Author: Mike Bergman

Posted:October 25, 2005

BBN Speech-to-Text Machine Translation

From Broadcast Newsroom, BBN Technologies just released version 2.0 of its AVOKE STX speech-to-text software.  According to BBN, this new version improves the relevance of multimedia search results by transforming audio into searchable text with unprecedented accuracy. Applications include enterprise search, business and government intelligence, consumer search, audio mining, video search, broadcast monitoring, and multimedia asset management.

BBN says AVOKE STX 2.0 separates speech from non-speech, such as music or laughter, and then processes the speech to identify additional characteristics. This information is captured, tagged with metadata, and indexed in an  XML format for use by standard search engines or technology.  Because each word in the metadata is time-stamped, users can navigate easily to any point in the transcript, listen to the original audio, or watch the corresponding video.

BBN’s legacy extends to playing a key role in pioneering the development of the ARPANET, the forerunner of the Internet. BBN supports both commercial and government clients.  Its AVOKE speech technology translates Arabic and Chinese with additional foreign languages planned.

Posted:October 24, 2005

Re-visit Internal Settings for Blog Viewing

For some time now I have had a setting of ‘5 days’ as the limit for the number of posts to display on my site.  My rationale, as in most things, was to limit the number of bytes any individual reader needed to wait for during  a site visit (and download).

However, that may be dial-up thinking.

I was playing around with my own site and viewed monthly archive options.  Lo and behold, with my 5-day limit, that also translated into that display as well.  So, I upped my limit to a full month (31 days) and repeated the step.

Sure, downloads were a little slower, but not truly noticeably so, and I am on an IDSL line (128 kb) anyway!  Anyone with anything approaching a modern connection should not have a problem upping post display limits.

Oh, well.  My advice to everyone (and I’m likely the last) is to up your blog display governors.

Posted by AI3's author, Mike Bergman Posted on October 24, 2005 at 4:25 pm in Blogs and Blogging, Site-related | Comments (0)
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Open Data Architectures: The Union Square Session

I’ve just finished reading a fascinating 228 pp transcript on the topic of peer production and open data architectures. This discussion, the first of the so-called Union Square Sessions, involved more than 40 prominent Web and other thinkers with a heavy sprinkling of VCs.

That being said, I was disappointed that neither interoperability nor extensibility directly entered into any of the discussions. I suspect this may be due to conjoining the important singular topic of open data architectures with the lens of peer production or social networks. For me, the quote closest to my interests among this disparate group was from Dick Costolo, who stated “the bottom line implication is that an open data architecture will be one that is purely API based and not destination based.”

Nonetheless, this is an interesting start. I’d like to humbly suggest open and extensible data architectures (including, importantly, database engines in addition to extensible exchange formats such as XML) for a future discussion topic.

Here is the link to the Union Square Sessions Transcript.

Posted:October 23, 2005

Starting Small via the Semantic Organization

Michael Wacey argues inThe Semantic Organization: Knowing What You Know that corporations have a tremendous amount of stored information and are likely to be the early adoption point for semantic Web capabillities, similar to the ways in which corporations have proven to be the adopters for Web services and the underlying technologies (UDDI, WSDL, SOAP) initially designed for the Web at large.

I agree with his premise that Web-wide adoption of semantic tagging is unlikely at first and individual organizations offer better and easier proving grounds.  However, my experience has been that government agencies have been the leaders in semantic and entity extraction; for reasons noted elsewhere, corporations have been slow on the uptake.

Some of the stumbling blocks appear to be lack of understanding of benefits by top management and the lack of automated and accurate means to "tag" content at scale and then manage it.  Until these fundamental sticking points are greased, we are likely to continue to see the leadership in promoting semantic Web capabilties by government entities where lives and national security are at stake.

Posted:October 22, 2005

Thanks! “Comprehensive Blogging Guide” Receives Kind Comments

I have been thankful for the many wonderful comments and reactions to my professional blogging guide.  My favorite is from Blizzard Internet Marketing:

When you come across such a generous addition to the web community you just have to share.  Last night, going through my feeds I came across the … Comprehensive Guide to a Professional Blog Site.  What a fantastic resource for the beginner professional blogger.  After spending just a few weeks with our own blog, researching and sharing online our quest to educate ourselves on the art, process, and best practices of blogging I came across this gem …. after spending just a few weeks on our own research I don't doubt how long it took to create this easy to read, easy to understand comprehensive guide.   

Michael's note taking and attention to detail as he went on his journey is impressive.  Just about every step of the way he details his tasks from choosing the program and why, to loading it on the server and configuring the system.  Within the guide are a number of resources for even more great information ….

Fantastic!  Michael, thank you so much for taking on loading and configuring the system and not giving the task to your tech team.  The information you gleaned from doing this yourself only enhances the content of the guide. 

I would highly recommend reading the guide if you are planning on installing and using WordPress for your blog.  Even if you decide to go with something more out of the box such as Blogger or Typepad the information in the guide on blogging and organizing your thoughts to create a worthy site are just as invaluable.

But also, among many others, thanks also to the Marketing Defined Blog, Marketing Slave and  e-Learning Centre.  Thank you, and others not specifically acknowledged, very much!

Posted by AI3's author, Mike Bergman Posted on October 22, 2005 at 3:07 pm in Blogs and Blogging, Site-related | Comments (0)
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