Lucid Imagination: Building Your Own Search with a Set of APIs

ReadWriteWeb

Lucid Imagination launched LucidWorks Enterprise today, a search technology with an API as part of its core.

The move is testament to the new world of the enterprise, where platforms are an attractive option for building applications that leverage the Web and multiple forms of structured and and unstructured data. It's a world where a search app has to be simple to build and flexible enough to connect people to the right information, be it internal documents or social data from the distributed Web.

At its core, LucidWork Enterprise is built on the Apache Solr/Lucene platform. Layered into the thinking it is a realization that content is changing in multiple dimensions. In terms of volume, content is coming in at a new pace. Twitter is testament to the speed in which data is now flowing.

And with this volume, the semantics are changing, too. The challenge becomes how semantics are refined in a search environment.

Video search, for instance, has a different context than plaint text. How that data is transformed into a search environment becomes a matter of how the service is built in the first place. The issue becomes a question of definition about the content and its meaning.

But in the end, the user gets information in different ways. They may type a query and gets a result or they may have an automated search to get the information they need.

It has to be straightforward. That means the search has to be easy for the customer to integrate. LucidWorks Enterprise works on the premise that Solr/Lucene can be leveraged with APIs. Customers can build their applications based upon a common admin console where data can be added and search features tuned depending on the needs of their users.

APs provide benefits such as the arms length configuration of Solr. Developers do not have to edit a Solr config file. Setting up the system, supplying data and schedules can be done through the API.

A click scoring feature provides the capability to leverage how the user interact. Results can be prioritized based upon what the user has already selected. Alerts have also been added for when new information has been added to the index. The system provides real-time feedback for developers on data coming through the connectors.

Enterprise search is a different animal than its consumer counterparts. it needs customization and refinement to be useful. There are multiple options. Google Search Appliance, Microsoft FAST, Autonomy and Endeca all compete with Lucid.

Building search technology into applications makes sense in this changing world of big data. Search has to be easy to scale. Building applications on open-source and APIs may not be for everyone but it does allow for providing the end user with an environment that can be fine tuned depending on the content being searched and its overall context.

Twitter Bans Third-Party Ad Networks From Using API
PC Mag

 

Twitter on Monday said that third-party ad networks will not be allowed to use the company's API in order to include paid tweets in the Twitter timeline.

"Aside from Promoted Tweets, we will not allow any third party to inject paid tweets into a timeline on any service that leverages the Twitter API," Dick Costolo, Twitter chief operating officer, wrote in a blog post. "We are updating our Terms of Service to articulate clearly what we mean by this statement, and we encourage you to read the updated API Terms of Service to be released shortly."

Promoted Tweets, which Twitter unveiled in April, displays advertiser-backed tweets atop search results. The effort is the micro-blogging's site's first foray into traditional online advertising, and started with several partners, including Best Buy, Bravo, Red Bull, Sony Pictures, Starbucks, and Virgin America.

Twitter said at the time – and again in Monday's blog post – that the ads would only display to relevant users; those searching for Starbucks mentions, for example. Twitter said it wants to keep it that way, and that it doesn't trust third-party ad networks to serve up ads in a similar manner.

"Third-party ad networks are not necessarily looking to preserve the unique user experience Twitter has created," Costolo wrote. "They may optimize for either market share or short-term revenue at the expense of the long-term health of the Twitter platform."

If Twitter becomes too cluttered with useless ads, people will leave the service, and Twitter will be done, he continued. "Third party ad networks may be optimized for near-term monetization at the expense of innovating or creating the best user experience."

There is, of course, also money. "Twitter will bear many of the support costs associated with any third-party paid Tweets, as Twitter receives support e-mails related to anything a user sees in a tweet stream. The third-party bears few of these costs by comparison," Costolo wrote.

So what's an advertiser to do? Costolo said the company's Annotations effort, which will allow people to add metadata to their tweets and was announced at this year's Chirp conference, is still a go.

"When Annotations ship, there are going to be many new business opportunities on the Twitter platform in addition to those currently available," he said. "We know that companies and entrepreneurs will create things with Annotations that we couldn't have imagined."

Costolo acknowledged that the new policy will prohibit activities in which companies have invested time and money. "We will continue to move as quickly as we can to deliver the Annotations capability to the market so that developers everywhere can create innovative new business solutions on the growing Twitter platform," he concluded.