Beyond Search

Featured

Academic publishing, specifically in the fields of science and math, is a big money industry. The whole system hinges on containing the flow of information, a task that grows increasingly difficult with the demand for free access to information. Free access is fueled by the internet and social media, with these influences creating a new generation of young people who assume and demand that information be free. Arxiv.org is an open access archive for academic literature devoted to math and science. It and other open access portals are being threatened by potential legislation. (Open access is a term referring to quality information sources that are not protected by a subscription.) The Quantum Pontiff tells us more in, “Could Elsevier Shut Down Arxiv.org?”

The blogger reports:

They (Elsevier) haven’t yet, but they are supporting SOPA, a bill that attempts to roll back Web 2.0 by making it easy to shut down entire sites like Wikipedia and Craigslist if they contain any user-submitted infringing material.

Splash page of arxiv.org shows the seal of Cornell University and the phrase “We gratefully acknowledge supporting institutions. See http://arxiv.org/

Social media and copyright are inherently opposing concepts. User-submitted material, as it is referred to above, will almost always infringe upon copyright. In fact, very few submissions aside from the users own thoughts and words will not infringe upon copyright. If the legislators supporting SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) make good on all their promises, eventual showdowns with social media heavy hitters like Facebook or YouTube could occur.

American copyright was established by the founding fathers in our constitution to balance the protection of intellectual property with the ability to foster creativity and innovation. However, copyright has evolved in the modern era into a blanket protection policy, primarily serving corporations. Libraries and other institutions of learning champion the cause of open access, but even these civic organizations are threatened by corporate lobbyists in their constant quest to have copyright protection extended tighter and longer.

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Interviews

Last week I was able to interview Gilles Andre, the chief executive officer, of PolySpot late in November and then last week. Mr. Andre joined PolySpot in June 2010. Prior to this, Gilles  was co-founder and CEO of Augure, a company engaged in e-reputation management and services. Mr. Andre was also the founder of Leonard’s Logic suite in 1997 (software editor of Genio ETL). Acquired by Hummingbird in 1999. Mr. Andre is board member at Talend, recognized market leader in open source middleware solutions.

PolySpot is a provider of open search solutions. The company offers a robust and innovative architecture which supports search-centric applications accessible from any device connected to a client’s network.

I was interested in Mr. Andre’s view of PolySpot. The search and content processing sector is in transition, and the role of open source solutions continues to gain traction. He told me:

PolySpot’s agile framework, its use of open source technology like Lucene, and a focus on putting information in the business work flow. Olivier Lefassy, David Fischer – our CTO – and I had designed some interesting ideas, and I was eager to fine tune these elements into a business model that would propel PolySpot over the hurdles which cause many enterprise information solutions to fail.

With open source making in roads at IBM and other major technology providers, I asked about Mr. Andre’s involvement in the “communities” which play an important role in the sector. He told me:

When I was board member at Talend, a very successful French initiative in the ETL [extract, transform, load] segment from inception in 2006 to December 2010, I came to understand the potential of open source software. PolySpot gives me a chance to leverage my knowledge about fast growth, high potential companies, open source software, and the “big data” opportunity around us. I think you can say that data management and information are woven throughout my business fabric.

The PolySpot approach boasts a robust framework. I asked what PolySpot has constructed around Lucene, the open source search system:

We build the connectors I mentioned before and a connector software development kit. We engineered out proprietary transformation and enrichment platform (that’s the Sense Builder components) which adds intelligence to raw information. We also developed a very innovative end to end administration console enabling to design and maintain search applications with no particular technical skill, this eases Lucene and Solr configuration but also amplifies the search functionalities provided by Solr. Last, we have added display modules, information views, and graphical user interfaces. These can easily be customized. To make it brief, PolySpot delivers the first end-to-end packaged search infrastructure over Lucene and SOLR core technologies.

After seeing several demonstrations of client deployments, I was impressed with the PolySpot technology. To learn more about PolySpot’s solutions and technical approach, navigate to www.polyspot.com. The full text of the interview with Mr. Andre is located in the ArnoldIT’s series Search Wizards Speak at this link.

Stephen E Arnold, December 13, 2011

Sponsored by Pandia.com, publishers of The New Landscape of Enterprise Search

SurfRay

 This is the first in a new series of posts that puts the spotlight on Windows PowerShell scripts for SharePoint 2010 Products that are stored in the TechNet Gallery. In each post, we will describe a script’s functionality and use and look under the hood at specific Windows PowerShell programming techniques that you can learn for your own scripts.