Shortcut Available for Text Searches Online
August 23, 2013
An article titled SearchClip Searches the Web for Text You Select with a Keystroke on Lifehacker addresses a Windows utility that enables easy search of highlighted text. The utility runs in the background once installed and enables the user to simply select text, hit Ctr+C twice in order to do a web search on the highlighted text. The utility, named SearchClip, sounds like a variant on the Autonomy Kenjin app developed over five years ago. The article explains some specifics of the program,
“You may need to add an exemption to your anti-malware tool for SearchClip to work—it does need to capture keyboard input to work, which can set off your antivirus app’s alarms. If you’re worried, Scott Hanselman was the one who turned us on to this one, and the code is freely available for inspection at GitHub. Also, you need Microsoft’s Visual C++ installed for the tool to work.
The article also states that on the first attempt to use SearchClip a DLL error code may appear. This problem disappeared once the package was installed. This utility seems like a shortcut of a shortcut, since copy and pasting Visit GitHub to try SearchClip out. Most of the responses to the post were critiquing the awkward hand position pictured in the article.
Chelsea Kerwin, August 23, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
IT Market Forecasting Increasingly Tricky
August 22, 2013
How big is cloud search? No one knows, because it is changing too fast to measure. That is the takeaway from eWeek‘s, “IT Marketing Forecasting Gets Dicey in Cloud Services, BYOD Era.” Forecasting firms have been recalibrating their tech-market predictions left and right. The article notes:
“In 2013 the major trends of mobile, cloud, social and bring your own device are rapidly altering the enterprise technology market. When you consider Microsoft reorganizing itself into a services operation, Dell working desperately to go private, Lenovo as the new leader in a declining personal computer market, and Samsung and Apple as the smartphone leaders, you get an idea of just how rapidly the tech globe is spinning.”
Writer Eric Lundquist supplies examples of forecasts that have been adjusted. He also examines specific developments, like the growth of Amazon Web Services and the bring-your-own-device trend, that have cast a fog around predictions. He concludes:
“All this goes to highlight the difficulty of forecasting a market that is changing beneath your feet. While you can add up actual spending, measuring lost opportunities, shifts in customer preferences and the attributes that cause corporate IT to abandon, for example, in-house development projects in favor of contracting with cloud services is not something that can be easily plugged into a spreadsheet.”
Indeed. The write-up suggests that researchers can overcome this difficulty once they capture enough customers’ thoughts about future spending. I am not so sure. Can we ever expect this market to settle down? Or is the pace of innovation only going to continue growing exponentially, leaving our tech prognosticators forever in the dust?
Cynthia Murrell, August 22, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Some Wonder if Chinese Search Partnership is Good
August 22, 2013
Some very smart people have speculated that as the Chinese market for, well, just about everything, goes so will go the rest of the planet. While nothing specific is said, that can likely extend to search. If that statement is true, there’s a lot of thinking to be done after reading a recent Search Engine Watch article, “Chinese Search Engine Quihoo to Buy Sogou for $1.4 Billion?”
According to the story:
Qihoo 360 launched its own search engine in August of last year, and is second only to Baidu in terms of market share in China. Purchasing Sogou would mean the company would have nearly 25 percent of the search market share compared to Baidu’s eroding market share, which is now slightly under 70 percent…If the deal happens, it will definitely shake up the Chinese search engine market.
This sounds like an interesting turn of events, but it begs the question: is this good for consumers? That’s another story. As this video illustrates, Chinese partnerships are happening across the spectrum. But whether or not they are good for customers depends on who’s buying and what is being sold. In the case of search, we think this will be a good thing that creates a more powerful tool for users.
Patrick Roland, August 22, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
Discovering Google Search Weaknesses
August 21, 2013
Much like a giant in an ancient parable, is it possible Google’s blind spots will cost them as the world becomes more analytic and big data savvy? While that currently sounds like a stretch, it seemed less so after reading a fascinating article in Technology Review, “Filling a Search Engine Blind Spot.”
The article spoke directly of Google and it’s blindspots, namely:
This information blackspot consists of location-specific information that is only useful for people for short periods of time. An example would be a question such as whether an advertised bargain is still available at a particular shop. Another is to ask whether parking spaces are available at a public event such as an air show, music concert or such.
This, coupled with the idea that Google’s blindspots are actually much more serious. The SF Gate reported back in 2010 that the search giants actual troubles lied in “Privacy and complexity.” Now that is something to ponder. Have we seen any evidence in the last three years that that has changed? No, what we have are the likes of Tech Review pointing out more blindspots. While Google dabbles in every side business under the sun it is starting to look like they are ignoring their bread and butter. Don’t be surprised if someone else is able to swoop in.
Patrick Roland, August 21, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
Search Keeps Getting Smarter
August 21, 2013
The Special Interest Group on Information Retrieval is a part of the Association for Computing Machinery. They host a yearly conference where a “state of the union” of search is presented. And while some may argue that search is an old technology, it is definitely not stagnant. Read more in the CMS Wire article, “Search is Getting Smarter All the Time.”
The author begins:
“There is a tendency to be critical of the fact that the core technology dates back to the work of Gerard Salton in the mid-1960s, and that therefore search is broken and is going nowhere. The same could be said of the internal combustion engine so long as you ignore the level of sophistication in Formula 1 and Indy cars. The reality is that search has never been in a better place in terms of development and there is a lot of exciting stuff sitting well below the horizon because of the disconnect between academic research and enterprise search development.”
Grant Ingersoll has posted some good reviews of this year’s conference. Ingersoll is the CTO and co-founder at LucidWorks. LucidWorks is part of the dynamic open source movement to which the article gives a great deal of attention. If search continues to get better, open source plays a large role in that, and the industry is noticing.
Emily Rae Aldridge, August 21, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
Raritan User Interface on Amazon Web Services
August 19, 2013
Raritan Technologies has announced a partnership with Amazon Web Services to launch a dynamic search user interface on the popular cloud platform. PR Newswire covers all the details in their article, “Raritan Releases Dynamic Search User Interface on Amazon Web Services (AWS) Marketplace.”
The article begins:
“Raritan Technologies announced a new relationship with Amazon Web Services to expand its search solutions through the CloudSearch Plus User Interface (UI). This search solution, which interacts with Amazon’s CloudSearch product, is now for sale on the AWS Marketplace. Raritan’s search UI is easily configured to access any CloudSearch collection, customizable for each company’s unique interface requirements and enables mobility for content retrieval and accessibility.”
Raritan is a partner with many open source solution providers, including LucidWorks. LucidWorks is known for their expertise in Apache Lucene Solr, and for their award winning customer support and training. Raritan will benefit from the partnership with LucidWorks, as well as other open source providers with a broad spectrum of expert areas. Open source is definitely an unstoppable force in enterprise, and partnerships like these are just one reason why the commercial search solutions should be afraid.
Emily Rae Aldridge, August 19, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
Another Information Priority: Legacy Systems
August 16, 2013
The hoohah about cloud computing, Big Data, and other “innovations” continues. Who needs Oracle when one has Hadoop? Why license SPSS or some other Fancy Dan analytics system when there are open choice analytics systems a mouse click away? Search? Lots of open source choices.
Image from http://sageamericanhistory.net/gildedage/topics/gildedage3.html
We have entered the Gilded Age of information and data analysis. Do I have that right?
The marketers and young MBAs chasing venture funding instead of building revenue shout, “Yes, break out the top hats and cigars. We are riding a hockey stick type curve.”
Well, sort of. I read “Business Intelligence, Tackling Legacy Systems Top Priorities for CIOs.” Behind the consultant speak and fluff, there lurk two main points:
- Professionals in the US government and I presume elsewhere are struggling to make sense of “legacy” data; that is, information stuffed in file cabinets or sitting in an antiquated system down the hall
- The problems information technology managers remain unresolved. After decades of effort by whiz kids, few organizations can provide basic information technology services.
As one Reddit thread made clear, most information technology professionals use Google to find a fix or read the manual. See Reddit and search for “secrets about work business”.
A useful comment about the inability to tap data appears in “Improving business intelligence and analytics the top tech priority, say Government CIOs.” Here’s the statement:
IT contracts expert Iain Monaghan of Pinsent Masons added: “Most suppliers want to sell new technology because this is likely to be where most of their profit will come from in future. However, they will have heavily invested in older technology and it will usually be cheaper for them to supply services using those products. Buyers need to balance the cost they are prepared to pay for IT with the benefits that new technology can deliver,” he said. “Suppliers are less resistant to renegotiating existing contracts if buyers can show that there is a reason for change and that the change offers a new business opportunity to the supplier. This is why constant engagement with suppliers is important. The contract is meant to embody a relationship with the supplier.”
Let me step back, way back. Last year my team and I prepared a report to tackle this question, “Why is there little or no progress in information access and content processing?”
We waded through the consultant chopped liver, the marketing baloney, and the mindless prose of thought leaders. Our finding was really simple. In fact, it was so basic we were uncertain about a way to present it without coming across like a stand up comedian at the Laugh House. To wit:
Computational capabilities are improving but the volume of content to be processed is growing rapidly. Software which could cope with basic indexing and statistical chores bottlenecks in widely used systems. As a result, the gap between what infrastructure and software can process and the amount of data to be imported, normalized, analyzed, and output is growing. Despite recent advances, most organizations are unable to keep pace with new content and changes to current content. Legacy content is in most cases not processed. Costs, time, and tools seem to be an intractable problem.
Flash forward to the problem of legacy information. Why not “sample” the data and use that? Sounds good. The problem is that even sampling is fraught with problems. Most introductory statistics courses explain the pitfalls of flawed sampling.
How prevalent is use of flawed sampling? Some interesting examples from “everywhere” appear on the American Association for Public Opinion Research. For me, I just need to reflect on the meetings in which I have participated in the last week or two, Examples:
- Zero revenue because no one matched the “product” to what the prospects wanted to buy
- Bad hires because no one double checked references. The excuse was, “Too busy” and “the system was down.”
- Client did not pay because “contracts person could not find a key document.”
Legacy data? Another problem of flawed business and technology practices. Will azure chip consultants and “motivated” MBAs solve the problem? Nah.Will flashy smart software be licensed and deployed? Absolutely. Will the list of challenges be narrowed in 2014? Good question.
Stephen E Arnold, August 16, 2013
Sponsored by Xenky
After Five US Patent Office Awards Search Patent To Simplexo
August 16, 2013
Is patenting search, a fundamental tool for users, the same as trying to trademark crust less peanut butter and jelly sandwiches? No, not if you just invent a new technology to improve the common feature. Techzone360 takes a look at the first search patent to be issued by the United States Patent and Trademark Office in five years in, “SearchYourCloud Awarded US Patent For Improve Search Engine Results.” Simplexo was given a patent for “Improved Search Engine-offers unprecedented search capabilities for users by leveraging Boolean and semantic search technologies to deliver enhanced search results.” Okay, so why is this important? Take apart the technical language and Simplexo offers a product that will search across clouds and its content, a better mobile design and security, improved Boolean search, and repetitive information reduction.
CTO of Simplexo Simon Bain had this to say:
“’The Improved Search Engine patent confirms SearchYourCloud as a leader in the search and application space and puts users in control of their data. SearchYourCloud’s technology enhances users’ productivity and lets users find and secure their data in one, fast step. Unlike other search engines our applications can find emails with a ‘to’ and ‘from’ name, and subject or content body without the user having to type in too many different search boxes. It can also find content from more than one source effortlessly and de-duplicate the results.’”
The demands on search engines are getting bigger and it is about time the expectations are met. It has not been decided how Simplexo will package its software, but expect it to change the way we search.
Whitney Grace, August 16, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
Aunt Bertha Helps Us Find Social Service Programs
August 15, 2013
We all know that Google Search is a wonderful tool, especially those of us old enough to remember trekking to the (physical) library to research any little thing. It is not, however, especially good at directing one to government or charitable services. One consultant with a programming background decided to pick up the slack with a tailored search service, we learn from Fast Company‘s piece, “Fixing Google Search’s Social Services Gap.”
Creator Erine Gray was working as a consultant for the Texas Health and Human Services Commission when he was frustrated by existing search engines’ deficiencies in this area. Writer Stan Alcorn explains his approach to the innovative solution:
“Where Aunt Bertha looks more revolutionary–and where it actually makes money–is in its promises for the social service providers themselves. For those that pay to receive applications through Aunt Bertha, search results go straight to an online form that saves the basic, repeated information–80% of most forms, according to Gray–for future use.
“This means less work for the applicant. Bringing up a housing program called the Children’s Home Initiative, Gray says, ‘If I apply to this program in January and then maybe a health insurance program in March, it’s going to remember how I answered that question.’ It also has the potential to provide charities with information they’ve never had about what social services people are asking for and where.”
Upon landing on the comparatively uncluttered site, I am greeted by Aunt Bertha’s friendly visage. I enter my zip code in the prominent box, then proceed to a well-designed page that sports user-friendly, color-coded categories like “food” and “education.” Under each of these icons is displayed the number of programs in that category (that the site knows of) in my zip code. My city seems to have a lot of healthcare and education resources, for example, but is low on food, housing, and legal help. Hmm.
The clean design continues on the results page, where I can easily see what each program provides and whom it is designed for. On tabs for each service, I find details about it as well as (if available) a link to the program’s website. And, of course, if the provider has contracted with Bertha, I can submit an application right there. Handy!
I would highly recommend this site to anyone researching social service options. The only caveat will, I hope, soon be overcome: Aunt Bertha is still in beta, and so far has only attracted a few customers (that is, service providers themselves.) She could also use some more folks to go by and tell her about programs in their areas, especially in rural locations and smaller cities.
I hope readers will spread the word, and programs receive a slew of requests to join. If the site takes off, Aunt Bertha could make life that much easier for millions of Americans.
Cynthia Murrell, August 15, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Long Awaited Updates to Desktop Search Tool Everything
August 15, 2013
Everything has been updated. That may sound like a reductive philosophical stance, but I am actually referring to the desktop search utility named Everything, which has been in beta for the last five years. Betanews informs us of the platform’s sudden leap forward in, “Aging Desktop Search Tool Everything Now Receives Major Update.” Writer Mike Williams informs us about this apparently underappreciated tool:
“Five years have passed since the search tool Everything first appeared, and the program’s amazing speed gets it fans ever since. It’s easy to see why, too — there’s no fuss, no complexity, just enter part of a file or folder name and results appear just as quickly as you can type.
“What is a little more surprising, though, is that the program’s last stable release was back in March 2009. But there’s no need to worry, Everything isn’t dead, just ‘resting’, and a series of betas released this year show that the developer is determined to make up for lost time.”
It is important to note that Everything only runs on NTFS-formatted drives, and that it searches data by name, not by content. Still, if you know the name of what you are looking for, it might be the most efficient choice. A few of the improvements include: increased ease of locating files of a specified type; an expanded search syntax; the option to run the program as a service; a search history and bookmarks; and context menu customizations. See the write-up for more information.
Cynthia Murrell, August 15, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
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