Lumrix Open Source Search Engine
July 9, 2013
We have run across a search system great for use with Wikiquotes, at the open-source clearinghouse Ostatic. The OS-independent, web-based Lumrix is aimed at developers. The description states:
“LuMriX is a search engine that exploits XML and XML Topic Maps. In contrast to other retrieval methods, it does not relate single items to resources, but combines given items into meaningful associations (concepts), which are in turn linked to resources. XML Topic Maps allow an intelligent mapping of relations between terms and pages. The meaning of the query is captured by transverse joint relations between the search items. LuMriX is also able to auto-extend its thesaurus and create new relations between failed search items and information resources.”
The Java-implemented system can use distributed algorithms to span many servers. It uses standardized interfaces like TCP, SOAP, HTTP, XML, and XTM. The software is an open source project from Lumrix (the company), which builds its commercial offerings around XML technologies. Lumrix was founded in 2003, and makes its home in Bern, Switzerland.
Cynthia Murrell, July 09, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
The Duck Is Gaining Over the Google Goose
July 5, 2013
Remember the old child game “duck duck goose?” It is now time to play “duck duck Google” with the top search engine chasing DuckDuckGo around in a circle. The privacy-based search engine may still end up being in the metaphorical pot, but Search Engine Journal reports, “DuckDuckGo vs. Google (Impressive New Stats)” that will make anyone quack with enthusiasm. According to new statistics released by DuckDuckGo, the tiny search engine has peeked at passing the two million searches in one day.
“It’s not compared to the billions daily that Google, Bing, or Facebook have but it’s a really good start. What’s most impressive is the HUGE increase and triple in traffic since January of this year!”
In February, DuckDuckGo hit its first one million web searches in a single day and only four months later they were able to double it. It is amazing news considering the billions of searches that are conducted via Google, Bing, and Facebook everyday. The underdog is coming out to show its thunder. Take note big engines, people do not like to have their searches tracked. DuckDuckGo is a metasearch engine, so it aggregates its results from other tools. However it does keep the results anonymous!
Whitney Grace, July 05, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
Amazon: Unrelenting Growth, Search, and Costs
July 3, 2013
I noted the Netcraft data which were presented in “Amazon Web Services’ Growth Unrelenting.” Amazon is a sprawling online services company. The firm hit on the idea of becoming a cloud provider years ago. The write up presents a diagram which uses a log scale (check with an attorney for what this means). The lines show growth in host names, active sites, and computers. What’s not to like?
Search vendors struggling to generate revenue have embraced the cloud as a way to reduce the on premises’ costs of deploying a content processing solution. Again: What’s not to like? Ease, convenience, and the perceived reliability of Amazon, the creation of a Wall Street wunderkind?
Amazon is in the search business. The system, as I understand it, requires that content be assembled to the Amazon specification. Once in the Amazon search system, all sorts of goodness is available to the person who wants to use the “native” Amazon search system. Other search vendors have embraced Amazon. Two examples are the still-in-start-up mode Digital Reasoning and X1 (search not the aircraft).
A couple of observations.
First, Amazon has to find a way to manage its costs. These have been rising over the last few years. No problem, of course. However, if the growth slows. Problem, of course.
Second, Amazon uses a variant of taxi meter pricing. Licensees may want to check into how the various fees for a search service operate.
Third, Amazon is piling on the search systems. The company has an internal development team beavering away. Search vendors are happily loading their software into the Amazon system. I wonder if Amazon will be learning about search and functions. Decisions are much easier to make when one has a bird’s eye view of market behavior.
Now what’s this have to do with search? My hypothesis is that Amazon will try to do with search what it has with streaming media, eBook readers, and discounted goods.
Are search vendors nervous about Amazon? Nah, search vendors are trying to make sales often without looking beyond meeting payroll. Exciting times ahead.
Stephen E Arnold, July 3, 2013
Sponsored by Xenky
LucidWorks Webinar Available on Solr 4
July 3, 2013
Several posts of late have revolved around the news of the Solr 4 release. The open source community is excited and ready to see what this new iteration can do. LucidWorks is a company that builds its value-added search and Big Data products on top of the Apache Lucene Solr platform. They have a genuine vested interest in the Lucene Solr open source community. One of their experts offered a webinar on Solr 4. Read the details in the release, “Webinar: Solr 4, the NoSQL Search Server.”
The summary begins:
“The long awaited Solr 4 release brings a large amount of new functionality that blurs the line between search engines and NoSQL databases. Now you can have your cake and search it too with Atomic updates, Versioning and Optimistic Concurrency, Durability, and Real-time Get! Learn about new Solr NoSQL features and implementation details of how the distributed indexing of Solr Cloud was designed from the ground up to accommodate them.”
The presentation was done by Yonik Seeley, an expert in the field if there ever was one. Seeley created Apache Solr and is a co-founder at LucidWorks. This sort of training from an expert is invaluable and LucidWorks is providing it for free! Do not miss your opportunity to get up to speed on all that Solr 4 has to offer.
Emily Rae Aldridge, July 3, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
To Search or Not to Search
July 1, 2013
In the Community section of AIIM, the global community of information professionals, we spotted an interesting post: “Search Is Lost Without Found.” The author, having recently attended Information Today’s Enterprise Search Summit, discusses the low turnout and the growing interest level in big data instead of enterprise search.
The gist of the message at the show was the idea that search is an unsustainable business on its own. He explains the speech made by Shawn Shell, Hitachi Consulting VP of its Microsoft Platform Practice. Shell concludes that people do not fundamentally enjoy search because it leaves them in an interim state of pure guesswork.
The author tells us that as much as people enjoy searches that fit a typical action-outcome scenario, there will always be a need for research through the discovery side of search. He continues:
“There’s a reason that sky-cracking brainstorms don’t open in the middle of workflows. It’s because they’re time-resistant, if not defiant of sequential procedures. Circles have taken their lumps lately. I blame the vanishing rotaries on a preoccupation with linear expression — a bias that tends to favor causality at the expense of circuitry. Whatever inspires you to search there is widespread agreement that search is not meant to inspire more searches but bias the outcome towards more actions.”
The age-old conflict between taking immediate action versus spending time researching and reflection while taking pause from action is torn right out of the pages of Shakespeare’s Hamlet and is manifested in search theory. As search remains the main artery of any virtual world, we can only hope that the author is right and a balance between the two poles on the spectrum will be maintained.
Megan Feil, July 01, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
What I Learned about IBM Watson from an Ad
June 27, 2013
I opened my dead tree version of the Wall Street Journal this morning and what did I see? A news story about the mining industry’s woes? An article probing Google’s most recent, top secret initiative? An interview with someone at the Fed about the bond excitement? Nope.
I saw a full page ad with the headline “How Watson Helps Answer Big Questions with Big Data.” I read the ad in the context of this news story: “Documents Sow IBM Layoffs in North America Now Top 3,000.”
The ad does not reference IBM’s struggles with its own core businesses. The ad asserts that IBM has a system which can help a company deal with Big Data. Here’s the passage I noted:
IBM Watson is one example of a new form of computing: an advanced cognitive system built to analyze and extract knowledge from vast amounts of largely unstructured data with unparalleled speed and results. Since its triumph on Jeopardy! in 2011, Watson’s power has been applied to healthcare, finance, education, and government. And its users are starting to find new ways to help their employees, clients, customers, and citizens.
The case examples do not include IBM’s own use of Watson.
The article includes a quote which I heard in my days at Booz, Allen & Hamilton (a now well known outfit):
“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted. The trouble is, I don’t know which half.”—John Wanamaker, whose empire is now part of Macy’s.
My thought was that an ad about Watson without providing hard facts about how Watson is helping IBM deal with its own business is interesting. The logical jump to the uncertainty of advertising was surprising as well.
Net net: Is Watson recommending the staff cut backs or is it basic cost reduction? My hunch is that Watson may be asking, “Do I have job security?” Or, “Is their an opening in advertising for a Big Data smart system?”
My personal question, “Is Watson fully employed in a job for which a new form of computing is uniquely qualified?”
And that’s how, on a smarter planet, answer leads to answer, and progress builds on progress. To learn more, visit us at ibm.com/watson.
Okay. Layoffs. Progress.
Stephen E Arnold, June 27, 2013
Sponsored by Xenky,
Keeping Up with Popular Culture Google Style
June 25, 2013
Google has done it again. More new features have been released and the article, “Google Trends Now Ranks Most Searched People, Places and Things in 40+ Categories, Releases Visual Trending Product,” shares more details on the search giant’s two new capabilities.
Google’s new charts will be updated every month and they will display the most searched people, places and things in more than 40 categories. The ability to filter by 11 countries is also available and the rankings go back to 2004. The article suggests that PR companies and their customers will find this as a good metric.
We learned more about this new feature in the article:
“Built on top of Knowledge Graph, the data is accurate beyond simply keywords. Google understands the difference between “The Next Web”, “TNW” and “TNW Conference” for example, and therefore the charts are an accurate representation of what is being searched for in both broad and specific terms.”
Google has also added a visual way to showcase trending searches in real time. Keeping up with popular culture is a never ending source of entertainment and now people can keep in Google style.
Megan Feil, June 25, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
Talking SEO with those Outside the Industry
June 25, 2013
SEOmoz shares an interesting article in light of the semi-recent Mother’s Day holiday. He has an open conversation with his mother about his industry, SEO, to pick her brain on the subject. He shares the interview in the posting, “How My Mom Thinks Search Engines Work.”
After learning that the author’s mother understands that search engines make money through advertising and that she believes search engines give sites placement at the top of a search result based on which have had the most people click through to them.
The author also spends some time reflecting on understanding a comprehension gap:
“This is certainly not exclusive to SEO, as any of us who have friends in terminology-heavy industries like software, finance or medical fields can easily get lost listening in during a technical conversation. Or my personal favorite, ask someone in the US Military to spout off as many acronyms as they can remember and your head will be left spinning; it’s impressive. Point being, it is important to understand that this gap in comprehension exists.”
In the article’s conclusion we are, of course, left with a happy Mother’s Day wish. Additionally, we wonder about whether the future of search will be a lowest common denominator approach.
Megan Feil, June 25, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
Conversational Search by Google has Arrived
June 25, 2013
Notice the ‘search by voice’ function on your Google search bar? Well, that has been there for almost two years now so it is about time. However, you may have noticed something different about its functionality. Once you speak to it, it speaks back to you directly with an answer. Search Engine Land covers this new development in “Google’s Impressive ‘Conversational Search’ Goes Live on Chrome.”
The author of this article acknowledges that that’s cool and impressive, speaking a search and getting an answer read back to you. However, this is the really cool aspect:
“What’s really special is that you can continue your search “conversation” by asking further questions in a way you could never do with regular search, by making use of pronouns and other shortcuts that reference things in your previous query. For example, after doing the search above, I asked, ‘how tall is he’ and got back this: ‘Barack Obama is six feet one inch tall,’ came back the spoken response, along with a text answer. But I hadn’t asked tall Barack Obama was. I’d asked, ‘How tall is he.’
We wonder what audience these feats are impressing: professional researchers, dabblers, advertisers? Who really benefits from this?
Megan Feil, June 25, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
Enterprise Analytics with Similarity Search
June 25, 2013
Today SearchHub.org is offering a webinar designed to help organizations implement Similarity Search across the enterprise. In a collaboration between Knowledgent, MapR, and LucidWorks, the webinar, “Operationalize Enterprise Analytics: Similarity Search at any Scale,” will explore integrating Big Data analytics into daily business.
The webinar will address:
“How do you introduce big data analytics into your daily business, foster rapid adoption, and ensure a return on your investment? Similarity Search provides a foundation for enterprise analytics that can be operationalized by delivering advanced, automated data exploration capability. Learn how Similarity Search can significantly increase productivity across a broad spectrum of data search use cases.”
It is very exciting to see collaboration between so many heavy hitters in the open source enterprise world. Such partnerships are really molding and shaping open source enterprise technologies, and Big Data solutions in particular are really benefiting. The LucidWorks products on their own are intuitive and efficient solutions for many organizational needs. However, such collaborations truly push the edge on what emerging technologies can do and we cannot wait to see what is next.
Emily Rae Aldridge, June 25, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
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