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May 13, 2008

Baynote Launches Merchandizing & Editorial Console That Blends Community with Control

Baynote, Inc. announced the availability of the Baynote Merchandizing and Editorial Console. The new management tool allows users to combine expert control with the inherent community wisdom distilled from web visitors' behaviors to optimize the delivery of product recommendations, content recommendations, and on-site search results. Baynote Recommendations and Social Search is built on a social science concept: that the collective behaviors of like-minded site visitors is the most effective way to display products and content based on a visitor's true intent. Leveraging crowd wisdom is especially important in content and product-rich "long tail" sites where manual merchandizing and editorializing is not cost or time effective. However, there are common scenarios where a merchandizing or editorial team requires the ability to exercise precise control over product and content recommendations to take into account product margin, inventory levels, promotions, breaking news, cross-channel content linking, and myriad other cases. While the new console benefits Baynote users in all vertical markets, it is particularly useful to online publishers and eCommerce businesses. http://www.baynote.com

See Baynote at Gilbane San Francisco.

Language Weaver and empolis Integrate Automated Translation Capabilities in Search and Customer Support Applications for International Markets

Language Weaver and empolis have entered into a strategic technology agreement that will support multilingual translation of enterprise applications. empolis will integrate Language Weaver's automated translation software into its e:SLS (empolis:Service Lifecycle Suite) application for customer service and into its e:IAS (empolis:Information Access Suite) information management application for cross-lingual enterprise search. Language Weaver's automated translation software offers translations based on the statistical likelihood of the correct meanings in context. empolis has integrated the capability into its existing applications, allowing its customers to access the automated translation functionality directly. The e:SLS application supports service organizations with creation, management and retrieval of service know-how. e:SLS enables organizations to provide the correct answers to customer queries with competent and consistent results via any channel, including telephone, e-mail, fax, letter, Internet, voice self-service and technical field service. e:SLS uses a central knowledge model as the foundation for intelligent search methods. It also builds a framework for multidimensional search and navigation structures to ensure efficient and precise information access. The e:IAS information management application supports intelligent and personalized information access, as well as efficiency and effectiveness when searching and navigating, analyzing, sorting and linking information and when creating new content. With access to multilingual information via the addition of Language Weaver's automated translation software, the searches become more comprehensive and effective in decision making. http://www.empolis.com, http://www.languageweaver.com

May 12, 2008

Powerset Unveils Semantic Search

Powerset released a service for searching Wikipedia that illustrates the capapbilities of the semantic search engine they are developing. From their site "Powerset's goal is to change the way people interact with technology by enabling computers to understand our language. ... Powerset is first applying its natural language processing to search, aiming to improve the way we find information by unlocking the meaning encoded in ordinary human language. ... Powerset's technology improves the entire search process. In the search box, you can express yourself in keywords, phrases, or simple questions. On the search results page, Powerset gives more accurate results, often answering questions directly, and aggregates information from across multiple articles. Finally, Powerset's technology follows you into enhanced Wikipedia articles, giving you a better way to quickly digest and navigate content." http://www.powerset.com/

May 6, 2008

blinkx Releases blinkx Advanced Media Platform

blinkx announced the availability of the blinkx Advanced Media Platform, a video content management solution that leverages blinkx's Conceptual Recognition Engine (CoRE) technology to enable media companies to unlock the potential of video assets and maximize their monetization. From the digital domain of the Internet and content management systems, to the offline world, the blinkx Advanced Media Platform is meant to solve the problems inherent in video processing and delivery. blinkx can identify and extract video assets from any storage system or packaging, online or offline. blinkx CoRE then makes it possible for media owners to search, discover and organize these assets based on their meaning, and for viewers to access these videos across different platforms, languages and formats. The Advanced Media Platform's SEO component captures new audiences while the advanced search and discovery functionality engages and retains them. With explicit and implicit user profiling, a content recommendation engine and automatic text-to-video linking, search results and display methods are tailored to relevant users. blinkx understands not only how a video is titled and tagged, but the content itself. Leveraging blinkx AdHoc, blinkx is able to place relevant ads against video content. http://www.blinkx.com/

May 5, 2008

MuseGlobal and Adhere Solutions Partner to Deliver Federated Search for Google Search Appliance

MuseGlobal announced a partnership with Adhere Solutions, a consulting company focused on designing, implementing and optimizing applications built on the Google Platform, to deliver a federated search solution for the Google Search Appliance. Called the All Access Connector, the joint solution will extend the Google Search Appliance, enabling organizations to search hundreds of millions of pages of content from over 5,400 sources, including internal and external databases, repositories, subscription content sources, data feeds and web-mining applications, all delivered through the Google interface. The Google Search Appliance relies on partners to federate third-party content sources and integrate the results into a standard interface. With the All Access Connector, MuseGlobal and Adhere Solutions have created Universal Search for the Google Search Appliance, closing the federation gap between the Google Search Appliance and traditional enterprise search solutions. Once integrated into the Google Search Appliance, the All Access Connector enables enterprises to leverage MuseGlobal's constantly expanding Source Factory of content sources to increase the depth and breadth of search results and facilitate real-time results analysis. http://www.adheresolutions.com, http://www.MuseGlobal.com

eVergance and Baynote Partner to Bring Intent-Driven Recommendations and Social Search to Customer Service and Knowledge Management

eVergance and Baynote announced that the companies have formed a strategic partnership to deliver Baynote's recommendation and social search capabilities to customer service and knowledge management environments. In addition, eVergance will be reselling the Baynote social search and recommendation solution, and will be tailoring its KM optimization and search tuning services to offer consulting capabilities to the Baynote customer base. The firm will also be developing programs to integrate Baynote's social search and recommendations capabilities with knowledge management solutions, such as KANA IQ. Baynote enriches the search and navigation experience by learning from user behavior and the collective experiences of the online community. http://www.eVergance.com, http://www.baynote.com

April 28, 2008

LTU Technologies Releases LTU-Finder 3.0

LTU Technologies announced the release of LTU-Finder v. 3.0, a tool for image and video recognition in the field of computer forensics. Offered as a trusted plug-in to Guidance Software's EnCase, a computer forensic tool used in law enforcement, government and legal professionals, LTU-Finder reduces the time required to identify and review relevant image and video files collected during a digital investigation. Likewise, to help users obtain relevant reference data LTU is authorized to share the child porn "DNA" reference set of a major Federal law enforcement agency. LTU-Finder combines LTU's image and video content recognition technology with Guidance Software's computer and enterprise investigation capabilities to increase the speed and scope of forensic and legal investigations as well as e-discovery. Today's unveiling of LTU-Finder includes enhanced image and video recognition capabilities and introduces text data identification tools that further automate large-scale file searches in the legal, e-discovery and law enforcement fields. LTU-Finder also includes automatic document identification tools that separate relevant scanned documents, like e-faxes, from other content such as personal photos or web graphics. LTU-Finder leverages the same core Image DNA technology offered in its multimedia content control solutions. All relevant information about images and videos is indexed within a digital signature, or "image DNA", that examines each pixel of an image in order to identify the key visual features. Additionally, LTU-Finder, like all of LTU's offerings, has the ability to identify duplicated and modified images and flag and match images against those in centralized databases or from case data files.

April 25, 2008

Microsoft Completes Tender Offer for Fast Search & Transfer

Microsoft Corp. announced that it has completed settlement of its tender offer for Fast Search & Transfer. Microsoft's plans to acquire FAST were originally announced on January 8th. FAST will operate as a Microsoft subsidiary, with a dedicated enterprise search research and development center in Oslo, Norway, and offices throughout the world. John Markus Lervik will transition from his role as FAST CEO to become Microsoft's Corporate Vice President of Enterprise Search, reporting to Jeff Teper. Under Lervik's leadership, the group's charter will include the development of a comprehensive portfolio of enterprise search offerings - including Microsoft Search Server 2008 Express, search for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and FAST ESP - and future delivery of a single enterprise search platform. Existing FAST customers will continue to be served by their FAST sales, services and support teams, while the combined product lineup extends customer choice. http://www.microsoft.com/

March 31, 2008

C2C Extends Search Capabilities with Introduction of Archive One Search Services

C2C announced the availability of its Archive Search Services which allows customers a range of open access points to massive amounts of archived email data to improve productivity. Archive Search Services features include: A Federated Search Provider, which allows enterprise search solutions, including Microsoft Search Server 2008, Microsoft Search Server 2008 Express, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS) and Internet Explorer's 'custom search providers,' to pass search queries directly to Archive One and accept and display results returned from there; A Search Connector, which allows search servers such as Microsoft Search Server and Windows Search access to the archive index in order for them to build index data within their own servers; A Google Search plug-in for search access to the email archive from Google Desktop and Enterprise; and Support for the OpenSearch v1.1 standard which allows any application supporting this standard to gain access to the archive data. http://www.c2c.com

March 26, 2008

Autonomy Announces Features for Pan-Enterprise Search Platform

Autonomy Corporation plc announced the availability of new advanced features for its Pan-Enterprise Search platform, IDOL (Intelligent Data Operating Layer). New features include: Drag and Drop Personalization - enables users to personalize their information delivery by dragging content of interest into a custom box; IDOL Deep Video Indexing (DVI) Advanced Features; Geo-Cluster Maps - IDOL has enhanced its support for geo-efficiency by providing visualization tools to represent document density per location, thus allowing the administrator to quickly assess usage patterns and make informed decisions about load balancing; Intent-Based Ranking - determines a user's intent when querying, thereby delivering highly targeted results based on the individual's profile and contextual factors; Multi-Dimensional Index & Query Throttling - By using a multi-dimensional index to provide information to the distribution components, IDOL helps preclude bottlenecks and unbalanced peak loads during the indexing and query process; and Quantum Clustering - Using quantum mathematics to calculate states/concepts within data, conceptual information is more easily and accurately identified. http://www.autonomy.com/

March 18, 2008

NetDocuments Embeds FAST Search Engine in SaaS Content Management Solution

NetDocuments announced that it has released its new searching engine, NDSearch, based on FAST's search engine. NDSearch is an enterprise index and retrieval platform, providing searching technology for a single repository of documents, images, emails, attachments, and digital records. NDSearch will be deployed in a SaaS model, where all maintenance, updates and optimization will be handled by NetDocuments and deployed in a redundant infrastructure across two datacenters. FAST preserves NetDocuments' secure searching technology which enforces access control, ethical walls, while offering such enhanced functionality as relevancy ranking, proximity and phrase searching, linguistics and lemmatization, data classification, topic and entity extraction. Users will not only be able to retrieve documents, but will also be able to analyze the people, companies, locations, dates, and concepts associated with matters and projects offering a truly discovery-class search technology. http://www.netdocuments.com

March 17, 2008

IBM Labs Announces ProAct, Text Analytics for Call Centers

Researchers at IBM's (NYSE: IBM) India Research Laboratory have developed software technology that uses sophisticated math algorithms to extract and deliver business insights hidden within the information gathered by companies during customer service calls and other interactions. The new business intelligence technology, called ProAct, is a text analytics tool, which automates previously manual analysis and evaluation of customer service calls and provides insight to help companies assess and improve their performance. ProAct provides an integrated analysis of structured information such as agent and product databases and unstructured data such as email, call logs, call transcription to identify reason for dissatisfaction, agent performance issues and typical product problems. Based on the Unstructured Information Management Analysis (UIMA) framework that IBM contributed to the open source Apache Software Foundation in 2006, the ProAct technology was initially developed as a service engagement. Now the new algorithms are being packaged in software and deployed in many IBM call center customers around the world. UIMA is an open source software framework that helps organizations build new analysis technologies that help organizations gain more insight from their unstructured information by discovering relationships, identifying patterns, and predicting outcomes. IBM uses UIMA to enable text analysis, extraction and concept search capabilities in other parts of its portfolio of enterprise search software products, including OmniFind Enterprise Edition, OmniFind Analytics Edition, and OmniFind Yahoo! Edition. http://www.research.ibm.com/irl/

SAS acquires Teragram to Strengthen Text mining and Analytics

SAS announced the acquisition of privately held Teragram. The acquisition will enhance SAS' own text mining and analytical BI offerings, and extend them to enterprise and mobile search. Teragram, a 40-person firm headquartered in Cambridge, Mass., will be run as a SAS company. Terms of the acquisition deal were not disclosed. Teragram's natural language processing (NLP) technologies help turn text - in many languages and from many sources - into useable information. NLP enables richer data processing at the level of words, linguistic relations and word meanings. Teragram has developed and maintains large annotated dictionaries containing several hundred million words in more than 30 languages. Teragram's categorization technologies provide instant classification of documents according to custom criteria, applied throughout the organization. For enterprise search, Teragram's NLP technologies scan structured corporate databases and unstructured sources including text-based reports and Web pages to provide answers from these multiple information sources. Teragram's search capabilities deliver an easy-to-use environment for BI, extending the availability and use of BI throughout organizations. The combination of SAS and Teragram technologies provides indexing driven not just by a report's header, but by its actual content and the metadata associated with it. Teragram also brings SAS mobile search, helping individuals scan information remotely and get answers faster. Using Teragram's mobile search technology, individuals can store and retrieve information, connect to outside applications such as BI systems, and search databases from their BlackBerry, smart phone or other mobile device. http://www.sas.com, http://www.teragram.com/

March 14, 2008

W3C Invites Implementations of XQuery Update Facility 1.0

The XML Query Working Group has published the Candidate Recommendation of "XQuery Update Facility 1.0." This document defines an update facility that extends the "XML Query language, XQuery." The XQuery Update Facility provides expressions that can be used to make persistent changes (including node insertion, deletion, modification, and creation) to instances of the XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 Data Model. The Working Group also published two additional documents that will become Working Group notes: " XQuery Update Facility 1.0 Requirements" and "XQuery Update Facility 1.0 Use Cases." http://www.w3.org/XML/Query/

March 10, 2008

IBM Upgrades Enterprise Search Software

IBM (NYSE: IBM) introduced a new version, 8.5, of its OmniFind enterprise search software. The OmniFind advancements support the latest Lotus collaboration and social software allowing early adopters of Lotus tools such as Lotus Quickr and Lotus Connections to improve productivity, business networking and knowledge sharing. The new version also includes an interface that refines and graphically displays relevant search results; full global language support for Japanese, Chinese and Korean; and support for the latest versions of Red Hat Linux, Windows Server, IBM FileNet Enterprise Content Management software and the IBM Lotus Collaboration Suite. OmniFind Enterprise Edition also serves as a platform for versatile semantic search and content analytics solutions such as entity analytics, sentiment analysis, threat analysis and global name recognition, which are designed to help customers address industry-specific information management challenges. Among the new features of OmniFind Enterprise Edition 8.5 is OmniFind Top Results Analysis, which provides a graphical means of analyzing top search results based on metadata. In addition to generating a standard list of search results, results can be displayed graphically, allowing users to drill down further and interactively refine their search to find what they need faster. For example, a query for "enterprise search" will return a list of relevant results as well as a navigation pane with dynamic bar charts where results are organized by category, for example, Web search, Desktop search, eDiscovery, author, language or source. Drop-down menus are provided for dynamically selecting other fields for analysis. In addition to OmniFind Enterprise Edition, IBM offers a full range of search and content discovery software, including OmniFind Yahoo! Edition, OmniFind Discovery Edition, OmniFind Enterprise Starter Edition, and OmniFind Analytics Edition. The software is currently available from IBM and IBM Business Partners. http://www.ibm.com/software/

March 4, 2008

Sajan Releases Language Translation Search Technology

Sajan announced the release of their new search and match engine, TMate Search Technology. TMate Search technology is an advanced search and match engine that is optimized for multilingual content. TMate Search Technology has a learning agent that improves traditional search methods. The learning agent offers intelligent search options which don't simply deliver more multilingual returns, but the algorithm also qualifies those returns. TMate's multilingual index was built to support the enterprise enabling corporations to process even the highest volume of data at faster rates.

Gilbane Group Announces New Report - "Beyond Search: What to Do When Your Enterprise Search System Doesn't Work"

Gilbane Group Inc. announced the launch of a new special report, "Beyond Search: What to do When Your Enterprise Search System Doesn't Work", by Stephen Arnold. The 250-page report also includes a "beyond search" market map, a chapter on Google's next generation plans for behind-the-firewall search, and a glossary. According to Lynda Moulton, Gilbane's Lead Analyst for Enterprise Search, "Over the past decade, companies and government agencies that have invested in major search technology have done so at great expense. This study recognizes that there are many large search systems out there that are in need of serious remediation or replacement. Mr. Arnold devotes over 40 pages to remediation options before presenting 24 'beyond search' technologies. These include both mature versions of established search products that have evolved to a stage of easier deployment, implementation and maintenance, and some new entrants that support highly specialized retrieval challenges within organizations. He leaves the reader with a feast for thought about how to meet enterprise search needs head on with both fix and replace options." The report will be available for purchase and download in early April. A workgroup license (up to 10) is $895 ($795 if ordered before April 15, 2008); an enterprise site license is $1595 ($1495 if ordered before April 15, 2008). http://gilbane.com/beyond-search.html

ISYS Search Software Introduces Enterprise Search for Linux

ISYS Search Software announced the availability of ISYS:web and ISYS:sdk for the Linux operating system. ISYS:web for Linux is a direct port of ISYS:web for Windows to the Linux platform and therefore transfers the majority of capabilities and supported file types to the new system. ISYS:web for Linux provides users with sophisticated enterprise search functionality, such as automatic categorization and entity detection, while administrators can take advantage of robust administration controls that enable rapid implementation and instant monitoring of search trends and performance. ISYS:sdk for Linux provides software developers and system integrators with the ability to incorporate ISYS search API into custom applications and solutions, whether for commercial distribution or internal use. ISYS:web for Linux is available for search with all Linux distributions and is certified for use with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, IA32 (Intel 32bit) and SuSE Linux Enterprise 10. ISYS:sdk is available for use with Linux kernels 2.2 and higher. http://www.isys-search.com/

March 3, 2008

Oracle Strengthens Content Security, Enhances Enterprise Content Management Platform

Oracle announced updates the Oracle Enterprise Content Management Suite, a component of Oracle Fusion Middleware, to strengthen content security, and enhance their Enterprise Content Management platform. The enhancements improve organizations' ability to secure content by automating encryption of documents stored in Oracle Universal Content Management through a new integration with Oracle Information Rights Management. The integration: Protects documents and emails that users check in to Oracle Universal Content Management by sealing them with Advanced Encryption Standard and RSA cryptography; Helps prevent unauthorized access to electronic documents and emails - even if it they have been downloaded, emailed, copied or transferred outside the corporate network; Allows administrators to control access to electronic documents and emails by local and remote users at the individual and group level at any time; and Does not require user intervention or restrict legitimate access to and search of the encrypted information. Oracle also delivered several new features to Oracle Universal Content Management including: Folios, which enable grouping of multiple content items for distribution, retention control, workflow and automatic rendering into a single document or other formats; Support for BPEL-based (Business Process Execution Language) processes; Improved AJAX-based user interface; A new forms editor that enables business users to create and edit online forms; Integration with Oracle's AutoVue Enterprise Visualization, Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher, and Oracle Secure Enterprise Search. http://www.oracle.com/