A new look from Silobreaker with more insights

Silobreaker continues their enhancement in their new beta. They are one of the few companies (and few smart guys in Sweden) who understand how to play with information to provide more intelligence.

Where to spend R&D dollars

In a recent HBR article (July-August issue) Jim Scinta who is the Chair of IRI's Research on Research Committee and a manager at ConocoPhillips highlights that companies are spending more dollars in new projects than basic research which is critical to innovation and developing breakthrough products. He gives examples from two companies ConocoPhillips and Pfizer on how they use their basic research effectively. He states that:

"While firms that concentrate on new projects may satisfy some of their immediate business goals, they will probably fail to cultivate the broad-based knowledge they'll need to realize their leading goal of growth through innovation"

Xerox and Smart Search

Xerox launched a new document search software called FactSpotter which claims to go beyond the conventional keyword search and extract concepts and relationships withing the text. They plan to launch the product in the legal market.

The software like AskOnce was developed at their Grenoble research center. Few years ago I had the pleasure to meet few scientists and engineers at their Grenoble center and worked with them on a proof of concept similar to FactSpotter. They have a bunch of very smart guys there and at the time they were years ahead in their ideas on information retrieval. I would love to see what they created in FactSpotter.

Crave about iPhone

This would go under "Things that I don't understand". What's the big deal if you get this one a month later? At the end you'll make a phone call. Would I wait in line to get this. Nop, it's not like they will be sold out like a game between Pele and Cruijff Via Steve Rubel

Nature Does it Again: It's all about access and sharing of scientific information

Here is Timo Hannay, Nature's Director of Web Publishing's email to Tim O'Reilly explaining the new Nature Precedings initiative.

"[Nature Precedings] will enable researchers to share, discuss and cite their early findings. It provides a lightly moderated and relatively informal channel for scientists to disseminate information, especially recent experimental results and emerging conclusions. In this sense, it is designed to complement traditional peer-reviewed journals, allowing researchers to make informal communications such as conference papers or presentations more widely available and enabling them to be formally cited. This, in turn, allows them to solicit community feedback and establish priority over their results or ideas." via Nascent

I agree with Tim O'Reilly 's conclusion in terms of bold moves by Nature's team:

"They are consistently the boldest and most innovative of publishers -- and it's so rare to see a market leader with Nature's unparalleled reputation taking such risks. It's truly inspiring."

Yellow Pages in France powered by Exalead

Exalead powers the new beta site of 118 218.

More on this launch at Exalead's Blog


After the post comment: As Nicholas indicates in the comments, title of this post should have a phone directory and not the yellow pages. www.118218.fr is a website of Le Numero , the French brand of Infonxx which is " the world’s premier provider of directory assistance and enhanced information services."

Alternatives to Google?

There are a lot of players in the search field to provide a much better and meaningful search experience to users, and present us insights instead of just search results. So far what I am interested is a combination of Google, Medstory, Powerset and Silobreaker

The Antiquity of our Healthcare System

Due to an unfortunate event which started at Beth Israel Medical Center my wife had to spent 5 days in NYU Medical Center. I am not sure how NYU got the best rating in NYC, but my wife's stay and the care that she received reminded us that as if she was being treated in a 3rd world country hospital.

In our business, we always talk about work-flow solutions and how we can improve the productivity of our users. From my 5 days observation, I can tell you there is a tremendous opportunity for work-flow solutions in the health care industry. Beside the poor quality of care, one thing that struck me was the inefficiency in whole information gathering and sharing, this is a big mess.

At least for me, it's unimaginable that in a hospital like NYU all the information is still being written, no PDAs and no notebooks. Even in restaurants, the restaurant managers or waiters can go to a terminal and see what a table ordered and what will be delivered to that table. Can't we have similar system in hospitals for patients, so that each doctor or nurse would know exactly what the patient has? Can't we all have or carry a smart card where all our health care info is there? Why I should be paying $0.75 per page to get the patients records? This whole system is in a big mess!

I'll be very happy to give my input and suggestions as an outsider to Dr. Robert Glickman who is the CEO of NYU Hospitals on how to improve the efficiency in NYU from my point of view.

It was also interesting for me to learn how semantics play a role in our health care system. What is called a "mistake" for a common human being, it's being called "complication" among doctors. Unfortunately with all the legal stuff that they might be facing, doctors are stunning away to say "mistake" and instead of that they use "complication".

On a more positive note on health, my colleague Jonathan Clark who works for our Health Science group has started a new blog. I strongly recommend to read his stuff, you'll enjoy his writing and thinking.