearable device like a smart watch? I suppose so, but what are the fancy watchmakers doing? Those throwbacks keep making watches some of which cost more than an Autonomy, Endeca, or SharePoint Search implementation. Nissan is doing a smart watch. Great idea.
Third, the need for software solutions is rising rapidly. I just heard a podcast which argued that Microsoft needs to focus only on apps. That’s a great idea. My wife has an iPhone and I can’t figure out which colorful icon does what. We need more apps. I think that top developers can meet this need whether I understand the solution or not.
Stepping back, let me ask a question. Does any of the enterprise software work without legions of technical experts applying bandages 24×7? Of the hundreds of thousands of apps, how many are in for the long haul? Of the thousands of open source programs, how many will survive the loss of a couple of key committers?
Software and the type of experts described in the article have helped make modern life brittle. With expertise concentrated and the constructs on the edge of functionality, will the software infrastructure support an increasingly complex future?
And what about search? Findability is not making much progress. I am not sure the developers are to blame. Computational boundaries, the complexity of language, and the “needs” of the busy worker contribute to systems which are increasingly alike. The enterprise search systems are equally useful and equally disappointing. Good business for consultants and technical wellness staff comes from the present situation.
Stephen E Arnold, September 10, 2013
Enterprise Search: Finding Flounders Floundering
September 9, 2013
A founder is a flat fish. In today’s whiz kid world, “flounder” does not make one drool for a fish stew. “Flounder” means to the Free Dictionary, “to move or act clumsily and in confusion.” I made the connection to search as a result of a seemingly innocuous discussion on LinkedIn about improving search.
A flounder not yet out of water.
I am not sure about the rules for linking to LinkedIn content. I have to watch my Ps and Qs because two of the goslings and I learned on Friday, September 6, 2013, that some of the queries I launched from my research computer were not processed by Slideshare. Was this a glitch or some intentional action? I don’t know. To be on the safe side, I will not link to the thread called “How to manage queries having no relevant answers but still matching some terms.” If you are a LinkedIn customer, you can log in and locate the discussion using the LinkedIn “finding” system. How well with that work out for you? Well, that’s another search topic.
To recap the thread, a LinkedIn customer is responsible for an Intranet search system. When its users run a query, the system produces a results list which do not answer some users’ questions. There is term matching, but the content is not on point. I no longer like to beat the drum for precision and recall. We are now in the era of good enough search. Few take the time to create a vetted content inventory. When the search system is rolled out, no one really knows what’s “in” the index. The point that a query contains terms which match some content but makes users grouse is not new.
Caught by an unhappy user who happens to be the CFO figuring out why so much money was spent for a search system that did not work.
The fix, of course, is like trying to refuel an old fashioned propeller driven aircraft with a somewhat more modern jet powered tanker. The job is going to be tricky and may end with some excitement. Jets and prop driven aircraft like enterprise search and quick mixes might not be a happy combination like peanut butter and jelly.
In 2004, then Googler Dave Girouard said in eCommerce Times:
“The funny part is it’s easier to find box scores from the 1957 World Series than it is to find last quarter’s sales presentation in the enterprise. While Web search has gotten really good, enterprise search has stagnated, and that’s why we really believe it’s a problem that needs to be solved and that Google has a unique set of capabilities to solve it.”
Well, Mr. Girouard has moved on and Google is advertising on LinkedIn for yet another wizard to work on enterprise search. If Google cannot knock the ball out of the park, who can? Is HP Autonomy the go-to system? What about a low-cost option like dtSearch? Why not download Elasticsearch, Constellio, of one of the other open source solutions? Maybe a company should embrace a predictive solution from Agilex or Palantir?
Once Again SharePoint Search Needs Augmentation
September 9, 2013
Collaborative content management programs are a solution to share information and connect users across multiple devices. An important function of the platform is search. SharePoint is a favorite out-of-the-box content software of many organizations, but like any Microsoft product it needs to be tweaked to make it perform at its best. Search is one of its functions that needs a lot of tweaking and Mentor Mate has a SharePoint Tips blog to help administrators improve search. One of its latest posts, “Pitfalls Configuring A SharePoint 2010 Search Service Application” tries to answer how to set up restricted access:
“In the following, first, blog we talk about restricted access for Search Service Application on a clean SharePoint farm even for a farm administrator account. So, we have a clean SharePoint 2010 install, we try to access the Search Service Application (under Application Management ? Manage Service Applications) and… we get an unexpected access denied. “
The author, Kiril Illiev, follows through with how he resolved the situation and the steps he took to get there. The post reads as an instructional article on how to fix SharePoint’s search application, complete with screenshots. SharePoint search can be enhanced with tips like this.
Whitney Grace, September 09, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
A New Search Tool Kicks Its Heels
September 6, 2013
Apache Lucene/Solr is already the most popular open source search software, but there are other options available including GigaBlast and Elasticsearch. Another search project wishes to join the ranks of open source search. Visit the main Web site and read the synopsis entitled, “Introducing Searchkick” to gain a basic understanding of the new technology. Searchkick is touted as helping developers “bootstrap their search.” It is an out-of-the-box solution that can stem, use special characters, ignore extra white space, handle misspellings, and is smart enough for custom synonyms.
Interestingly the new search tool is an intelligent search function:
“Searchkick uses conversion data to learn what your users are looking for. If a user searches for “ice cream” and adds Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey to the cart (the conversion metric), that item gets a little more weight for similar searches. Results get better as more people search.”
Searchkick can also reindex without any downtime, uses SQL, and can be deployed to any language. The search software is available via Github for download and development. We see a lot of small search projects starting off using open source software. The main problem is that they are often abandoned. Searchkick appears to be off to a better start than others. Let us see if the spark sticks.
Whitney Grace, September 06, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
