Reflections & analysis about innovation, technology, startups, investing, healthcare, and more .... with a focus on Minnesota, Land of 10,000 Lakes. Blogging continuously since 2005.

Tag: search (Page 1 of 2)

Defrag 2010: A Chat About Yolink

On the first day of Defrag, I stopped by to chat with Brian Cheek, Director of Business Development for TigerLogic, about his firm's product Yolink, which is a next-generation technology that enhances search by extracting information from behind links and inside of documents.  Yolink-graphic I was amazed I hadn't heard about Yolink until a few days prior to Defrag, and found it pretty amazing as I started to play with it.  See the following coverage for more about this technology: Yolink Helps Web Researchers Search Behind Links (Mashable) … Yolink's Next Step Search Pulls Info from Behind Links and Inside Docs (ReadWriteWeb) … and Yolink – A Search Accelerator for Deep Internet Research (MakeUseOf.com).

It's available as a plugin for all the major browsers. It's also available as a desktop app for Windows PC users. You can even get a Yolink widget for your site or blog (again, all the major platforms). Also be sure to look at some cool lab experiments created by Yolink engineers that showcase the use of the Yolink API. The API allows integrating Yolink into any web service. It can be used to enhance existing search engine results, or to provide site or app search functionality outright. The API is simple to implement and completely customizable.

Download or listen to my interview with Brian Cheek of TigerLogic about Yolink… (MP3)

DEMOfall 2010: A Chat With VoiceBase About Its Voice Storage, Search, and Sharing Platform

WalterBachtiger+SpencerLord-VoiceBase Speaking of DEMOgod Award winners, this was another — though we didn't know that till an hour or so after I stopped to interview CEO and founder Walter Bachtiger. (That's him on the left, with Spencer Lord, Chief Voice Officer/CTO.) This was one of my favorite demos on stage earlier in the day, because I could see what a great productivity tool it would be for bloggers, writers, and researchers (just to name a few). I wanted to be sure to find out more, and see a more detailed demo up close. VoiceBase-logo VoiceBase transcribes voice files (audio now, video coming soon) that you upload to their site. It then posts those transcripts to the site, and enables you to then search within those files for keywords you specify. It also let you share those files on social sites. I can't wait to use it myself — in fact, I'll start by uploading these DEMOfall audio interviews of mine!

Download or listen to Graeme's interview with VoiceBase about its Voice Storage, Search, and Sharing Platform… (MP3)"

 

Anticipating Defrag….

Getting excited about the Defrag conference, kicking off this Sunday evening in Denver. Once again, Eric Norlin and his colleagues who originally conceived this event (including VC Brad Feld) have planned a wonderful conference program, and again attracted a stellar group — coming off a blowout successful first-year event a year ago. Defrag2008-logo
(I wrote about the inaugural version extensively: here's an index of my Defrag 2007 posts. Actually, I believe it was the last event I live-blogged, versus the live-Twittering approach I've adopted since for my conference reporting. Why has Twitter just sort of taken over?) And, with this year's advisory board including people like Esther Dyson (of PC Forum fame) and Chris Shipley (of DEMO fame), how could this not be another fantastic conference?

Last year's experience was so great in every way that I took to describing it as basically like a religious experience. I was in awe hobnobbing with so many luminaries and big thinkers. I also got to connect again with many of my friends from the early days of the Internet — Doc Searls, Chris Locke, David Weinberger, Steve Larsen, and others.  I love my (younger) friend Aaron Fulkerson's testimonial comment about Defrag 2007, used on the current web site: "The
event had quite the attendee and speakers
list. You couldn’t spit and not
hit an industry notable."
 
It was an amazing group — all told, about 300. The collective intelligence in the room was unlike
anything I've ever experienced, and the program, keynotes, and
discussions — both the panels and the informal variety — were
off-the-charts valuable and thought-provoking.  There was just this energy level that I can't fully describe…that we were about to collectively imagine the future of the Internet, the social web, a whole new level of collaboration. You had to be there.

And you should be there this year! It's not too late, and I even have a juicy discount code posted in my sidebar to the right. [Shhh, don't tell anybody.  I'm not sure I'm supposed to be offering that to all my blog readers — but what the hell! Maybe Eric Norlin won't read this… 🙂 ] The best way to get the real skinny about what's in store this year is to check out the Defrag blog, which Eric writes so well. The man has a gift for storytelling. And, of course, check out the list of stellar speakers…and the great agenda. This conference is packed with aha moments and extreme takeaways.

What's also cool is that there are three speakers from my home state of Minnesota. Rich Hoeg of Honeywell, whom I met at our "Minnebar" BarCamp event this past spring, will be speaking about social search in the corporate environment, and Connie Bensen, a community strategist now working with Network Solutions, will be on a panel about "making the social web." Oneplace_logo
And I'm especially looking forward to a panel on "Re-imagining
the metaphors behind collaborative
tools
," which includes my friend Steve Kickert of Minnesota's own Riverock Technologies, who'll be talking about his very cool, just released from beta OnePlace™ online team collaboration and work management system. 
These guys are some amazing developers, and this thing rocks. (I know — I use it!) You can catch some buzz about OnePlace™ just starting to appear here and here. [Full disclosure: I'm a consultant to Steve's company.]

Want to see who else you'll be able to hobnob with in this intimate setting?  Check out this blog post that lists just some of the many companies attending.  People, I'm tellin' ya, this is a heavy-duty crowd!  Want to read a great rundown on what your two-day experience will be like at Defrag?  Check out this blog post, which will give you "a sense of what you'll encounter" at this great conference.

I really hope you can make it to Defrag. See you in Denver!

They May Not Be Evil, But Their Tagline Is Hellish

Google has finally done it — come up with a tagline. No, I’m not talking about the motto (“Don’t Be Evil”), or the mission statement (“to organize the world’s information”). As Danny Sullivan reports today on his blog, SearchEngineLand, the company has gone and uncorked the phrase to end all phrases. Saywhat Okay, are you ready for it? Are you sure? Okay, drumroll, it’s…..“Search, Ads & Apps” !! No, I’m not kidding — that is it, friends. I know this really tugs on your emotions. But, please, try to control yourselves … from tearing up with brand euphoria.

I’ve always maintained that writing a tagline is like writing poetry. It may be the highest form of advertising writing there is. (And Google, we’re told, is an advertising company!) But this one, I’m sorry. This is no tagline — it’s a three-part laundry list. Okay, Google, great — you do all these things. Got it. Three of ’em. Check. Like we didn’t know that?

This is like Coke saying “Water, Sugar, and Fizz.” Or Nike: “Soles, Laces, and Uppers.” How about Apple? “Pixels, Pods, and Jobs.”

Got any more? Hey, this is fun….play along.

‘How to Make a Furby Stop Buzzing’

This is the flat-out funniest search term I’ve seen to date that brings up my blog in Google’s search results — actually, I’m fourth on the list (out of 14,700), which was complete news to me. Goes to show you search algorithms still have a long way to go, I guess. How do I find such things, you ask? (I don’t even own a Furby, or know anyone who does.) Here’s how: in the traffic stats provided by my blog hoster, Typepad, I can see referring sites that bring people to my blog page — and that includes searches people do at Google, Yahoo, Ask.com, and other such sites. But the interesting thing is that I get to see the search term they used. These terms have been all over the map, but I think this is the first one that actually made me laugh out loud… So, how in the world does my blog come up on such a strange search request? I certainly don’t have a “Toys” category. Well, let me explain. First, here’s a screen-grab of part of the search-results page. Furbysearchpage

I attended a technology conference early this year called Demo, and I blogged a lot about that event. Some 70 new companies and products were debuted there, one of which was the “Pleo,” which was from the same guy who invented the “Furby.” In the particular post where I mentioned the Pleo and the Furby, I also had used the term “buzz” — meaning the media and blog coverage that Demo creates. All that must have really been confusing to this little kid (I assume) who was dutifully slogging through all these search results trying to get the damn toy to shut up! 🙂

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