There is a new project on google code called Behemoth that utilizes Hadoop to achieve scale for GATE and UIMA applications. Here is a more detailed post from Julien:
"Behemoth allows to deploy GATE or UIMA applications over a Hadoop cluster in order to do very large scale document analysis. It uses a very simple representation format which can be used as a common ground between UIMA and GATE-generated annotations, hence achieving compatibility between both systems. Since it is Hadoop-based it benefits from all its features (scalability, fault-tolerance, etc…) and most notably the back up of a thriving open source community. Quite a few Apache resources already do or will fit into it: Nutch, Tika, Mahout, Hbase etc…"
A few days ago Daniel announced that he is joining Google where he would be focusing on changing the simplistic view of the google search (layout and all that), and today Techcrunch has a post that shows Google is flirting with the Search Options more (see screenshot below). It definitely shows that Google is finally understanding that Faceted Navigation (filtering) is a very powerful paradigm that helps users slice and dice results and help them narrow down to the result they are most interested in.
I think we will see a lot of activity from Google in this area as they enrich this functionality more and more. I can see them exposing dynamic faceting capability where based on the higher level type of information / type chosen, the facets that show up would change.
Checkout the Webinar on how Solr and Lucene are used to power Local Search and Geo Spatial applications. This includes the work I was involved with at AT&T Interactive building YP.com
Google has been talking about speed of their search engine as well as published how users react when search takes a longer time. Now, with a short interview with Mike from WebProNews, Matt Cutts says the speed of a site (load time) might become a ranking factor in search.
What does that mean?
- Web Site creators will be forced to ensure that their sites are faster - Greater demand for performance and scalability gurus - With speed being a factor in everyone's mind - Google would treat their quick response times as a competitive edge. Other search engines will have to raise the bar and focus a lot on ensuring that the search experience is super fast.
Work done by Stanford on Near Duplicate Detection using a technique called "Spot Signature Extraction". Seems like a decent approach for news articles. Planning to try it out on a small data set.
Interesting to find that Facebook has a user to developer ratio of 1.1 million (detailed post here)!! That's definitely some motivation for the developer as how much impact does his work has on the end users. What's the ratio at your company?
Seems like when it comes to ratings it’s pretty much all or nothing. Great videos prompt action; anything less prompts indifference. Thus, the ratings system is primarily being used as a seal of approval, not as an editorial indicator of what the community thinks about a video. Rating a video joins favoriting and sharing as a way to tell the world that this is something you love.
…, the company says its ranking system already factors in the number of reviews, whether they come from experienced Yelpers or first-time reviewers, and whether those reviews were voted helpful.
Frequent releases are desirable because of the changes it forces in software engineering. It discourages risky, expensive, large projects. It encourages experimentation, innovation, and rapid iteration. It reduces the cost of failure while also minimizing the risk of failure. It is a better way to build software.
