NewsLink Issue 48/October 2003 =========================================================================== NewsLink is a free weekly e-mail newsletter featuring news and resources for the information industry. If you are receiving this issue as a forward and would like to become a subscriber, please visit our Web site at https://www.infotoday.com or send a blank e-mail to join-infotoday@lists.infotoday.com. =================================================================== SPONSOR _ KMWorld & Intranets 2003 Conferences & Exposition =================================================================== Don’t Miss This Mega-Event Dedicated to Knowledge Management, Intranets, and Portals October 14-16, 2003 Santa Clara Convention Center, Santa Clara, CA KMWorld & Intranets 2003 features more than 120 speakers in six simultaneous tracks, 100 in-depth sessions, 12 pre-conference workshops, and leading-edge KM, intranets, and portal solutions providers. The event provides an unsurpassed opportunity to gain new insight, increase your return on investment, and accelerate development and innovation in your evolving enterprises. Register today at http://www.kmworld.com/kmw03 =================================================================== IN THIS ISSUE =================================================================== 1) WELCOME 2) ITI SNAP POLL 3) NEWSLINK MONTHLY SPOTLIGHT 4) NEWSBREAKS 5) FEATURED ARTICLES 6) CONFERENCE CONNECTION 7) BOOKSHELF =================================================================== 1) WELCOME =================================================================== Welcome to the October 2003 issue of NewsLink, Information Today, Inc.'s FREE e-mail newsletter for library and information professionals. In this month’s spotlight article, Paula Hane analyzes two new upgrades to Endeca’s enterprise search products: Endeca InFront 4.0 and Endeca ProFind 4.0. Fall conference season is just around the corner. Check out our Conference Connection section for the latest dates and info for industry events. We are very excited about the upcoming KMWorld & Intranets Conferences & Exposition. The event, taking place October 14-16 in Santa Clara, Calif., will be host to dynamic keynote speakers and leading-edge KM, intranets, and portal solutions providers. We hope all those attending enjoy the conference and exposition. There is still time to register. Go to http://www.kmworld.com/kmw03. You can also register on-site at the Santa Clara Convention Center. If you have any comments or suggestions on any special content you would like to see covered or on how to improve this newsletter and the information held in it, please reply to newslink@infotoday.com. Best Wishes, Tom Hogan, Jr. =================================================================== 2) ITI SNAP POLL =================================================================== Have you implemented (or are you planning to implement) a blog within your organization? Please comment at https://www.infotoday.com/default.shtml. =================================================================== 3) NEWSLINK MONTHLY SPOTLIGHT =================================================================== Endeca Upgrades Its Enterprise Search Products By Paula J. Hane Endeca, based in Cambridge, Mass., is a relative newcomer in the enterprise search arena. The company was founded in 1999 and spent the first 2 years or so in R&D before building a sales and marketing team for its fledgling products. By mid-2003, the company, now up to 100 employees, announced that, since the launch of its first commercial product, it had done $20 million in business bookings in just 18 months. On Oct. 1, Endeca announced version 4.0 of its two cornerstone products, Endeca InFront, an e-commerce and catalog search solution, and Endeca ProFind, an enterprise search solution. The upgrades offer enhanced enterprise-class search capabilities; additional security; an enhanced Developer Studio; new multilingual support; and Compound Dimension Search, a patent-pending new approach to multiword queries. The heart of Endeca’s products is its Endeca Search and Guided Navigation engine, which combines full-text searching with navigation capabilities. The company says that this easily integrated platform is different from other search engines because of its ability to discover relevant relationships in data and find accurate and precise results with unprecedented speed. Endeca InFront 4.0 lets businesses use the power of Endeca Search and Guided Navigation to provide customized search to site visitors and utilize dynamic merchandising for highlighting products on a site (to encourage more purchases). It’s used for catalogs, directories, and retailers. Customers include barnesandnoble.com, Eddie Bauer, and PC Connection. Endeca first launched Endeca ProFind in the third quarter of 2002. Version 4.0 offers new security features; three new adapters for increased integration capabilities; added language support, including Japanese and Chinese (in partnership with Basis Technology); and increased performance, scalability, and reliability. ProFind can handle all types of content within an enterprise, both structured and unstructured, including databases, documents, or e-mail. Business partners like ClearForest provide rules-based, native, entity, and concept extraction from the content. ProFind can be integrated with existing taxonomies. According to Endeca, ProFind 4.0 also introduces a new patent-pending search technique that addresses multiword/natural language queries—without the high cost of NLP setup and maintenance. David Gourley, CTO of Endeca, said: "ProFind 4.0 is the result of extensive research and development into what companies and business users require to locate and access information across the enterprise, regardless of location or format type. As a result, the new and enhanced features in Endeca ProFind 4.0 allow businesses to search, navigate, retrieve, and use their data in groundbreaking ways." Last fall, Information Handling Service (IHS) Engineering adopted Endeca ProFind. According to IHS, it has helped eliminate the "million or none" problem in which the burden is placed on the user to describe items in a way that’s recognizable to the system. This often results in a long list of irrelevant results or no results at all. "Endeca offers a comprehensive solution that combines search and navigation—something that other vendors are lacking—allowing users to search through our more than 1.5 million online technical information documents and products catalogs and easily find what they are looking for," said Randy Weil, president and COO of IHS Engineering. "We’ve seen incredible results much faster than we had anticipated. The fact that we were able to get up and running quickly, combined with improved user experience and significant cost savings, is a competitive edge in today’s economic climate." Not the Only Game in Town Nearby, outside Boston, another company offers what it calls its Synchronized Search and Navigation platform. EasyAsk, a provider of information access software for Global 2000 enterprises, recently announced EasyAsk Enterprise 9, its platform for "unifying all forms of enterprise content and enabling information access across commerce, service, and decision-support activities." EasyAsk is used by companies like Lands’ End and GlaxoSmithKline. Also, don’t forget about some of the big-name players in the enterprise search space that have been around longer, including Autonomy, Verity (which purchased Inktomi’s enterprise search), Convera, and FAST (which also purchased the AltaVista enterprise search business from Overture). Google also operates in this market with its Google Search Appliance. None of these companies is standing still. It’s obviously a big need to fill (and there’s a lot of money to be made) with the right products that do much more than just offer keyword searching. The trend in products now is to integrate entity extraction, linguistic technologies, taxonomies, and classification to provide better search results with less work. So there’s a lot of room for competitors, innovators, and upstarts. Paula J. Hane is Information Today, Inc.’s news bureau chief and editor of NewsBreaks. Her e-mail address is phane@infotoday.com. =================================================================== 4) NEWSBREAKS =================================================================== For a complete listing of previous NewsBreaks visit the Information Today, Inc. Web site at https://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks. NewsBreaks for Monday, September 29, 2003 ------------------------ Moreover Introduces New Blog Monitoring Tool By Barbara Quint Moreover Technologies based in the U.K., has announced a new business information service called Weblog Content Pack. The database service scans some 25,000 Web logs (aka blogs) for enterprises eager to expand their competitive intelligence and market research to encompass this new form of information. The new package adds to Moreover’s Connected Intelligence (ci) product suite. For an additional fee, users will be able to receive near real-time (15-minute delay) updates on blog content filtered for profiled interests through standard delivery options offered in Moreover’s ci services. --> https://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks/nb030929-1.shtml ----------------------------------------------------------- Antarctica Upgrades Its Visual Net Software By Paula J. Hane Antarctica Systems, Inc., one of the leading developers of visualization technology, has just announced version 4.0 of its Visual Net (VN) software, which provides a map interface to information of all kinds. The upgrades to Visual Net were aimed at maximizing the screen real estate to put as much information at a user’s fingertips as possible, while maintaining visual clarity and usability. The company redesigned the entire user interface, upgraded the underlying technology, and built in additional interactivity. The changes made by Antarctica position the product to handle the key business issues and data complexities of large enterprises—a market it is now heavily targeting. --> https://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks/nb030929-2.shtml ------------------------------------------ NewsBreaks Weekly News Digest ------------------------------------------ Stellent Releases Content Management 7.0 Stellent, Inc. announced the release of Stellent Content Management 7.0. The company says this new version provides the only solution supporting each aspect of content management within a single, common product architecture. --> https://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks/wnd030929.shtml CISTI to Offer Secure Web Delivery of Documents The Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information announced it will launch a new delivery method in December 2003. Secure Desktop Delivery (SDD) will enable Web delivery of copyright-cleared electronic documents directly to the end user. According to CISTI, clients have been asking for electronic delivery for years, and CISTI now has the technology and agreements in place to make this possible. --> https://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks/wnd030929.shtml Company Dossier Now Available in LexisNexis Academic LexisNexis U.S. has announced the release of LexisNexis Company Dossier into the academic market. The research tool has been available to the corporate market and LexisNexis has now expanded its availability to the academic sector. --> https://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks/wnd030929.shtml =================================================================== 5) FEATURED ARTICLES =================================================================== For full-text coverage of the following articles please use the hotlinks provided. INFORMATION TODAY The Great Copyright Debate By Gail Dykstra The Seybold San Francisco 2003 seminar featured "The Great Copyright Debate" as one of its keynote sessions. --> https://www.infotoday.com/it/oct03/dykstra.shtml ------------------------ ONLINE Magazine Information Quality, Liability, and Corrections By Stephen Adams Just as the garden weeds are more robust than the desired plants, bad information rears its ugly head more virulently than good information. --> https://www.infotoday.com/online/sep03/adams.shtml ------------------------ COMPUTERS IN LIBRARIES The Librarian Is In and Online By Jessamyn West Feel threatened by the Google Answers service? Learning more about it from an insider might ease your mind. Get the scoop here. --> https://www.infotoday.com/cilmag/oct03/west.shtml ------------------------ SEARCHER Magazine Net Effects: How Librarians Manage the Unintended Consequences of the Internet By Marylaine Block Web filters, user expectations, access problems, disappearing data ... Marylaine Block offers advice on how to deal with all types of Net-induced difficulties. --> https://www.infotoday.com/searcher/oct03/block.shtml ------------------------ MULTIMEDIA SCHOOLS How to Create a Standards-Driven, Technology-Based Collaborative Media Program By Peggy Milam The information explosion doesn't just affect baby boomers. Today's students are no less susceptible to this overload of information than are today's workers. --> https://www.infotoday.com/MMSchools/oct03/milam.shtml ------------------------ LINK-UP DIGITAL Computer Crisis! What to do when your hard drive is destroyed or your laptop is stolen By J.A. Hitchcock When disaster strikes in the form of a hard drive crash, damage to your computer, or loss of your laptop, do you have a way of recovering everything saved onto your hard disk? --> https://www.infotoday.com/linkup/lud100103-hitchcock.shtml =================================================================== 6) CONFERENCE CONNECTION =================================================================== Get the latest event information available for the library and information fields in the Conference Connection. The Conference Report/Update gives you an inside look at the most recent information industry events, while the Conference Calendar is updated monthly to provide you with important contact information for up-and-coming industry events. CONFERENCE REPORT/UPDATE ------------------------ KMWorld & Intranets Conferences & Exposition October 14-16, 2003, Santa Clara, California The exciting combination of KMWorld 2003 and Intranets 2003 offers attendees a powerful one-stop opportunity to explore the strategic potential of knowledge management and/or master the related technologies of intranets and portals. The complementary aspects of the fields of knowledge management and intranets are numerous, and the workshops, tracks, and sessions you’ll find in both conferences combine to offer you a robust selection of expert speakers and relevant topics that will enhance your skills and maximize your on-the-job proficiency. REGISTER TODAY! http://www.kmworld.com/kmw03 Internet Librarian Conference & Exhibition November 3-5, 2003, Monterey, California New and cool tools are always important to Internet Librarians and Internet Content Pros—and this year the program is filled with new tools and techniques, applications and opportunities to help us streamline our operations, improve and enhance our customer relationships, develop new applications, and more. Our seventh annual Internet Librarian conference is a mixture of leading-edge ideas, tools, expert speakers, and exciting new events—all focused on information professionals and Internet-related technologies. REGISTER TODAY! https://www.infotoday.com/il2003/ CONFERENCE CALENDAR ------------------- October 14-16 KMWORLD & INTRANETS, Santa Clara, CA Contact: http://www.kmworld-intranets.com October 14-16 STREAMING MEDIA CA, Santa Clara, CA Contact: http://www.streamingmedia.com October 19-22 The European Association of Information Services (EUSIDIC), Prague, Czech Republic Contact: http://www.eusidic.org October 20-23 AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY (ASIST), Long Beach, CA Contact: http://www.asis.org October 22-26 ASSOCIATION FOR EDUCATIONAL COMMUNICATIONS AND TECHNOLOGY, Anaheim, CA Contact: http://www.aect.org November 3-5 INTERNET LIBRARIAN, Monterey, CA Contact: https://www.infotoday.com/il2003/ December 2-4 ONLINE INFORMATION, Olympia Grand Hall, London, U.K. Contact: http://www.online-information.co.uk/online/conference.asp For the complete Conference Calendar visit https://www.infotoday.com/calendar.shtml. =================================================================== 7) BOOKSHELF =================================================================== Information Representation and Retrieval in the Digital Age, by Heting Chu This new book offers a comprehensive and current view of Information Representation and Retrieval (IRR), a key topic for developers and users of online and Internet data retrieval systems. With an emphasis on principles and fundamentals, author Heting Chu first reviews key concepts and major developmental stages of the IRR field, then systematically examines retrieval techniques, models, and Internet systems. Chu explains the retrieval of multilingual, multimedia, and hyperstructured information; explores the user dimension and evaluation issues; and analyzes the role and potential of artificial intelligence (AI) in IRR. Meticulously researched and organized, the book is designed as a guide for developers and users of information retrieval systems and as a textbook for scholars and students in library and information science. "Professor Chu has done an outstanding job dealing with virtually all facets of the field, intellectual and automated, covering both input and output activities, and not neglecting the historical context," said F.W. Lancaster, Professor Emeritus at the University of Illinois Graduate School of Library and Information Science. "It's an impressive achievement." Order your copy today! https://books.infotoday.com/books/InfoRep.shtml ------------------- September 2003/hardbound ISBN: 1-57387-172-9 ASIST members $35.60, Nonmembers $44.50 =================================================================== SPONSOR _ KMWorld & Intranets 2003 Conferences & Exposition =================================================================== Don’t Miss This Mega-Event Dedicated to Knowledge Management, Intranets, and Portals October 14-16, 2003 Santa Clara Convention Center, Santa Clara, CA KMWorld & Intranets 2003 features more than 120 speakers in six simultaneous tracks, 100 in-depth sessions, 12 pre-conference workshops, and leading-edge KM, intranets, and portal solutions providers. The event provides an unsurpassed opportunity to gain new insight, increase your return on investment, and accelerate development and innovation in your evolving enterprises. Register today at http://www.kmworld.com/kmw03 =========================================================================== ©2003 Information Today, Inc. all rights reserved. This newsletter is published by Information Today, Inc. Editor in Chief: Tom Hogan, Jr. Managing Editor: Stacey Sochacki Phone: 609-654-6266 Fax: 609-654-4309 Web site: https://www.infotoday.com E-mail: newslink@infotoday.com To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-infotoday-9382643Q@lists.infotoday.com.