I have moved my blog to http://blog.nimitkumar.in. I finally managed to work my way to set up wordpress on my personal domain. It was easy to set up and it rocks!
--nimit.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
UIMA and the Semantic Search
IBM's Unstructured Information Management Architecture (UIMA) was released to the open source community in early 2006 when the entire source code was made available on Sourceforge. After spending more than a year at Sourceforge, UIMA is now a part of the Apache Incubator.
UIMA is pitched to become the first and only open-standard for unstructured information management. In very short, UIMA is a framework for building analytics solutions for the new world of structured-unstructured information sharing. Other frameworks like CALAIS are narrowly focussed on the Semantic Web technologies rather than providing a framework for building rich Text Analytics applications.
UIMA allows developers to build applications around technologies and chain the processes through its framework. Each component in the framework is an annotator. Consider for example an application that identifies person names in a text document. The algorithm can be implemented as an annotator that implements the UIMA interface (jCAS if you are using apache UIMA) for common analysis systems(CAS). A CAS is a general representation schema and can store arbitrary data structures for the analysis of documents. Using CAS, the span of annotation can be represented easily. The data can be passed through several Analysis Engines (AE) so far as each of them comply to the descriptor. Details on using UIMA and how to build Aggregate Analysis Engines are available here.
One of the most exciting engagement will be between UIMA and the Semantic Search. Semantic Search is the next generation of Search Technology using metadata (read information) created through Advanced Text Analytics and enabling 'contextual' search. The underlying technologies from NLP, Machine Learning, Statistics have existed for decades and explored to finer details by the research community. With the increasing adoption of enabling frameworks like UIMA, it is now easy to develop scalable solutions using Advanced Research Tools.
Some useful links to learn how UIMA can be used for building advanced text analytics solutions:
1. Background information on UIMA
2. UIMA and Semantic Search
Undercover information: When at IBM, I was part of the gang that developed ProAct - A UIMA based Customer Satisfaction Analysis technology.
UIMA is pitched to become the first and only open-standard for unstructured information management. In very short, UIMA is a framework for building analytics solutions for the new world of structured-unstructured information sharing. Other frameworks like CALAIS are narrowly focussed on the Semantic Web technologies rather than providing a framework for building rich Text Analytics applications.
UIMA allows developers to build applications around technologies and chain the processes through its framework. Each component in the framework is an annotator. Consider for example an application that identifies person names in a text document. The algorithm can be implemented as an annotator that implements the UIMA interface (jCAS if you are using apache UIMA) for common analysis systems(CAS). A CAS is a general representation schema and can store arbitrary data structures for the analysis of documents. Using CAS, the span of annotation can be represented easily. The data can be passed through several Analysis Engines (AE) so far as each of them comply to the descriptor. Details on using UIMA and how to build Aggregate Analysis Engines are available here.
One of the most exciting engagement will be between UIMA and the Semantic Search. Semantic Search is the next generation of Search Technology using metadata (read information) created through Advanced Text Analytics and enabling 'contextual' search. The underlying technologies from NLP, Machine Learning, Statistics have existed for decades and explored to finer details by the research community. With the increasing adoption of enabling frameworks like UIMA, it is now easy to develop scalable solutions using Advanced Research Tools.
Some useful links to learn how UIMA can be used for building advanced text analytics solutions:
1. Background information on UIMA
2. UIMA and Semantic Search
Undercover information: When at IBM, I was part of the gang that developed ProAct - A UIMA based Customer Satisfaction Analysis technology.
Friday, February 1, 2008
What is Microsoft upto?
This sure is a no-brainer. It is gearing up for a whole new battle of market share on the Web - Ad Revenues, et al. Mr. Gates announced in the World Economic Forum at Davos this year that his company is getting ready with some new and exciting products in the WWW services/offerings arena. Interesting was his comment that there is not just one company in this world of "Search". And why not? The online ad market is projected to grow to $61 billion. You sure have arrived Mr. Gates - though inorganically, but who cares.
Microsoft announced it's intention to acquire Yahoo! and made an offer of $31/share valuing the company at $44.6 billion. This is after the two companies decided to work together in 2006.
There has been consistent effort by Microsoft to consolidate it's portfolio of offerings related to enterprise search and web/mobile advertisement. MSDN's enterprise search blog is a good insight into the company's initiatives in this realm.
In 2007 alone, MSFT made 7 acquisitions related to the two offerings. The recent acquisition of Oslo based Fast Search & Transfer (FAST) for $1.2 billion is aimed at giving Sharepoint (MSFT's enterprise offering) a smarter search capability. Earlier in 2007, MSFT announced a partnership with Atlassian (of Confluence fame) and Newsgator for providing more features taking Sharepoint closer to the Web 2.0 world. Sharepoint contributes $800 million to MSFT's revenues and it seems the Redmond gang is beginning to feel the heat from open-source collaboration platforms such as mediawiki.
Sharepoint badly needed a makeover and to get rid of its very Office-like feeling. I am a big fan of MS Office, but I sure am not game with the use of a Word app for maintaining personal notes and technical meeting records. I would anyday prefer a wiki with latex and mindmap plugins. The Atlassian and Newsgator partnership is probably targeted around building such easy to use features around Sharepoint.
To add to user's woes imagine digging out relevant information from hundreds of documents and not being able to search within the document contents. For large enterprises this is a non-trivial problem; and a very annoying one too. The FAST acquisition will probably enable Sharepoint with potential solution to these bottlenecks.
With enterprises slowly (but steadily) accepting open-source technologies, will MSFT's pursuit to revive and empower Sharepoint and enterprise technologies really work? This is a question we all will eagerly wait for an answer.
The game has already begun. This is a three cornered polygon - Google, MSFT and the Open-source, with Google trying to get identified as an open-source angel. My personal favourite is the world of Sourceforge, Slashdot and Wikipedia. Let the best win the battle.
Microsoft announced it's intention to acquire Yahoo! and made an offer of $31/share valuing the company at $44.6 billion. This is after the two companies decided to work together in 2006.
There has been consistent effort by Microsoft to consolidate it's portfolio of offerings related to enterprise search and web/mobile advertisement. MSDN's enterprise search blog is a good insight into the company's initiatives in this realm.
In 2007 alone, MSFT made 7 acquisitions related to the two offerings. The recent acquisition of Oslo based Fast Search & Transfer (FAST) for $1.2 billion is aimed at giving Sharepoint (MSFT's enterprise offering) a smarter search capability. Earlier in 2007, MSFT announced a partnership with Atlassian (of Confluence fame) and Newsgator for providing more features taking Sharepoint closer to the Web 2.0 world. Sharepoint contributes $800 million to MSFT's revenues and it seems the Redmond gang is beginning to feel the heat from open-source collaboration platforms such as mediawiki.
Sharepoint badly needed a makeover and to get rid of its very Office-like feeling. I am a big fan of MS Office, but I sure am not game with the use of a Word app for maintaining personal notes and technical meeting records. I would anyday prefer a wiki with latex and mindmap plugins. The Atlassian and Newsgator partnership is probably targeted around building such easy to use features around Sharepoint.
To add to user's woes imagine digging out relevant information from hundreds of documents and not being able to search within the document contents. For large enterprises this is a non-trivial problem; and a very annoying one too. The FAST acquisition will probably enable Sharepoint with potential solution to these bottlenecks.
With enterprises slowly (but steadily) accepting open-source technologies, will MSFT's pursuit to revive and empower Sharepoint and enterprise technologies really work? This is a question we all will eagerly wait for an answer.
The game has already begun. This is a three cornered polygon - Google, MSFT and the Open-source, with Google trying to get identified as an open-source angel. My personal favourite is the world of Sourceforge, Slashdot and Wikipedia. Let the best win the battle.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Shameless self proclamation
The Blog Readability test announces this blog to be of the 'Genius' level. I am curious to know how this thing works. It will be interesting to see how this level changes as i post more stuff here.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
The case of the Bonsai Manager
The case of the bonsai manager - sometime later in 2007 I got a chance to read this wonderful book by R. Gopalakrishnan. In this interesting book, Gopalakrishnan derives inspiration from nature to motivate managerial thoughts and growth stories.
I have never been a 'manager' myself - except from being a lead on some projects and choreographing some dances - enjoying most of both the challenges. An interesting note for me is a strong correlation between dance troupes and product development teams; or any team for that matter.
There always is a delicate balance between discipline, passion and co-operation. An inspiring choreographer/manager can identify personality-role mappings; resolve conflicts; respects group and individual priorities and discourages negative energies. McKinsey Quarterly (4, 2007) discusses radical change in organisations and mentions the need to remove negative energies. Negative energies often creep into leadership personalities creating a gang of cynics. This is the birth of the bonsai manager - the growth has just been stunted!
The big Q is to know how to NOT be a bonsai and continue with one's natural growth. The first step to dance the natural way is to feel the music and the rhythm - to be honest and receptive. You need a filter to separate the noise that may have corrupted the fine tracks of the music - to listen to the honest critics and ignore/accept others.
McKinsey's review on radical change emphasizes the need for an orchestrated story. If the dancer in the last row on stage goofs up, the show ends up in a mess. Every member is important - and he/she will only feel important if the leader shares the story and emphasizes how their presence is making a difference. Managers often forget this in the rush to fulfill their personal committments to their bosses. The story has to trickle down and percolate amongst the group.
I started my career with an outstanding R&D institution where I was away from the brutalities/excitement of product development. I was enjoying another part of the grilling and mind boggling world of ideation and proof-of-concept development. I also have spent a bit of life on the excitement of software engineering. A very inspiring person once explained me the life-cycle of a product starting from an idea to the market place. The challenge of bringing a concept out of the lab, transferring technology into usable products, and witnessing this journey is an amazing experience.
There is nothing that excites me more than the awareness and identification with a good story - a music that makes me tap down the street. On the flip side, there is nothing more than an aimless journey that can unsettle me. The bottomline truth is - there is either a true story or a good story. What you believe in is what you make of yourself.
May the world have less bonsai managers!
I have never been a 'manager' myself - except from being a lead on some projects and choreographing some dances - enjoying most of both the challenges. An interesting note for me is a strong correlation between dance troupes and product development teams; or any team for that matter.
There always is a delicate balance between discipline, passion and co-operation. An inspiring choreographer/manager can identify personality-role mappings; resolve conflicts; respects group and individual priorities and discourages negative energies. McKinsey Quarterly (4, 2007) discusses radical change in organisations and mentions the need to remove negative energies. Negative energies often creep into leadership personalities creating a gang of cynics. This is the birth of the bonsai manager - the growth has just been stunted!
The big Q is to know how to NOT be a bonsai and continue with one's natural growth. The first step to dance the natural way is to feel the music and the rhythm - to be honest and receptive. You need a filter to separate the noise that may have corrupted the fine tracks of the music - to listen to the honest critics and ignore/accept others.
McKinsey's review on radical change emphasizes the need for an orchestrated story. If the dancer in the last row on stage goofs up, the show ends up in a mess. Every member is important - and he/she will only feel important if the leader shares the story and emphasizes how their presence is making a difference. Managers often forget this in the rush to fulfill their personal committments to their bosses. The story has to trickle down and percolate amongst the group.
I started my career with an outstanding R&D institution where I was away from the brutalities/excitement of product development. I was enjoying another part of the grilling and mind boggling world of ideation and proof-of-concept development. I also have spent a bit of life on the excitement of software engineering. A very inspiring person once explained me the life-cycle of a product starting from an idea to the market place. The challenge of bringing a concept out of the lab, transferring technology into usable products, and witnessing this journey is an amazing experience.
There is nothing that excites me more than the awareness and identification with a good story - a music that makes me tap down the street. On the flip side, there is nothing more than an aimless journey that can unsettle me. The bottomline truth is - there is either a true story or a good story. What you believe in is what you make of yourself.
May the world have less bonsai managers!
Saturday, December 15, 2007
Age of the Wikimania: the importance of online collaboration
The Web 2.0 and the easy access to bandwidth has ushered in some new paradigms in collaboration. The rise of the wikipedia (in general the open source wiki frameworks such as mediawiki) and P2P frameworks have transformed knowledge sharing in the open-source (or should i say open-knowledge) world.
The use of online collaboration technologies in managing knowledge sharing has made me a strong proponent of open-source collaborative systems - wikipedia, sourceforge, bugzilla, mind-maps to name a few. The success of the open source revolution can be attributed to different technology advancements in on-line collaborative systems. If google made it simpler for people to use the internet, wikipedia has brought knowledge sharing at the click of the mouse. These technologies have now started seeping into the intranet of organizations and effectively used for knowledge sharing and information management within and between groups. The ubiquitous nature of groups - often positioned across time zones and the need of easy-to-manage knowledge bases have championed the use of online collaboration.
In Wikinomics, Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams aptly desribe the use of mass collaboration for improving internal organizational processes to knowledge sharing. This is an interesting read and strongly recommended for those who are excited about the charms of collaboration and knowledge sharing.
If you are interested in setting up a wiki for your organization, I strongly recommed using mediawiki. Mediawiki with a mySQL support works great. All you would need is php, apache and a mysql server on a linux box to get going. It has easy to integrate features with any user management system.
The use of online collaboration technologies in managing knowledge sharing has made me a strong proponent of open-source collaborative systems - wikipedia, sourceforge, bugzilla, mind-maps to name a few. The success of the open source revolution can be attributed to different technology advancements in on-line collaborative systems. If google made it simpler for people to use the internet, wikipedia has brought knowledge sharing at the click of the mouse. These technologies have now started seeping into the intranet of organizations and effectively used for knowledge sharing and information management within and between groups. The ubiquitous nature of groups - often positioned across time zones and the need of easy-to-manage knowledge bases have championed the use of online collaboration.
In Wikinomics, Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams aptly desribe the use of mass collaboration for improving internal organizational processes to knowledge sharing. This is an interesting read and strongly recommended for those who are excited about the charms of collaboration and knowledge sharing.
If you are interested in setting up a wiki for your organization, I strongly recommed using mediawiki. Mediawiki with a mySQL support works great. All you would need is php, apache and a mysql server on a linux box to get going. It has easy to integrate features with any user management system.
Sunday, September 30, 2007
another blog.....
My older blog (nimitkumar.blogspot.com) has a very high variance - evident of any kid growing up through college and early work-years. Waking up to my varied (and geeky) interest in technology, innovation and economics I decided to start another weblog where I can maintain a collection of my thoughts-random, so what. You may have to be patient with me on this one - my thoughts could be very naive and sometimes debatable.
As Nassim Taleb says - "You may not be able to change the world but can at least get some entertainment & make a living out of the epistemic arrogance of the human race".
I definitely don't expect myself to change anything in this world. Probably I will make some (necessary and positive) amendments to myself and have a good laugh.
Cheers,
-N.
As Nassim Taleb says - "You may not be able to change the world but can at least get some entertainment & make a living out of the epistemic arrogance of the human race".
I definitely don't expect myself to change anything in this world. Probably I will make some (necessary and positive) amendments to myself and have a good laugh.
Cheers,
-N.
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