Mindbreeze, a software provider for enterprise search and digital cognition, has been positioned as a “Challenger” in the Gartner “Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Search” ¹⁾. The evaluation is one of the most internationally influential market analyses for the evaluation of enterprise search software. The US analyst group analyses different providers based on criteria such as market penetration, innovation and strength of implementation and places them into the categories “Challengers”, “Leaders”, “Visionaries” and “Niche Players”. continued…

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Our own Jenny Zaino recently discussed some of the interesting developments that Google announced at the Google I/O event yesterday. Francis Bea of DigitalTrends adds to that discussion with a few other developments shared by Google: “With Google I/O introducing and hyping the tech company’s latest batch of products today, Google also announced a whopping 41 new features to Google+. Along side this update, it was revealed that there are currently 190 million active Google+ users – a number Google likely feels compelled to focus on in the wake of news about dwindling user activity.  continued…

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“With more features in the Knowledge Graph and more languages, with conversational voice search and hot-wording coming to Chrome on desktops and laptops, and with new Now functionality like reminders….search is becoming a really beautiful and ubiquitous experience that intelligently answers your questions and assists you throughout the day across all screens.”

That’s how Google Fellow Amit Singhal summed up the evolving search experience at today’s Google I/O event. Here’s more about the latest features:

• Google’s Knowledge Graph, now some 570 million entities strong and growing, is taking it to the stats. Now, users will get important stats powered by the Knolwedge Graph, he said. “Already you can find answers to questions like what is the population of India,” he told the audience, “but starting today we will anticipate your next question,” which may be how that population compares to the population of other countries. So, you’ll get the answer alongside the trends line and see all that in comparison to the population of the two countries whose population is most often compared to India, China and the U.S. Google Knoweldge Graph is also boosting its language support, adding to the existing eight Polish, Turkish, simplified and traditional Chinese.
• Users in the Gmail search trial already have the capability of finding answers – like when is their upcoming flight or restaurant reservation — without having to sift through email, docs and calendar data. But, said Singhal, things can get better when it comes to letting users get those answers in the most natural way possible, which means Google has been working hard on technologies like voice recognition and natural language understanding. To that end, conversational search, already available on Android and iOS, is coming to all desktops and laptops through Chrome, he said.
• Joining conversation search is hot-wording, a new interface, or, as he calls it, a “no interface,” where users can ask their search questions without clicking on the mike. Just preface a voice question with, “OK Google,” and Google will speak back the answer to you, drawing among other sources on its Knowledge Graph for the response. Google product manager Johanna Wright gave a demo of the voice experience courtesy of Chrome on a mobile device, working her way through planning a day trip to Santa Cruz through to images of its beach boardwalk, asking “OK Google, how far from here to it?,” where Google, in speaking back the answer, recognized that it referred to the boardwalk and that here was her current location.
• Enter Google Now: Singhal talked up anticipation (it’s more fun if you pronounce it like Tim Curry in the Rocky Horror Picture Show number), and the usefulness of having the right answer suggested at the right time, even before a user asks. That’s what is set to happen with an on-the-way feature that lets users set reminders in Google Now to show up when they need them. Also launching on the Google Now front are other new cards: public transit commute time cards and more cards for music albums, tv shows, and video games. Google is now “even more useful as an assisted tool,” he said.

Of the new age of search, Singhal said it’s not around the corner, that it will be some time before this becomes the predominant search experience. “There are lots of complex and scientific problems to solve, but our investment and commitment to getting there sooner rather than later is immense.”

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Frederic Lardinois of TechCrunch reports, “Bing‘s social sidebar, which shows relevant entries from your Facebook friends, Twitter, Klout, Quora and other services, just got a lot more interactive. You can now like Facebook posts in the social sidebar and add their own comments. In addition you can now also see all of the existing comments on a post right in the sidebar, too. This, Microsoft believes, will make the social search experience on Bing even more interactive, engaging and helpful than before. It also means users don’t have to leave Bing to engage with these posts. Chances are, after all, that they will get distracted by all of the other goodies Facebook has to offer once they leave Bing and won’t return anytime soon.” continued…

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David Amerland of Imassera recently shared his opinion on why he thinks Google will win the semantic search race. He writes, “Google was a latecomer to search. When you’re the new kid on the block the paths that’ll lead you to the top of the hill are strictly limited: innovate or be the best. Innovation is the obvious one, of course, because it creates buzz, sets you out from the rest at first sight and draws the attention of the Press and those who can give you publicity. Being the best is harder. continued…

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London, UK – May 8, 2013: Today, Ontology Systems, the semantic search company for structured enterprise application data, announce their nomination as finalist in the Big Data and Analytics category for the Pipeline COMENT Innovation Awards 2013.

The recognition comes as Ontology is being increasingly adopted by CSPs and enterprise across other industries, such as financial services, for its innovative uses of semantic search across large, complex data estates as a faster, more cost-effective, more resilient and more accurate alternative to traditional data integration approaches. continued…

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Derek du Preez of Computer World reports, “The Financial Times (FT) has appointed John O’Donovan as its new Chief Technology Officer, who will lead the FT’s technology strategy across development and operations teams. O’Donovan joins the publication from the Press Association, where he was director of architecture and development, and has also previously worked as the chief architect for BBC News, Sport and Weather. Whilst at the BBC, O’Donovan played a key role in building some of the company’s flagship products, such as the BBC iPlayer, as well as the widely used sport APIs for the Olympics Data Feed.”

He continues, “The FT said that O’Donovan has ‘delivered influential technical strategies that have become widely adopted, using semantic technologies and architectural patterns for dealing with complex integration in modern technical environments.’ continued…

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Avishay Bassa of Newsgeek (translation by TheNextWeb) recently wrote, “Israeli start-up Symbolab, developer of a unique, mathematically geared search engine that can find and solve for complex mathematical equations, announced today the completion of a seed round of $1.2 million. The round was funded by several angels, including Michael Queen – former CEO of Harel Finance and Sprint Investment House, as well as other angels from the UK investment world. CEO, Michal Avny said, in an interview with Newsgeek, that the money raised in the current funding round will be used for further R&D of their technology, as well as to help finance the launch of a mobile application for smartphones and tablets in the near future.” continued…

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CHICAGO, IL and STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN–(Marketwired – May 6, 2013) – EPiServer, a global software provider for innovative ecommerce and digital marketing solutions, today announced its acquisition of Swedish search provider, Euroling. Following the acquisition, EPiServer will continue to support the customers and partners of the wholly-owned subsidiary of Euroling. Because the two organizations have joint stakeholders, the acquisition allows for improvements to operational efficiencies and presents opportunities for consolidation. continued…

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Panels are always among the most exciting and informative events at the Semantic Technology and Business Conference, and the panels at next month’s conference in San Francisco will be no exception. One of the most anticipated panels will happen at 3:45 on Tuesday, June 4, at 3:45. Search Engine Marketing in a Semantic World will examine a number of questions, including:

• Does the semantic web represent the beginning of the end of search engine optimization as we know it, or does the search engines’ adoption of semantic web technologies only add an additional dimension to search marketing without significantly impacting the fundamentals of SEO?
• Does the search engines’ drive to encourage structured data uses put sites not employing it at a disadvantage, and how far should the search engines go to ensure the search visibility of valuable sites not employing semantic web technologies? continued…

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SAN FRANCISCO, May 1, 2013 /PRNewswire/ — Skimlinks, the leader in content monetization, today announced the launch of two new products aimed at helping publishers earn even more revenue from their content.

Skimlinks Showcases is a near-text unit that populates automatically with products mentioned in content. Leveraging Skimlink’s SkimWords technology to accurately identify product attributes, Showcases provide a visual way to complement publishers’ content with additional revenue-generating potential. continued…

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Matthew Syrett of PBS Media Shift recently shared his thoughts on the flaws of Facebook’s graph search. He writes, “With Graph Search, Facebook intends to mine our social networks to unlock knowledge stored among our online friends to create a recommendation search engine. Instead of crawling the Internet to build search indices, Graph Search will use our social media connections, likes, and Check-ins to make search indices to respond to our queries. Using Graph Search, we should be able to find restaurants that have been checked into or liked by our Facebook friends. We can discover movies based upon the likes of our connections, or relevant music. The project strives to be an alternative to everyday search queries we all do to discover things to do or get in our lives — all validated by people we know and trust, and not by unknown reviewers or a faceless algorithm.” continued…

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TVTechnology.com reports, “Veveo, a provider of semantic technologies to bridge the usability gap in connected devices and applications with intelligent search, discovery and personalization solutions, has been awarded four new patents by the United States Patent and Trademark Office, bringing its total count of issued patents to 38. The new patents relate to improving search experiences in the context of current usability trends around social, device based universal search, or semantic and intelligent searching capabilities.  The patent entitled ‘User interface methods and systems for selecting and presenting content based on user relationships’ (USPTO number 8,423,583) covers incremental search capabilities based on relationships of users.” continued…

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Stuart Dredge of The Guardian writes, “Google has launched its Google Now service for iOS devices, as an update to its existing Google Search app. Accessed by swiping upwards from the bottom of the app’s homescreen, Google Now learns about its user through their activities and their history in various Google services. It then serves up weather forecasts, traffic reports, boarding passes, sports scores and other information when they may be relevant. On iOS, it’s the sole new feature in version 3.0.0 of the Google Search app. Available for Android devices since the Android 4.1 Jelly Bean software was released in 2012, Google Now’s iOS incarnation has been subject to speculation this year.” continued…

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Courtesy: Flickr/ Sean MacEntee

Earlier this month word came of a revision to schema.org: Version 1.0a additions, according to this posting from Dan Brickley, include the Datasets vocabulary, and some supporting utility terms for describing schema.org types, properties and their inter-relationships. One of the gems in the update are additions related to the Learning Resource Metadata Initiative (LRMI), an effort led by the Association of Educational Publishers and Creative Commons, which has as its goals making it easier to publish, discover and delivery quality educational resources on the web. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation helped fund the work.

With schema.org serving as a catalyst for its work, the LRMI developed a common metadata framework for tagging online learning resources, with the idea of having that metadata schema incorporated into Schema.org. With that now the case, it’s possible for publishers or curators of educational content to use LRMI markup and have that metadata recognized by the major search engines.

“One of the reasons why education was one of the first extensions of schema.org is that the education industry is going through some very interesting times,” says Madi Weland Solomon, head of Data Architecture Standards at education company Pearson plc, one of the LRMI project launch partners.

continued…

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