Glyph Language Services has launched a limited time offer to localize mobile applications and games for free. New clients can receive localization and emulator testing services for one Android or iPhone app in one target language. The offer includes localization of up to 1000 words of content from the UI, source code and distribution portal, as well as emulator testing of the localized app. Available target languages include English, Spanish (Spain or Latin America), French, Italian, German, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Polish, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Korean or Japanese. www.glyphservices.com/
Topic: Technology (Page 3 of 5)
The word technology refers to the making, modification, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems, and methods of organization, in order to solve a problem, improve a preexisting solution to a problem, achieve a goal, handle an applied input/output relation or perform a specific function. It can also refer to the collection of such tools, including machinery, modifications, arrangements and procedures.
Kaltura, Inc. announced it has released a Kaltura-based video extension for Joomla! The Kaltura extension allows Joomla site-builders to handle every aspect of video and rich-media, including content management, syndication, monetization, transcoding, uploading, importing, editing and remixing. The extension is simple to install, customize, and use. The Joomla extension is available in two flavors: a free community-supported, video platform extension that is self-hosted by the publisher, and a video extension based on Kaltura’s SaaS platform, which includes a 10GB free trial, including Kaltura support and additional paid services such as tier-1 hosting and streaming, transcoding, syndication, advertising, security and more. http://www.kaltura.com
FatWire Software announced the early-access release of its Web Experience Management Framework. The new framework delivers a set of components that enable integration of third-party and custom-built applications into the FatWire WEM product suite. Organizations can have an expanded set of web applications and functions operating as a unified interactive business platform. Several FatWire partners, including Mahindra Satyam, Congruent, frevvo, and Element 115, have already leveraged the WEM Framework. The WEM Framework provides: Common user interface framework – A single user interface provides unified management across FatWire applications and integrated third-party applications, giving users seamless access to the capabilities they need to manage their web presence; Centralized user and role management – Single sign-on enables users to login in once and navigate among WEM and partner applications while maintaining appropriate access privileges and capabilities; Centralized administration – This functionality enables centralized management of users, roles, site and applications. These policies automatically apply across all FatWire and third-party integrated solutions; REST API: This API enables turnkey repository connectivity for third-party applications, so they can access and run on FatWire-managed content. http://www.fatwire.com
FastPencil announced their eBook Publish-Ready Format for eReaders offering an authoring solution to ensure an author’s book can be read anywhere today and in the future. FastPencil provides authors with an end-to-end publishing platform where they can maintain control of the content creation, price, distribution and sales activity. FastPencil gives eBook authors flexibility. For instance, authors can take individual book chapters and create eBook editions to promote the larger work. Short-story writers can also use FastPencil to create and publish their stories. Also, as eReaders incorporate multi-media, such as video, audio, animation, slides presentations and games, FastPencil will provide support. FastPencil Publish-Ready Format Features: Auto-generate table of contents, Auto-pagination, Auto-merge into professional book design template, Auto-merge into eBook formats, and Uphold Industry standards compliance (title page, copyright, ISBN). The FastPencil eBook Publish-Ready Format is available now at http://www.FastPencil.com
FatWire Software announced that its FatWire Content Server fully integrates with Google Analytics to help customers measure and track the success of their FatWire websites. FatWire customers can download the integration module free of charge from FatWire to automatically generate Google tags and feed data directly into Google, for out-of-the-box monitoring and reporting. The integration will enable FatWire customers to use Google’s free analytics package to measure and optimize online content and campaigns, providing a better understanding of website effectiveness, including traffic, usage patterns and visitor behavior. The FatWire Analytics module, which is natively integrated with Content Server, provides granular tracking of content assets for specific customer segments and across dynamic, targeted web pages, enabling optimization of content on a granular level. Google Analytics provides complementary capabilities for tracking and measuring website and user behavior at a site and page level. With this packaged integration, customers can now combine FatWire’s platform with Google Analytics, thus providing a combination of page, behavior and granular content analytics. http://www.fatwire.com
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has published new Drafts of XQuery 1.1, XPath 2.1 and Supporting Documents. As part of work on XSLT 2.1 and XQuery 1.1, the XQuery and XSL Working Groups have published First Public Working Drafts of “XQuery and XPath Data Model 1.1,” “XPath and XQuery Functions and Operators 1.1,” “XSLT and XQuery Serialization 1.1” and “XPath 2.1.” In addition, the XQuery Working Group has updated drafts for “XQuery 1.1: An XML Query Language,” “XQueryX 1.1” and “XQuery 1.1 Requirements.” http://www.w3.org/News/2009#entry-8682
This title by Mike Altendorf, in CIO Magazine, October 31, 2008, mystifies me, Search Will Outshine KM. I did a little poking around to discover who he is and found a similar statement by him back in September, Search is being implemented in enterprises as the new knowledge management and what’s coming down the line is the ability to mine the huge amount of untapped structured and unstructured data in the organisation.
Because I follow enterprise search for the Gilbane Group while maintaining a separate consulting practice in knowledge management, I am struggling with his conflation of the two terms or even the migration of one to the other. The search we talk about is a set of software technologies that retrieve content. I’m tired of the debate about the terminology “enterprise search” vs. “behind the firewall search.” I tell vendors and buyers that my focus is on software products supporting search executed within (or from outside looking in) the enterprise on content that originates from within the enterprise or that is collected by the enterprise. I don’t judge whether the product is for an exclusive domain, content type or audience, or whether it is deployed with the “intent” of finding and retrieving every last scrap of content lying around the enterprise. It never does nor will do the latter but if that is what an enterprise aspires to, theirs is a judgment call I might help them re-evaluate in consultation.
It is pretty clear that Mr. Altendorf is impressed with the potential for Fast and Microsoft so he knows they are firmly entrenched in the software business. But knowledge management (KM) is not now, nor has it ever been, a software product or even a suite of products. I will acknowledge that KM is a messy thing to talk about and the label means many things even to those of us who focus on it as a practice area. It clearly got derailed as a useful “discipline” of focus in the 90s when tool vendors decided to place their products into a new category called “knowledge management.”
It sounded so promising and useful, this idea of KM software that could just suck the brains out of experts and the business know-how of enterprises out of hidden and lurking content. We know better, we who try to refine the art of leveraging knowledge by assisting our clients with blending people and technology to establish workable business practices around knowledge assets. We bring together IT, business managers, librarians, content managers, taxonomists, archivists, and records managers to facilitate good communication among many types of stakeholders. We work to define how to apply behavioral business practices and tools to business problems. Understanding how a software product is helpful in processes, its potential applications, or to encourage usability standards are part of the knowledge manager’s toolkit. It is quite an art, the KM process of bringing tools together with knowledge assets (people and content) into a productive balance.
Search is one of the tools that can facilitate leveraging knowledge assets and help us find the experts who might share some “how-to” knowledge, but it is not, nor will it ever be a substitute for KM. You can check out these links to see how others line up on the definitions of KM: CIO introduction to KM and Wikipedia. Let’s not have the “KM is dead” discussion again!
When interviewing search administrators who had also been part of product selection earlier this year, I asked about surprises they had encountered. Some involved the selection process but most related to on-going maintenance and support. None commented on actual failures to retrieve content appropriately. That is a good thing whether it was because, during due diligence they had already tested for that during a proof of concept or because they were lucky.
Thinking about how product selections are made, prompts me to comment on a two major search product attributes that control the success or failure of search for an enterprise. One is the actual algorithms that control content indexing, what is indexed and how it is retrieved from the index (or indices). The second is the interfaces, interfaces for the population of searchers to execute selections, and interfaces for results presentation. On each aspect, buyers need to know what they can control and how best to execute it for success.
Indexing and retrieval technology is embedded with search products; the number of administrative options to alter search scalability, indexing and content selection during retrieval is limited to none. The “secret sauce” for each product is largely hidden, although it may have patented aspects available for researching. Until an administrator of a system gets deeply into tuning, and experimenting with significant corpuses of content, it is difficult to assess the net effect of delivered tuning options. The time to make informed evaluations about how well a given product will retrieve your content when searched by your select audience is before a purchase is made. You can’t control the underlying technology but you can perform a proof of concept (PoC). This requires:
- human resources and a commitment of computing resources
- well-defined amount, type and nature (metadata plus full-text or full-text unstructured-only) to give a testable sample
- testers who are representative of all potential searchers
- a comparison of the results with three to four systems to reveal how well they each retrieve the intended content targets
- knowledge of the content by testers and similarity of searches to what will be routinely sought by enterprise employees or customers
- search logs of previously deployed search systems, if they exist. Searches that routinely failed in the past should be used to test newer systems
Interface technology
Unlike the embedded search technology, buyers can exercise design control or hire a third-party to produce search interfaces that vary enormously. Controlling for what searchers experience when they first encounter a search engine, either a search box at a portal or a completely novel variety of search options with search box, navigation options or special search forms is within the control of the enterprise. This may be required if what comes “out-of-the box” as the default is not satisfactory. You may find, at a reasonable price, a terrific search engine that scales well, indexes metadata and full-text competently and retrieves what the audience expects but requires a different look-and-feel for your users. Through an API (application programming interface), SDK (software development kit) or application connectors (e.g. Documentum, SharePoint) numerous customization options are delivered with enterprise search packages or are available as add-ons.
In either case, human resource costs must be added to the bottom line. A large number of mature software companies and start-ups are innovating with both their indexing techniques and interface design technologies. They are benefiting from several decades of search evolution for search experts, and now a decade of search experiences in the general population. Search product evolution is accelerating as knowledge of searcher experiences is leveraged by developers. You may not be able to control emerging and potentially disruptive technologies, but you can still exercise beneficial controls when selecting and implementing most any search system.
