the Pipeline

Fun with taxonomies

Why should the folks back at headquarters have all the fun? Verity Inc. officials have released a new product that allows field agents and other experts to help create taxonomies that govern the flow and structure of information within and among systems.

A taxonomy is a "division into ordered groups or categories," according to the dictionary. If that's not enticing enough, the new product, called the Collaborative Classifier, also helps discover subtle relationships among data points.

It doesn't matter what the data is. For some agencies, it might be financial transactions, while others focus on scientific information or criminal investigations. Taxonomies are intended to reflect the needs of those creating and using them.

The idea is to allow the people who work most closely with information to decide how it should be defined and stored, said Scott Whitney, director of product management at Verity. That will make searches bring back more relevant results in less time, even for unknown information.

"If there are agencies [with employees] located in the field, why not let them determine what the taxonomy looks like?" Whitney asked. "Why not let them determine how to present that information in a directory style? Everyone wants their material to be read. Why not let them do that?"

Why not, indeed.

The system includes automatic classification capabilities, and it improves over time, Whitney said. It can classify documents on the fly and then seek user approval to further refine its accuracy. The system also offers business rules to control which users have access to certain kinds of information.

Seek and ye shall find

Convera Corp. officials have released Screening Room 3.0, a video search product enhanced with new security features. The system is an optional component in Convera's RetrievalWare search platform, adding the ability to search video libraries.

Officials at the FBI and Homeland Security Department already use the technology, according to Convera officials.

The product includes tools to manage media assets. As part of RetrievalWare, it delivers real-time capture, encoding, analysis and cataloging of video. It can search text in captions or closed-captioned recordings along with the video content.

The system also includes security features to authenticate users and control

the viewing and editing of sensitive video material.

A smattering of miscellany

Blue Coat Systems Inc. officials have introduced ProxyAV, a Web antivirus appliance that delivers up to 249 megabits/sec throughput and 4 millisecond

latency. The goal is to provide virus protection at an organization's Internet gateway without visibly slowing the Web response for users.

Pilot Software officials have released

PilotWorks 2004 Spring, an operational framework that includes a variety of modeling, reporting and planning components for organizations. PilotWorks is designed to help organizations execute their business strategies.

UniPress Software Inc. has released FootPrints 6.5, a major update to the company's help-desk and support management software. The new version includes improved workforce management capabilities, improved metrics, better reports, and custom search and reporting options.

MonocerosSoft officials released Database Web Explorer, a database management tool that, according to company officials, can make any database Web-enabled. The software can be used for viewing names of tables, fields, indexes and stored procedures in a database, among other tasks.