Webhamer Weblog: Search & ICT-related blogging

Yahoo’s Rob McCool argues in Rethinking the Semantic Web, Part 1 that the Semantic Web will never happen. Why? Because the Semantic Web has three fundamental parts, and they just don’t fit together based on current technologies. Here is what we have. The foundation is the set of data models and formats that provide semantics to applications that use them (RDF, RDF Schema, OWL). The second layer is composed of services - purely machine-accessible programs that answer Web requests and perform actions in response. At the top are the intelligent agents, or applications.

See: http://allanslibrary.blogspot.com/2007/11/semantic-web-mccool-way-of-explaining.html

The Curse of Knowledge: the more you know, the more difficult it is for you to communicate knowledge. When we know something, we can hardly imagine not knowing it. The more we learn about something, the more it becomes even harder for us to think of not knowing it. It is generally difficult for experts (who know much) to explain their expertise to laymen (who know little) because experts have to try hard to imagine the scenario when they were not experts. This is the Curse of Knowledge.

See: http://www.semanticfocus.com/blog/entry/title/the-curse-of-knowledge-and-the-semantic-web/

Enterprise search poses a dilemma for knowledge managers. Search engines must be easy for IT staff to manage, and results must be equally straightforward for users to navigate. At the same time, you have to index growing numbers of complex information sources – each with their own access rights. Coveo Enterprise Search 5.0, with its numerous new features, satisfies both sides of this equation.

A question that I often come across during my conversations with senior executives is “what is the impact of web 2.0 strategies and tools from an enterprise perspective?’  Many have difficulties providing a quick answer while they were quick to provide examples of how Web 2.0 innovation has been creating new applications for consumer uses. I believe these innovations are finding their way into the enterprises. Enterprise 2.0 doesn’t really exist today other than a few software companies (content management) renaming themselves. The question is why? There are many answers to that.

SenseBot represents a new type of Search Engine that delivers a summary in response to your search query instead of a collection of links to Web pages. SenseBot takes top results returned by one of the major Web search engines and summarizes them. 

Microsoft moves in on enterprise search - vnunet.com
“Searching the internet can be like searching for a needle in a haystack but enterprise search is like searching for one [specific] needle in a haystack full of needles,” Gray said.

“In internet search, you want people to find information and you have people to do search engine optimisation and tag content, whereas in the enterprise you might not want certain people to find certain content at a certain time, and people aren’t commercially incentivised. We feel enterprise search is still in its infancy but people have started questioning why they’re paying [large sums] for these products.”

Microsoft will use capabilities from Site Server for its search tools and will support the OpenSearch format for federated search to aggregate results from several internet search engines, as well as searching internal intranets and file systems. A dedicated server is not required but systems must be running Windows and either SQL Server or its free Express sibling.

The effort will take Microsoft up against Google’s Search Appliance and Mini, both of which wrap Google search software in a dedicated server. Another key competitor will be IBM, which last year began offering a free version of its OmniFind search software, in partnership with Yahoo, that limits the number of documents that can be searched.

X1® Enterprise Platform
THE X1 SOLUTION:
Federated Search from the Enterprise through the Desktop
The X1 Enterprise Search Suite integrates critical business systems and bridges the gap between the desktop and the enterprise by providing a secure, unified view of personal and IT managed content found throughout the enterprise.

The X1 Enterprise Search Suite puts the power of universal, actionable search into the hands of users through a single interface to Find, Preview, and Act on the information they need to do their jobs — no matter where it exists.

Don Dodge on The Next Big Thing
Microsoft announced a new free enterprise search product Search Server 2008 Express. It has the same core search functionality as the regular enterprise search products, and no restrictions on size or number of documents. The goal of the program is to reach the almost 6 million businesses in the United States that don’t use an enterprise search solution.

Because Search Server Express delivers web results from Live.com, a popular free enterprise search product could have a positive effect on Microsoft’s consumer web search strategy as well. According to Spataro, only 1 percent of 6 million business are doing enterprise search. Microsoft hopes that a free and easily deployed search application will remove any entry barriers that businesses may have to hopping on the enterprise search bandwagon. Competition is stiff, however, with competing products being offered by Google and IBM/Yahoo, as well as a number of smaller firms.

FooFactory: Online indexing - integrating Nutch with Solr

IkNum Enterprise search Download