Poor Puffer
July 10, 2013
Columnist Scott Kirsner has found the perfect symbol for the disruptive cultural shifts that take place when a large company acquires a smaller one; Boston.com posts, “Firing Nemo: Endeca, Oracle, and the Cultural Aftershocks of an Acquisition.” Much like a new homeowner who razes a lovingly-tended, decades-old flower bed to make room for a gravel driveway, new corporate overlords can impose heart-aching changes that end up devaluing the property they just bought.
The symbol that embodies this unfortunate tendency is one lovely fish named Puffer, who for a decade enjoyed the plum position of Endeca mascot. However, because Oracle maintains a no-pets provision for all of its properties, Puffer was forced into retirement. I find it amazing that large organizations, even ones run by smart people, tend to produce bureaucracies unable to distinguish between a puffer fish and a Great Dane. But I digress; the issue here is changing corporate culture, not that red tape smothers common sense. (Right?)
Kirsner writes:
“All the employees loved Puffer. They put her picture on posters that promoted companywide parties. And when she puffed up — which was not very often — people took pictures and e-mailed them to their co-workers. The employees who helped take care of Puffer, feeding her krill and algae, loved her even more. She would follow them whenever they walked past her tank, sometimes bonking into the glass.
“But one day in 2011, one of the richest men in the world decided to buy Endeca. . . . And that’s when things changed for Puffer and her friends.
“This is the story of Puffer, but it’s also the story of those thousand tiny changes that big companies often make when they acquire smaller ones. And about how those changes often lead to the loss of the very same talent the big company hoped to bring on as part of the deal.”
How big a problem is this loss of talent through such tone-deafness? Well, Kirsner for one says he knows far more folks who have left Endeca than stayed since the Oracle deal. That is just one example, but I can think of one or two others. Is this sort of shake-up necessary, or could more common sense and sensitivity be applied? It seems like a low-cost way to maximize the ROI on corporate acquisitions. (The good karma is an added benefit.)
Cynthia Murrell, July 10, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
The Search Circle Subscription Service
July 10, 2013
In the increasingly complex world of enterprise search, particularly open source enterprise, good information flow is essential to staying on top of the latest trends and updates. New information services are popping up to help keep developers and enterprise managers in the know. The Search Circle is the latest on the market. Read more about the service:
“The Search Circle is the first subscription information service for managers and developers with responsibility for enterprise search and website search applications. It was launched on 1 July 2013. The annual subscription is £250 plus VAT, €300 plus VAT or $400. Payment can be made against an invoice or by credit card. For an application form email membership@thesearchcircle.com.”
The service is based in the UK, but there are other means of obtaining similar information in the states. For instance, Steven E. Arnold produces The Honk, a free weekly opt-in newsletter focused on online search and analytics. Or, users can go another route by choosing an enterprise solution that builds in support and training, like LucidWorks. Their support and services mean that users will never be behind the curve.
Emily Rae Aldridge, July 10, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
Endeca Does SEO
July 9, 2013
Web services firm Thanx Media reveals, within their Site Search solutions menu, the existence of a product we find quite interesting: apparently, Endeca has entered the search engine optimization (SEO) space. The description tells us:
Oracle Endeca’s Search Engine Marketing (SEM) technology provides a proven method for accelerating the optimization of websites and improving natural search results. The technology automates the process of exposing your content to Web search engines in a highly consumable and search engine friendly format.
Your business can boost the value of your Oracle Endeca investment and benefit from:
- Higher website traffic.
- Increase the number pages indexed by search engines by more than 500%.
- Improved quality of indexed pages.
- A 60% reduction in development hours spent optimizing landing pages for SEO.
- Improve Natural Search sales by as much as 50%.
A curious move from Endeca. The module generates sitemaps as well as optimizing and redirecting URLs. Even before it was snapped up by Oracle in 2011, the company was at the fore of the faceted search field, with hundreds of customers in areas from ecommerce to intelligence. Endeca was formed in 1999, and is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Cynthia Murrell, July 09, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
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
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