Beyond Search

ZyLAB Integrates Google Maps

2009-11-07T17:27:16Z

According to Documanager.de, ZyLAB has integrated Google Maps with its ZyIMAGE Information Access Platform. Users now have the ability to identify the location of documents in a hit list. ZyLAB says that coordinates detail of the contents of a document can also be displayed on a Google Maps. The function requires no additional work on the part of the user.

Uses of the functionality range from law enforcement to eDiscovery. A user runs a query and each pin represents a document or a set of documents that are displayed on the additional metadata when you hover the mouse over it.

ZyLAB’s Rijnbeek Vincent, said:

This new functionality provides additional options to our use of visualization tools and ensuring more transparency in the information jungle. If, for example included in the context of criminal investigations coordinates of a crime scene in a document, it shows a pin exactly in these Google Maps to. But even in the building and construction sector is the new integration useful, by example, location information from complex construction plans quickly and clearly represents.

The use of visualization tools solves a major problem of the usual file structures: These traditional structures typically do not allow users to view an item that is not currently displayed on the screen. Large document sets pose a particular challenge. A collapsible folder structure is unwieldy, especially if users have to follow several nested folders. The constant scrolling, as is required in table structures, is cumbersome and not conducive to efficient and accurate data investigations.

More information is available from ZyLAB at http://www.zylab.com.

Stephen Arnold, November 8, 2009

No joy, no payment. Report this charitable act to the Red Cross.

Adjoovo Space

2009-11-07T15:40:10Z

Short honk: A happy quack to the reader who sent me a link to Adjoovo.com. I have been making quick mentions of the dataspaces technology concept. With the world happy to think of Google as a competitor to Microsoft, there is not much mental computing power available for big new thoughts. The folks at Adjoova have some spare computational cycles. The company has rolled out Adjoovo Spaces. According the the firm:

Adjoovo Spaces is an integrated metadata registry / repository, designed to store information about technical artifacts and entities in logical groups, or spaces. Spaces allows knowledge workers to quickly import and analyse several types of artifact and discover the services, resources and potentially complex relationships that they collectively expose. The Spaces user interface has Web 2.0 and wiki capabilities built-in, providing users the ability to annotate and enrich the knowledge stored in the registry. The rich summary and artifact views in Spaces provide deep insight into your development artifacts and their relationships. Download the free Spaces Community release today to understand how it can help facilitate the discovery, analysis and collaborative aspects of working with complex artifacts in your development projects.

We took a quick gander (no pun from the addled goose here, of course) at the site and the video. The system appears to blend components from metadata management, XML repositories, and Google Wave-type functions. You can locate more information at www.adjoovo.com/cms. The download link for the software is at http://adjoovo.com/cms/products/spaces.html

Stephen Arnold, November 8, 2009

No dog kisses, cash, or other compensation were involved in this write up. Do you hear that, US Marine Corps?

Google and the Beltway Crowd

2009-11-07T15:39:37Z

Short honk: I saw an interesting factoid in the Economic Times today (November 6, 2009). The item appeared in the news story “Google’s Q3 Lobbying Costs Eclipse $1 Million.” The passage that caught my attention was:

Google’s lobbying budget has been steadily rising during the past year even as it tightened its belt in other areas to bolster its earnings during the worst U.S. recession in 70 years.
Through the first nine months of this year, Google’s lobbying costs came to $2.9 million, a 41 percent increase from the same time last year. That contrasted with a 2 percent decline in Google’s companywide expenses during the same period.

I wonder if the Google day care budget issues have been resolved?

Stephen Arnold, November 8, 2009

No dough for the goose for this news item. It’s becoming a habit I think.

Google News Ranking Algorithm

2009-11-07T15:39:03Z

Short honk: The Google continues to edge forward with replacing functions once done by humans with semi-autonomous agents. Who cares? I suppose publishers may want to think about this approach. The USPTO document that caught my interest was US20090276429, Systems and Methods for Improving the Ranking of News Articles.” Like most Google patent documents, the claims are interesting. Dig in. The company did include a brief abstract with the filing:

A system ranks results. The system may receive a list of links. The system may identify a source with which each of the links is associated and rank the list of links based at least in part on a quality of the identified sources.

The key word in the summary for me was “quality”. Google’s method is to assign a source with a score, roughly analogous to an editor’s judgment. In the Google system, the idiosyncratic, often cranky news editor becomes:

Organized and generally without a large expense account and a penchant for making life tough on 23 year old journalists.

Stephen Arnold, November 8, 2009

You think anyone paid me to compare a human editor to a method? If so, report me to the Jefferson County Animal Control officer.

SharePoint 2010 Presentation

2009-11-08T04:25:31Z

Short honk: If you missed the SharePoint shin dig in October 2009, you can download the presentation at this link which may go dead without so much as a how de do. I had to name the file because my instance has an invalid extension, which I assume is a feature of SharePoint. The search examples appear on slides 40 and 41.

Ooops. When I ungrouped the slide, some of the “features” were deleted. The slide in the official presentation really looked like this. Maybe this was my error?

If not, Microsoft had to do some shaping of the search results. Seems like a work in progress. For $1.23 billion that works out to about $600,000,000 per slide, not counting the fixing up of the search results. Wow.

Stephen Arnold, November 9, 2010

I wish someone would have paid me to write this short honk. Tess would not look me in the eye when I expressed dismay at the brief coverage the search function received. Bad, Tess. Bad.

Texas Tribune Taps Donations for New Online Content

2009-11-07T01:35:46Z

When I worked at the Courier Journal & Louisville Times Co. in the 1980s, out databases generated revenue and turned a profit. I read with interest “Texas Tribune’s Launch ‘Just the Beginning’ of Databases, What’s to Come”. The main idea is that a newspaper is creating online “databases”. For me, the key passage in the write up was:

The site, which is being underwritten with tax-deductible donations and has received foundation grants from Houston Endowment and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, is partnering with six television stations in large and small markets throughout the state to share content. Texas Tribune political reporter Elise Hu plans to go on television in Dallas and Waco in the next week to help further promote the site.

I suppose it is easier to seek grants and donations than create a product for which people will pay. I guess I am old fashioned. I liked the online approach of the Courier Journal, an approach that did not require third party subsidies.

Stephen Arnold, November 7, 2009

A gift to the newspaper mavens who read this blog. Hear that, Food & Drug Administration?

Harvard Prof Cracks the Code on Social Networks

2009-11-07T01:35:10Z

When Harvard offers data, I listen. In this case, I read “Social Network Marketing: What Works?” Sunil Gupta, a Harvard professor, offered the fruits of his labors in an interview with Sarah Jane Gilbert. I found some of the insights amazing. Let me highlight three and invite you to read the interview for more of these golden nuggets:

Some users of social networks are influenced by the “purchases of their friends while others are not”.
High status social network users “upload their own content”.
“…By understanding the social network of users, firms can better understand and influence consumers’ behavior.”

And there’s a new paper “”Do Friends Influence Purchases in a Social Network?” with more of these insights.

Stephen Arnold, November 7, 2009

I want to report to the Department of Education that Harvard did not pay me to write this article. Man, I feel better having disclosed that.

Microsoft, Says Microsoft, Beats Google in Worldwide Web Use

2009-11-07T01:33:18Z

You will want to read “Microsoft Tops Google, Yahoo, Facebook in Worldwide Web Use”. I assume the data in the write up are accurate. I was surprised, but what’s new? The Seattle PI write up offered several nuggets of information I found interesting:

“Windows Live Messenger led Microsoft’s Web properties in capturing 14.5 percent of total time spent online in September worldwide”
“Windows Live Messenger accounted for nearly 70 percent of the 3.9 billion hours people spent on Microsoft Web properties”
Time spent on Microsoft properties rose 43 percent between September 2008 and September 2009.

Google, Facebook, and Yahoo may be spending their weekend wondering what options are available to them. Microsoft, it appears, is the giant among pygmies. One source for data was comScore.

Stephen Arnold, November 7, 2009

No money changed hands for this item. To whom do I report. Ah, the Federal Highway Administration?

Topsy Adds New Feature

2009-11-06T02:44:01Z

Topsy, one of the real time search systems that I use had added a new feature. The company’s search results now includes archived content. You can get a summary of the services other new features in “Topsy Gives Tough Competition to Tweetmeme and OneRiots in Real Time Search”. One comment in the write up jumped out for me:

There is more to the content search in Topsy. In order to filter the spam, each users are rated according to influence. This brings the relevance of the content in search result.

As more services add numerical recipes that make value judgments, the greater the pressure on traditional information companies becomes.

Stephen Arnold, November 6, 2009

No dough for this. Sigh.

Microsoft Responds to Gmail

2009-11-06T02:42:12Z

I heard about a price cut last week. I noticed an article by Dina Bass that provided more information. In “Microsoft Cuts E-Mail Price, a Bid to Ward Off Google”, I learned that in Bloomberg’s view, Google is making life a bit unpleasant for Microsoft. Ms. Bass wrote:

Microsoft and Google are seeking customers that want to outsource the management of e-mail systems. The competition has helped buyers negotiate lower rates from Microsoft. Even before the price cut, Rexel SA got Microsoft to slash about 30 percent off its cost to roughly match Google’s offer, said Olivier Baldassari, Rexel’s chief information officer. “Google somehow in the process disrupted the landscape and forced Microsoft to become a bit more aggressive,” Baldassari said. “Microsoft has been very aggressive in terms of price.”

Google and Microsoft have similar views about capturing market share. In today’s financial climate, price cuts are potent weapons. Forget deflation. The goal is to do whatever it takes to win customers. The notion of paying customers is not a new one for Microsoft. Google has its own variants. You don’t need a book on “free-conomics” to understand how predatory methods work.

Good news for some, but I think the road kill on the information highway will increase as these two semi trucks speed forward. Just my opinion.

Stephen Arnold, November 5, 2009

Dear OSHA, no one paid to write this story about the danger on the information highway to small critters in the email game.