October 14, 2003

NYC Subway RSS Feeds

Heh, RobotPolishers’ has created RSS feeds of MTA’s services updates for the NYC Subway over at Disorient Express:

“So out of frustration, sheer geekiness and a desire to toy around with RSS, I decided to put together some feeds of the MTAs service updates, based on a program scanning their own weekly website updates.”

October 10, 2003

Jahia: Integrated Java CMS and Portal

I had a chance to take a look at the new 4.0 version of Jahia and I must say that I am very impressed. As 100% Java solution, it’s a competitive alternative to SharePoint.

Jahia is not quite Open Source however, you do get the source code, but the license model is “Jahia Collaborative Source License (JCSL)”, which roughly means that you can either pay for the license in dollars or pay with code contributions to the project. Certainly an interesting model that is similar to Sun Collaborative Source License (SCSL).

October 8, 2003

Search Engine for Research Documents

Penn State University has released a new search engine called SMEALSearch, which is focused on indexing academic and business white papers, articles and reports.

“SMEALSearch is a niche search engine that searches the web and catalogs academic articles as well as commercially produced articles and reports that address any branch of Business. The search engine crawls websites of universities, commercial organizations, research institutes and government departments to retrieve academic articles, working papers, white papers, consulting reports, magazine articles, and published statistics and facts.”

October 2, 2003

Collaborative Search

Unfortunately, I haven’t been using any IM clients recently due to the fact that their usage is banned and blocked where I work (more on that sometime).

Anyway, it was intriguing to read via Jeremy Zawodny Blog about Yahoo’s new IMVironment (e.g. plug-in) for its Messenger client that allows users to search collaboratively.

“Pull up a map or yellow pages listing together instantly. Working with a colleague in another city? Search together in real time for info, images, news…”

October 1, 2003

Email-2-RSS

I’ve actually been thinking of cobbling together a similar service that I could use to aggregate all of my various POP3 and Web-based email accounts as RSS feeds, which I could then read via NewsGator in Outlook.

I know- I know this sounds convoluted, but this idea was basically spurred because POP3, IMAP and many web-based mail services have been blocked via the corporate firewall here where I work, which has been instituted because of the rash email-based worms and of course the abundance of spam.

September 30, 2003

Google acquires Kaltix

Well, that was quick… Here’s quote via San Jose Biz Journal

“Kaltix Corp., a search technology startup, has been purchased by Internet search engine company Google Inc., of Mountain View. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.”

(Thanks for the heads-up Anil.)

I posted something about this back in August, but based on their “published research that claims to offer a way to compute search results nearly 1,000 times faster than what’s possible using current methods”, it seems like a smart move for Google.

September 30, 2003

Ten Technologies That Deserve to Die

Add to this list the Fax Machine! I despise that retched device!

September 30, 2003

NewsGator posting plug-in for B2

Cool! Greg has released a NewsGator posting plug-in for B2! (hopefully this will work!)

September 29, 2003

Serendipitous Data Connections

CNET News.com has an article on a new Wharton Team that appears to be using k-log-like techniques to rediscover serendipitous data connections.

“Although an unprecedented amount of information about technology is now available online, Ranieri notes that “everything is set up to look for exactly what you are looking for,” rather than to assist in the process of finding crossover, innovative applications. In addition, information is “stored in silos” that are hard for non-specialists to penetrate. Until now, there has been no way to search for attributes like “lighter, faster or quicker” with technology categories, he says.
…
The Wharton team’s new process aims to meet this challenge by using a methodology that “combines computer research techniques with human research techniques,” MacMillan says. Kimbrough likens the new process to the methodology Google uses. Although Google’s search engine is automated, it exploits information that thousands of individuals (at no cost to Google) painstakingly collected and loaded onto their Web sites. Kimbrough explains that Google’s page-ranking algorithm “exploits tons of work (done by) people who put Java links on their Web sites; it exploits their manual labor.”
…
the Wharton team’s new process searches through documents and makes connections between highly technical descriptions of properties–often familiar only to narrow “silos” of technologies–and broader terms that could suggest market applications to those who work in other areas. As Ranieri describes it, “We found a clever way to make a link between attributes and markets.”
…
Although it’s too early for developers to discuss technical details, Kimbrough acknowledges that this new process requires a significant amount of human input. “In part, we use human beings to create databases of attributes that can be matched up.”

September 25, 2003

Scopeware Personal Information Management

Scopeware is a personal desktop search tool similar to X1, but with a different take on the user experience.

I haven’t tested it yet, but it seems to be worth a look.

Scopeware also offers a server-based solution.