Over the last few weeks, I have had the opportunity to work and play around with the Google Search Appliance Version 7.0, and I must say that it’s an interesting piece of technology. Varying opinions, such as “Yeah, GSA is cool, but it can’t do X, Y, or Z,” have prevented many people from adopting the Google offering as a real Enterprise Search solution. Thanks to the new version, most of those limitations are a thing of the past. The platform is much more mature than previous versions. You can sense that Google is really making the effort required to improve its search platform so that it properly addresses the needs of the Enterprise market. It’s not just about web content anymore. Read More…
Norconex participation in the CIBC Run for the Cure
Norconex will be back at this years CIBC Run for the Cure event, on September 30, in Ottawa. The Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation CIBC Run for the Cure is Canada’s largest single day, volunteer-led fundraising event dedicated to raising funds for breast cancer research, education and awareness programs. It was founded by a small group of volunteers who wanted to raise awareness and funds for the breast cancer cause. Last year, Canadians united to raise over $30 million in the 2011 Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation CIBC Run for the Cure. Please help make this year another success and come run with us or make a donation here.
Enterprise Search Summit – NYC – 2012
No drastic changes to the industry were observed at this year’s Enterprise Search Summit (#ESS12) in New York. Despite the fact that there wasn’t anything ground breaking there are still some industry trends that continue to prevail.
Open Source Search
Open source search technology continues to evolve and must be considered as a legitimate option for many organizations. The open source search community is now standardizing and continuing to develop more sound solutions. In addition, there are more third party open source experts that can assist with ongoing support and maintenance of your open source search applications (Norconex, being one of them). The open source search player’s presence was felt this year. Read More…
Top 10 Search Design Pattern Websites
Over the past few years we’ve seen a drastic improvement in search interfaces. The development of ugly search boxes and incomprehensible search result screens should now (hopefully) be a thing of the past. New search UI’s are designed and developed daily, that are crisp, clean, well thought out, and really help guide users to the information they’re looking for. Search based concepts and technologies are finally starting to be properly recognized as being as important as the content they’re put in place to help discover. A clean, well thought out search user interface not only makes a large difference in helping users navigate site information, but also goes a long ways towards bringing users back for more. Read More…
Happy 5th Birthday Norconex!
Norconex is celebrating its fifth anniversary. We are taking this opportunity to thank you for your contribution in making us a successful company. Many thanks go to Norconex customers, partners and other enterprise search enthusiasts. Your continuing support keep us going strong. Read More…
Enterprise Search Pitfalls: Underestimating Implementation Efforts
I’ll say it: enterprise search is expensive and takes time to do properly. The bigger the number of different repository types, the more complex your architecture is, the more you have in-house solutions or archaic systems in place, the more it will cost you time and money. Seems obvious doesn’t it? Then why do so many enterprise search projects go over budget? Possibly due to the fact that enterprise search is often treated as an “add-on” to an existing infrastructure, or even as a necessary evil in some cases. Many will treat search implementations like any other “simple” project. To them the requirements gathering, vendor evaluation, and procurement process are the most daunting tasks. Actual implementation and ongoing maintenance is too often neglected. Read More…
Enterprise Search Pitfalls: Believing in Magic
Series Introduction
Regardless how many satisfied enterprise search customers we meet, it seems there are always “irritants”. Many enterprise search customers have shared with us their frustrations towards their current search engine solution. For some, frustration grows with their needs. For others, it seems as though no search engine works quite like they want it to. Read More…
Search UI Showcase: The Search Box
Series Introduction
Over the past several years, we’ve helped clients design, implement and maintain unique search implementations. A natural side effect of our search implementation work has been exposure to hundreds, if not thousands, of different approaches to implementing various forms of search functionality. The organizations we’ve worked with usually have a pretty good understanding of how they want their search system to look and work. On the other hand, they have often not been exposed to possible search user interface search design techniques that could help them greatly improve their search. To help enterprise search customers understand different search user interface approaches, we’ve decided to start a series of articles showcasing well thought out search user interface component implementations. In each one of these articles we’ll showcase 5 different public search implementations, focusing on one search UI component. We’ll outline what we like about the UI approach, and how it helps improve the search experience. Search UI implementations will be highlighted from organizations varying in size and intended audience, and will in no way be exhaustive. These examples represent just a few of the many great implementations of a specific search UI component out there. (Note: This series is not intended to be a a showcase for Norconex accomplishments – we are intentionally not using search examples taken from sites or applications we’ve worked on. Please refer to our portfolio for implementations performed by Norconex.) Read More…
Enterprise Search Europe 2011
Enterprise Search Europe 2011 (#eseu) has come and gone. So what was new and exciting in this first edition in terms of technology? Not much. As stated by many speakers during the conference, Enterprise Search technology is pretty mature now. It has been around for multiple decades and most of the major break throughs have been made. There is always room for some innovation, but the event did not un-cover any ground-breaking research or incredible search improvements. Read More…
Canada’s Government Technology Event (GTEC 2011) Recap
Well, another GTEC has finished. We definitely had a great time attending this years government technology conference, and thoroughly enjoyed camping out in a booth there for a few days. We met a lot of really interesting people, from just about every possible business spectrum. All Canadian government departments seemed to be in attendance, and the people we met definitely made these departments shine. Read More…