Darwin Discovery Engine Blog

Darwin Uncovers Emerging Buzz Over UCLA Tuition Hike

2010-03-10T03:12:00-05:00

Here is an example of how the Darwin Awareness Engine ™ can uncover breaking news before it hits the mainstream press. We have the concept of rising and falling stars as topics gather or lose momentum on the Web. These rising and falling starts are displayed in a ticker tape type across the top of the Darwin screen.

Recently, Thierry Hubert noticed an acceleration or rising star on the term – tuition hike. He looked at the formal mainstream media and found nothing. Then he looked at informal media through Darwin and found a lot of content is a variety of related themes as displayed on the Scan Cloud™. For example, there was a video of UCLA students protesting the tuition hike at their school. There are several other sites with similar videos. It appeared to be a coordinated by the UCLA students through social media. Here is a link to a video of the Darwin screens and results.

We found a similar example recently, when we saw that the Latino community was organizing through social media to get rid of Lou Dobbs on CNN. This social media effort appeared through Darwin before it was picked up by the mainstream press

Enterprise Search Summit 2010 Comes to NYC and KM World 2010 Moves to Washington DC

2010-03-08T03:18:00-05:00

This year’s Enterprise Search Summit 2010 will be at the New York Hilton on May 11-12. The KM World Conference & Exhibition 2010 has moved to Washington, D.C. It will be November 16 - 18, 2010 at Marriott Renaissance, It is nice to see these two conferences on the East Coast. I went last year in the November to the combined conference in San Jose.

Thierry Hubert and I will be presenting at the Enterprise Search Summit 2010. We are presenting on Deriving Order From Chaos Through Discovery and Awareness. Our session is on Wednesday May 12 at 1PM. The Enterprise Search Summit says that the “emphasis for Enterprise Search Summit is on how enterprise search enables Information Access. Search can no longer be viewed as a stand-alone application. It is increasingly part of everything we do and has become the de facto gateway to information in the enterprise.” I would certainly agree and we hope to see you there.

The KM World announcement said that this year's theme is KnowHow: the Knowledge-Driven Enterprise. “The knowledge of how to do something smoothly and efficiently with technical skill and expertise -- also known as "knowhow" -- drives every enterprise, agency, and organization. Creating knowledge bases, sharing them effectively, using them for decision-making and innovation.”

This sounds familiar but it is great that it is still very relevant. The session shave a 2.0 flavor like last year. I hope to be able to attend. Deadline for speaker submissions is March 1. Here are my notes from the combined event last year.

KM World and Enterprise Search Summit: Is Semantic Technology Real?

KM World and Enterprise Search Summit: Evolve From a Tactical E-Discovery Approach to Search and E-Discovery

KM World and Enterprise Search Summit: The Role of Social Techniques in Search & How It Impacts Your Organization

KM World and Enterprise Search Summit Sessions: From Birth to Billions: The Life Story of Google Enterprise Search

KM World and Enterprise Search Summit Sessions: Fundamentals of Enterprise Search

KM World and Enterprise Search Summit Sessions: Enterprise Search Technologies

Pivot is a New Way to Look at Data - TED Demo

2010-03-05T03:02:00-05:00

Gary Flake recently demoed Pivot at TED. It is a new way to browse and arrange massive amounts of images and data online. Built on Seadragon technology, it enables spectacular zooms in and out of web databases, and the discovery of patterns and links invisible in standard web browsing. Gary is a Technical Fellow at Microsoft, and the founder and director of Live Lab. He shows how you can take control over data to see trends that might be undiscovered otherwise. For example, being able to see all Wikipedia pages related to a topic at once, allow you to see trends that are not contained in any single entry.

He said that with Pivot you can navigate the Web as if it is a Web and see relationships. He talks about taking the curse of data overload and turning it on its head to take advantage of quantity to see the patterns within it. Here is Gary’s Pivot talk on TED.

Although we take a different approach this is exactly the goal of the Darwin Awareness Engine. Instead of bringing you long lists of content on topic that are order by popularity, we show the top 100 themes within the content that relates to your topic of interest. We attempt to let you discover unexpected patterns, content, and relationships in this manner.

Our Favorite Tweets February 15 - 28, 2010

2010-03-03T03:07:00-05:00

Here is the twelfth in a new series of posts that provide access to our favorite tweets that contain links to useful information. Some of these we did to link to things we found useful and others are RTs. Since Twitter archiving is an oxymoron, we are now going to post our favorite links for the month so they can be easily accessed later. We will repeat this once a month if that timing seems to work best. We may adjust the timing.

We spot tested the reduced shortened urls and they all should work. We hope this is also useful for you. Let us know your favorite tweets for the month.

Nat Science Foundation visualization winners http://bit.ly/azs62D Feb 27

RT @hebsgaard: #KM in the media - Toyota recall http://bit.ly/c9K6Ns 3:30 PM Feb 27th

RT @hebsgaard: Here's A Comprehensive Directory For #SocialMedia Monitoring Tools http://bit.ly/bNoxvb 2:54 PM Feb 27th

25 Ways To Overcome Creative Blocks http://bit.ly/bHrb7A from @psfk 10:31 AM Feb 27th

Do paywalls hurt social news? http://bit.ly/cYErBl IMO YES 4:30 PM Feb 26th

Communicating Science In A Post-Newspaper Era http://bit.ly/aFCtiI from NPR 9:17 AM Feb 26th

via @digiphile: Facebook granted patent for dynamically providing news feed about user of social network http://j.mp/cDKTEY 9:30 PM Feb 25th

Social Media Is Removing The Last Of The Content Barriers http://bit.ly/bACuSN Feb 25

RT @hebsgaard: Are The Fortune 100 Now Beginning To Embrace #SocialMedia Tools? http://bit.ly/9iT26Q Feb 25

via @GeorgeDearing: old business model for newspapers has come undone. new model is in birth http://bit.ly/bMfqsS Feb 25

RT @hebsgaard: Gartner’s Top 5 #CRM Predictions For 2010, Social Apps are Key http://bit.ly/bKmo6f Feb 25

Larger Threat Is Seen in Google Case NYT http://nyti.ms/buP55o Feb 25

Yahoo-Twitter Partnership via @SBoSM http://bit.ly/cznQNp Feb 24

Role of Curation In #Journalism http://bit.ly/aUch0e via @psfk Feb 24

Apple's iPad Disrupting Network TV Business Model? http://bit.ly/9tRCVo Fast Co 8:56 AM Feb 23rd

RT @hebsgaard: 10 emerging Enterprise 2.0 technologies to watch -- http://bit.ly/9Tq1fg #startups http://bit.ly/dmlint 11:06 PM Feb 22nd

RT @SmartDataCo: Microsoft's anti-Google weapon: Open-source Bing http://goo.gl/fb/tRBI #cloud 10:57 PM Feb 22nd

Google Buzz No Facebook, Twitter Killer, Google Exec Says http://bit.ly/d5FVlv via @SBoSM 5:12 PM Feb 22nd

Cloud Collaboration Wars Ramp Up http://bit.ly/9DIEZe 4:36 PM Feb 22nd via TweetDeck

Interactive Data Visualizations: Experiencing Abstract Information http://bit.ly/9WnSa4 via @psfk Feb 20

Social Networking Now More Popular on Mobile than Desktop http://bit.ly/bhrhPk via @readwriteweb 1:08 PM Feb 19th

RT @SmartDataCo: Predictive Analytics: 8 Things to Keep in Mind (Part 1) http://bit.ly/bu4lTt #cloud 3:57 PM Feb 18th

10 Cloud Computing Trends That Are Rapidly Catching On http://bit.ly/aGv0XT 3:15 PM Feb 18th

The iPad and the Life Between Buildings http://bit.ly/b9SUoV via @psfk 2:51 PM Feb 18th

Private Cloud Deployments: Top 8 Planning Requirements from CIO http://bit.ly/9tojgu 2:02 PM Feb 18th from TweetDeck

RT @Emergent007: How Google Went Into "Code Red" And Saved Google Buzz http://bit.ly/dq30uJ (via @jmgall) Feb 17

RT @servantofchaos: Some good reading: Social Media Needs Accountability - http://bit.ly/9rUbPp 7:50 PM Feb 16th

RT @SmartDataCo: Data Glut? The Answer Is Innovation http://bit.ly/bgGziK #cloud 8:43 AM Feb 16th

RT @dhinchcliffe: Google Buzz vs. Outlook 2010 Social Connectors: http://bit.ly/d73Pn0 4:37 PM Feb 15th

Google Buzz: 5 Tips for Power Users http://bit.ly/bWPYIy via @SBoSM 2:51 PM Feb 15th

Google changes #Buzz privacy settings--again http://bit.ly/9iYjSj 10:07 AM Feb 15th

RT @GautamGhosh: RT @petergold99: Messaging & Collaboration Businesses Get Serious About Social sw http://bit.ly/cvTuXw 8:51 AM Feb 15th

Tracking the Buzz as TV Becomes More Social

2010-03-01T03:36:00-05:00

Social Media is moving into television on an increasing basis and this will have a number of implications. This is the theme of a post by Tim Dillard on TheNextWeb: Will 2010 be the Year of Social TV? For example, fans of certain TV shows from different time zones are saving the latest episodes of their favorite shows and then arranging common viewing times with their friends to watch the shows whilst discussing the action together on Skype,

The shows themselves are also launching efforts, sometimes with mixed results. In the UK, high profile post-apocalypse drama, BBC's 'Survivors', launched with stream of tweets from 'survivors'. They were supposedly trying to get messages out to a world in which most of the population had been wiped out by a mystery virus. However, the effort did not last. In another failed case, Fox tired integrating Twitter during reruns of sci-fi series 'Fringe' in the US. It got criticism almost immediately from the show's fans by swamping the screen with tweets from the cast and crew of the show, thus obscuring much of the action. Sounds like those tweets do blast you with multiple tweets in a row, except even worse.

It seems the most successful efforts so far are user generated. For example, with Twitter, real-time conversations about TV shows at the shows are broadcast live are linked together through the use of hashtags. This is the same with online communities. The television shows will need to move better in this direction by listening to their viewers and being creative.

One of the issues that comes up with this move is the ability to track the buzz around shows. The Darwin Awareness Engine™ provides one solution to this tracking issue. With its real time reach and the display of rising stars as buzz climbs, the Awareness Engine can help shows keep up with their buzz.

Demand is Rising for TV Web Convergence

2010-02-26T03:41:00-05:00

Rob Paterson recently did a post, TV and Radio and the web, where he reported some interesting survey data. The desire to hook up their TV to the Web is rising in US Internet users. In 2009, the percentage of US interest users that would like to hook up their TV to the Web: ages 14-26 – 74%,, ages 27-43 – 71%, ages, 44-62 – 59%, and ages 63-75 – 46%. In talking with a number of people in their 20s and 30s, they say that they only watch TV in the OnDemand mode. I have tried this and it was a great way to watch and tape the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Concert.

Rob wrote that he has cancelled his cable access and has been connecting directly to the web for 2 months now. He writes that the reasons for doing this are: greater control, , no ads, no paying for unwanted content, and plenty of good Web TV content. Also the the pathways there – iTunes, Veoh, YouTube are good enough and getting better. He uses a simple mini connector on his MacBook to link to his TV set and uses the screen management feature to synch the screens. I can do the same on one of my TV sets, the one I purchased in 2009. Rob adds that in 2010 even these simple technical hurdles will go away.

Rob predicts that in 2011 the Web will be the channel for TV. Others have said it will happen in 2010. For example, eMarketer CEO Geoff Ramsey writes in his 2010 Predictions Round-Up, “The Consumer Electronics Show in early 2010 will usher in TVs with direct Internet connectivity, or with on-screen access to content portals such as YouTube, Blockbuster and Netflix. As online video becomes intertwined with the living-room TV experience, download and streaming services will take on a prominent role in the home entertainment ecosystem.”

I am looking forward to this as I watch Van Morrison’s live performance of Astral Weeks on my TV through DVD. It should only get better. This convergence will only increase the amount of content generated through social media and develop new audiences for this content. At Darwin Ecosystems we eagerly await this trend as it will only increase the value that the Darwineco Awareness Engine™ can provide.

BBC Pushes Social Media for Its News Staff for Both News Collection and Impact Monitoring

2010-02-24T03:50:00-05:00

According to the Guardian (BBC tells news staff to embrace social media), BBC news journalists have been advised to use social media as a primary source of information by Peter Horrocks, the new director of BBC Global News. He took over last week and said it was important for editorial staff to make better use of social media and become more collaborative in producing stories. They quote him, "This isn't just a kind of fad from someone who's an enthusiast of technology. I'm afraid you're not doing your job if you can't do those things. It's not discretionary."

We would agree. Getting material for articles is of several ways that traditional television news media needs to make use of social media to survive the social media onslaught. For BBC news editors, Twitter and RSS readers have now become essential tools and aggregating and curating content with attribution are essential skills. In addition, BBC's journalists have to integrate and listen to feedback for a better understanding of how the audience is relating to the BBC brand.

We have been talking with a number of major traditional media organizations about using the Darwin Awareness Engine™ to help with their news harvesting efforts. It allows you to see what is going on around a topic and find the unexpected, as well as the news breaking in real time.

The BBC also created a social media editor post in October. This is another related trend we have reported on here (see The Rise of Social Media Directors at Mainstream News). The Guardian concludes by noting that as technology is changing the nature of journalism, the BBC is trying to keeping up with the pace. Horrocks is quoted again, "If you don't like it, if you think that level of change or that different way of working isn't right for me, then go and do something else, because it's going to happen. You're not going to be able to stop it."

Our Favorite Tweets February 1 – 14, 2010

2010-02-22T03:42:00-05:00

Here is the eleventh in a new series of posts that provide access to our favorite tweets that contain links to useful information. Some of these we did to link to things we found useful and others are RTs. Since Twitter archiving is an oxymoron, we are now going to post our favorite links for the month so they can be easily accessed later. We will repeat this once a month if that timing seems to work best. We may adjust the timing.

We spot tested the reduced shortened urls and they all should work. We hope this is also useful for you. Let us know your favorite tweets for the month.

RT @SameerPatel: Five Reasons to Love, Loathe Google Buzz - ABC News http://ow.ly/175BD - @techinciter Feb, 13th

RT @sagenet: RT @jcloonan KM struggles with value concept. Good 'down to earth article http://tinyurl.com/yj5fspc Feb 13th

Critics Say Google Invades Privacy With Buzz NYT http://nyti.ms/bNKj6X 9:48 AM Feb 13th

BBC tells news staff to embrace social media http://bit.ly/9a3NGE via @SBoSM 2:02 PM Feb 12th

Startups look to iPhone at Macworld http://bit.ly/aIJt8g 10:54 AM Feb 12th

Google Acquires Aardvark For $50 million (Confirmed) http://tcrn.ch/b6fYNI 10:28 AM Feb 12th from TweetDeck

Google Plans To Deliver 1Gb/sec Broadband Network in Pilot http://tcrn.ch/aheZdo 1:10 PM Feb 11th

(Data Visualization) The Mythical United States of Facebook http://bit.ly/bjAqlj via @psfk 12:03 PM Feb 10th

Will iPad Invade Enterprise as Quickly as iPhone Did? http://bit.ly/9zoFf7 CIO mag 11:34 AM Feb 10th

RT @bizcom: RT @mparent77772: The Real-Time Revolution http://bit.ly/aZ7Xgm 2:51 PM Feb 9th

Gmail Seeks to Rival Facebook WSJ via @SBoSM http://bit.ly/9dmXnZ 1:09 PM Feb 9th

RT @driessen: New blog post! From Atoms to Bits and Back http://bit.ly/b7w8iD 8:56 AM Feb 9th

RT @ariegoldshlager: A Better Way to Rank Expertise Online: http://bit.ly/amMwnS 10:45 PM Feb 8th

Facebook’s Project Titan: A Full Featured Webmail Product http://tcrn.ch/bMrQ5t via @SBoSM 1:19 PM Feb 5th

Five social software predictions for 2010 and beyond: @Gartner http://bit.ly/a7Bhmi 1:11 PM Feb 4th

Defining the Social Media Editor Role http://bit.ly/avIJxe via @SBosm 1:48 PM Feb 3rd

Berlin uses social media http://bit.ly/cflZz4 via @SBoSM 2:24 PM Feb 2nd

Is Real-Time Search Good for Businesses? http://bit.ly/cKJLMQ via @SBoSM 9:00 AM Feb 2nd

RT @Gartner_inc: #Gartner: Five Social Software Predictions for 2010 and Beyond http://bit.ly/aRpo3i 8:45 AM Feb 2nd

The Value of Design to Startups http://bit.ly/dx7x8s via @ariegoldshlager 7:06 PM Feb 1st

Using Darwin’s Awareness Engine™ to Uncover Community Web Activity: Lou Dobbs Case

2010-02-19T03:05:00-05:00

The Darwin Awareness Engine™ uses the concept of rising stars to bring forward terms that are receiving increasing attention in the target content areas. In this case we were looking at both informal media such as blogs and more traditional mainstream media.

We noticed that Lou Dobbs started getting a lot of attention in the informal media. Looking closer we could see that is was coming form the Latin-American community. At the same time there was little mention of him in the mainstream media until a week later

The Latino community was organizing to demand Lou Dobbs resignation or firing from CNN for some very inappropriate comments. This discovery created a baseline to observe how the news spread and eventually grew to be covered in the mainstream media a full week later. In this case the Awareness Engine™ served both an early detection and provided the ability to monitor the story as it evolved.

As many know Lou Dobbs did resign but the story does not stop here. What is the aftermath? What happens to the community that was organized to demand Lou Dobb’s resignation? Does it consolidate and grow its influence on the Web? These are questions that be monitored and tracked by the Awareness Engine.™ The coverage and conversations in both social media and mainstream media can be observed and compared.

Monitoring and Measuring the Impact of Public Service Media Part Two: Addressing the Issues

2010-02-17T03:02:00-05:00

In the last post we raised some of the ways that Public Service Media can support community through the Web. In this post we look at how Darwin’s Awareness Engine™ can help. First, we will look at data mining and awareness. The Awareness Engine™ collects Web events from both formal and informal sources, and correlates them with multi-dimensions to show occurring emerging patterns. The basic interface provides the user with the benefits in the “Awareness and Discovery in Action” section. The accumulation of this information provides a rich corpus for advanced trend analysis over time. Special reports and alerts can be customized and developed as needed to meet different levels of monitoring and analysis. Public Service Media programs can benefit from the measuring and monitoring of the evolution of a theme over time or dimension:

1. tracking and measuring the impact of the Public Service Media programs’ actions in the community and/or the broader Web

2. creating alerts based on significant variations within the designated themes of interest and/or controversial spikes

3. advancing analytics for pattern recognition and prediction

With these benefits, the Public Service Media programs have better awareness of critical themes to improve and mitigate their interaction within the community and the Web. Furthermore it provides them with better planning for subsequent and follow-up programs, which become more target-specific and identifiable.

The Awareness Engine™ can also help empower community leaders. Similarly to the Public Service Media team, the community leader/s can gain greater awareness from the technology. This access can generate more relevant content, but also engage more community leaders to participate as a valuable resource towards their community thanks to the Public Service Media. A key benefit is that the elevation of awareness will generate more content from the community, thus leaving the PSM neutral in the emergence of community issues. Our next post will cover an example of how Darwin’s Awareness Engine™ can uncover community Web activity before it hits the mainstream press.