Augmenting the Future with Aurasma
June 24, 2011
I somehow missed the earlier reporting until now. Straight out of science fiction, “Aurasma App Is Augmented Reality, Augmented” gives a glimpse of the next app to potentially saturate the market.
Aurasma describes itself as an augmented reality platform. With an equipped Smartphone, one can point the window at the world and conjure up an associated “aura”, or online video content. The content is created by anyone and stored in an infrastructure provided by the brains of this innovation, Autonomy. The article stated:
The idea is that media companies can use Aurasma to recognize printed matter – street posters, newspapers, magazines – to call up compelling video and online content they have made themselves or from TV stations and movie studios. … It’s making the world browsable.
Okay, the given examples of animating the assembly instructions of flat-pack furniture, talking newspapers and bringing advertisements to life will be at least momentarily entertaining. But these applications toe the gimmick line and can lose their appeal as quickly as animated ads have ruined the internet.
Let’s consider some of the more useful extensions. In engineering, for one: imagine issuing equipment specs or construction issue drawings with associated 3-D models rather than typical 2-D likenesses. Sure, 3-D CAD files exist, but not everyone can afford those licenses merely for viewing. Highlighting all of the most important and oft ignored drawing details with Aurasma animations would be another option. Any industry based on communicating thru flat images could benefit greatly from this service.
Further and a bit closer to home, making the world "browsable" is tantamount to making it searchable. If the technology sticks it will not take long before search can be leveraged thru Autonomy’s brilliant platform. It sounds like another layer is being added to the prospering location based services business. If we could view it through Aurasma, we would probably see some cheerfully dancing dollar signs.
Sarah Rogers, June 23, 2011
ArnoldIT.com, the resource for enterprise search information and current news about data fusion
Maps on Steroids
May 17, 2011
Here is an interesting link from the people behind Mapsys.info: “Public Data Visualization with Google Maps and Fusion Tables”.
“Visualizing” public data basically means mapping information that is relevant to a community. A good working example mentioned in the posting is San Francisco’s Bay Area bike accident tracker. The map’s legend decodes the various colored dots as the type of accident and how it came to be recorded.
Source: http://mapsys.info/
A screenshot of the coding needing to display a map with personalized details is offered in the posting. The star of the show is the integration with a fusion table, a tool offered by Google to house data sets to be presented on a map. Added functionality is included by using “SQL-like query syntax” and leveraging “the Python libraries Google provides for query generation and API calls”. This allows you to pick smaller data sets out of the fusion table.
So behind the scenes, this looks like another example of search moving beyond the token keyword. You won’t hear any complaints out of us. I remember creating maps using old fashioned methods when I was working on my engineering degree. This method delivers accuracy and time savings.
Sarah Rogers, May 17, 2011
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Visualization Components
May 15, 2011
David Galles, of the Computer Science University of San Francisco, gives us a useful collection of visualization components in his “Data Structure Visualizations” list. The structures and algorithms addressed include the Basics, Indexing, Sorting, Heap-like Data Structures, Graph Algorithms, Dynamic Programming, and “Others.”
In his page discussing visualizations, Galles explains,
The best way to understand complex data structures is to see them in action. We’ve developed interactive animations for a variety of data structures and algorithms. Our visualization tool is written in JavaScript using the HTML5 canvas element, and run in just about any modern browser — including iOS devices like the iPhone and iPad, and even the web browser in the Kindle! (The frame rate is low enough in the Kindle that the visualizations aren’t terribly useful, but the tree-based visualizations — BSTs and AVL Trees — seem to work well enough).
Galles also provides a tutorial for creating one’s own visualizations. Check it out if you’re wrestling with your own complex data structures. As search vendors thrash and flail, business intelligence looks like a promising market sector. Nothing sells business intelligence like hot graphics. Just ask Palantir.
Cynthia Murrell May 15, 2011
As Search and Analytics Merge: Visualizations Surge
May 7, 2011
“6 Great Data Visualization Applications” provides some interesting screen shots and links to exemplary graphical presentations of result sets. The drivers for visualization are MBAs looking to add sizzle to their otherwise narcotized PowerPoints and big data. When running a query against petabytes of data, a laundry list is essentially useless. With top results distorted by spam and SEO machinations, I find it difficult to pinpoint what I need to answer a question. I find myself falling back on traditional research methods such as notecards, looking up information in books (printed and digital), and talking to people who allegedly know their stuff.
Assume you want some snappy visualizations. The article from Techlozenge will help you out. You get a screen shot and a brief description of six tools. These include:
- DiskSpaceFan
- Google Chart Tools
- Mindmap
- Newsmap
- Treesize Free
- WinDirStat
Of this group, I found the Newsmap and Google Chart Tools links the most useful. You may want to take a look at these examples. Keep in mind that these are not industrial strength toolsets like those provided with Palantir and Digital Reasoning. The idea is to provide some examples.
Stephen E Arnold, May 7, 2011
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Visualization Tools for Data Analysis
May 2, 2011
Just like consumers companies often compare the products on the market. Companies gather loads of data to help them meet the needs of their clients and stay productive. Visualization is an important data analysis tool that transforms text into graphics in order to make the data easier to comprehend. Users can then study the graphics and look for trends or patterns.
The hefty price tag for visualization tools often make them seem unattainable for many. The Computerworld article “22 Free Tools For Data Visualization and Analysis” provides an in depth review of 22 free tools that can be used in data visualization and analysis. Statistical analysis, data cleaning and mapping are just a few tools available.
With data analysis such an important part of staying competitive in the business world, companies must have the tools needed in order to effectively do the job. With nothing to lose, but maybe a little time, this deal seems too good to pass up. This is worth downloading and tucking away. Useful article.
April Holmes, May 2, 2011
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Automated Understanding: Digital Reasoning Cracks the Information Maze
March 4, 2011
I learned from one reader that the presentation by Tim Estes, the founder of Digital Reasoning, caused some positive buzz at a recent conference on the west coast. According to my source, this was a US government sponsored event focused on where content processing was going. The surprise was that as other presenters talked about the future, a company called Digital Reasoning displayed a next generation system. Keep in mind that i2 Ltd. is a solid analyst’s tool with technology roots that stretch back 15 years. (I did some work for the founder of i2 a few years ago and have a great appreciation for the case value of the system for law enforcement.) Palantir has some useful visualization tools, but the company continues to attract attention from litigation and brushes with outfits with some interesting sales practices. Beyond Search covered this story here and here.
ArnoldIT.com sees Digital Reasoning’s Synthesys as solving difficult information puzzles quickly and efficiently because it eliminates most of the false path or trial-and-error of traditional systems. Solving the information maze of real world flows is now possible in our view.
The shift was from semi-useful predictive numerical recipes and overlays or augmented outputs to something quite new and different. The Digital Reasoning presentation focused on real data and what the company called “automated understanding.”
For a few bucks last year, one of my colleagues and I got a look at the automated understanding approach of the Synthesys 3 platform. Tim Estes explained that real data poses major challenges to systems that lack an ability to process large flows, discern nuances, and apply what Mr. Estes described as “entity oriented analytics.”
Our take at ArnoldIT.com is that Digital Reasoning moves “beyond search” in a meaningful way. The key points we recall from our briefing was the a modular approach eliminates the need for a massive infrastructure build and the analytics reflect what is happening in a real time flow of unstructured information. My personal view is that historical research is best served by key word systems. The more advanced methods deliver actionable information and better decisions by focusing on the vast amounts of “now” data. A single Twitter message can be important. A meaningful analysis of a flow of Twitter messages moves insight to the next level.
Free Visio Stencil Art for SharePoint Planning
December 27, 2010
Why get lost in design search architectures when you could reference a map? Microsoft recently released a handy collection of Visio shapes created specifically for generating diagram models of server deployment. These shapes prove useful for the Microsoft 2010 versions of Office, SharePoint Server, Project Server, Search Server and SharePoint Foundation.
It only takes seconds to grab this 1-MB .zip file from the website and extract its contents into your Visio shape folder. The system requirements and download instructions are clearly posted on the webpage, making the whole process a snap. Microsoft was even thoughtful enough to provide several examples of sensible ways to employ the custom shapes; the IT pro content publishing team put together a smattering of SharePoint Server and Office 2010 technical diagrams as guidelines. Now your own SharePoint installations can quickly become a matter a record, making following the path easier in the future.
Sarah Rogers, December 27, 2010
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Gepi: The Open Source Graphing Tool
December 20, 2010
A New Year’s Day treat!
Want to create open source graphs with lots of pretty colors? The O’Reilly Radar recommends “Strata Gems: Explore and Visualize Graphs with Gephi.” This program allows you to turn any form of data into a graph. Gepi is an open source project great to analyze networks and data. It can be used on all the major operating systems is described as a “Photoshop for data.”
“Graphs can be loaded and created using many common graph file formats, and explored interactively. Hierarchical graphs such as social networks can be clustered in order to extract meaning. Gephi’s layout algorithms automatically give shape to a graph to help exploration, and you can tinker with the colors and layout parameters to improve communication and appearance.”
Another great feature Gephi offers is that it is extensible through plugins. These will allow you to export and publish the data on the web and experiment with other layouts. Gephi appears to be a quick and easy way to study data, plus the color options will keep your artistic side happy. Get Gephi at http://gephi.org/.
Whitney Grace, December 20, 2010
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Ease of Use: A Barrier to Business Intelligence Adoption
October 13, 2010
This story is a preview of a new ArnoldIT.com blog now in a limited test.
Training wheels are a good thing when learning to ride a bicycle. Once the training wheels are off, the rider is on his or her own. Most people survive bicycle riding without much more than a few bumps and scrapes. A small percentage suffer serious injuries.
For years, business intelligence came equipped with training wheels and a person with a degree in statistics with programming expertise. For a manager to hop on a business intelligence system, one of these experts plus training wheels were required. Not surprisingly, in this era of rapid fire decision making and flows of big data, who has time for the stats wonk and the speed inhibiting training wheels.
The argument in many organizations boils down to a demand from users to get direct access to business intelligence systems. Just as every Web surfer perceives himself / herself as an expert in online research, that confidence now reaches to most professionals.
“Ease of Use Is a Big Driver of SaaS Business Intelligence” reinforces this shift in the business intelligence market. According to the article on ITBusinessEdge.com:
When business users are actively involved in purchasing BI, ease of use is one of their primary criteria. And as White [a TDWI researcher] writes, “SaaS BI tools are generally intuitive, easy to use, and easy to understand.” Aberdeen found organizations using SaaS BI have 50 percent more self-service BI users than companies that do not use SaaS. That’s significant, since some folks think that getting more people using BI is the key to ROI. It’s also no surprise, then, that Dresner Advisory Services found earlier this year that vendors selling SaaS BI products are gaining ground on companies offering traditional, on-premise BI software. In addition to less-intimidating user interfaces, another reason SaaS BI is easier to use is because deployments typically are based on smaller, simpler data models. As White notes, SMBs using SaaS have smaller and less complex data sets than their larger counterparts. And at big companies, individual departments often use SaaS BI to supplement on-premise deployments by filling niches that traditional software doesn’t adequately address. “This smaller scale can make data inherently easier to navigate and easier to slice and dice,” White writes.
My opinion is that the “user experience” or UX will become more important that the user’s understanding of the underlying data’s strengths and weaknesses. Point and click works well in many situations. I am not convinced that buying a mission critical business intelligence system whether implemented via the cloud or on premises because of the snappy graphics and interface is appropriate.
Game link interfaces that obfuscate the underlying data may lead to very poorly informed decisions. A business intelligence system that isolates the user from the moving parts that put the information in a context may create more problems than its solves. Eye candy may not have the caloric value needed. I prefer a system that combines both rigor and ease of use. More importantly, I want the vendor to be standing by in case my ride begins to wobble. I saw a demonstration of a system from Digital Reasoning that struck me as having a good balance of features and functions without sacrificing ease of use.
Stephen E Arnold, October 13, 2010
Linguamatics Joins Up with Accelrys
October 11, 2010
Linguamatics, a nifty content processing vendor in the UK, has formed a partnership for “streamlined, high performance text analytics” with Accelrys. Linguamatics will be giving a presentation at the Smart Content Conference in Manhattan later this month, so you can learn about the company first hand, or you can navigate to http://www.linguamatics.com/. The firm’s Web site has been refreshed and you can learn about the firm’s solutions directly.
Accelrys is a company that produces scientific informatics software. If you got a D in biology, you won’t be using Accelrys’ industrial strength analytics and visualization tools any time soon. Chemistry majors, engineers, and molecular biologists will be quite interested in the firm’s solutions.
What does the hook up mean?
According to “Linguamatics and Accelrys Announce Partnership for Streamlined, High-Performance Text Analytics,”
Mutual customers will benefit by embedding powerful natural language querying within more extensive informatics workflows including access via Accelrys web clients. Organizations continue to face the challenge of filtering ever-increasing volumes of text information to gain actionable knowledge. Linguamatics provides the ability to automate document indexing and querying within the I2E software platform in addition to its interactive information extraction capabilities. Embedding I2E within Pipeline Pilot workflows enables further streamlining of the process for high throughput text mining, and provides access to additional content processing, analytics and output display options.
I would not characterize the new capabilities as search or NLP. The companies are moving, like some others, into a data fusion space. Unlike search vendors who announce that they are now involved in Business Intelligence, Linguamatics and Accelrys have industrial strength technology in place to meet the needs of a specific market category. Just my opinion.
Stephen E Arnold, October 11, 2010
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