Blogs and other Enterprise Search Resources
Last Updated Mar 2009
By: Mark Bennett & Miles Kehoe, New Idea engineering Inc., Volume 4 Number 3 - June 2007
Before we started running our Enterprise Search blog a few months ago, we spent some time reading the existing blogs on search as well as on web and enterprise 2.0 and on other related topics. When we were talking resources at the recent Enterprise search Summit in New York, several folks thought that sharing the blogs and resources we use might help them get started, so here they are.
Note: If you're new to blogging, your first day cruising 'the blogosphere ' might feel like there is far more content than you can digest - the proverbial 'drinking from the fire hydrant'. trust me, that's how I felt the first week of exploring blogs and the links they contain. Find a blog reader you like - I use the Google home page at www.google.com/ig, but there are many other good ones - and start with a few blogs. Give yourself 10 minutes a day to read relevant content; and in no time you'll be caught up and current. Then you can add another blog or two, and catch up on them. Now, like just about anything, you'll find there is an "80/20" break - most of the useful information will come from a small segment of the blogs. Once you see this split happening, you might even move the '80%' blogs into a different folder or tab so you can focus on the high value blogs. You'll be current and commenting on blogs in no time!
Vendor Blogs
CMS Watch Enterprise Search Feed
CMS Watch at http://www.cmswatch.com/ follows enterprise search along with content management, portals and web analytics. Their web site has some good content, but their primary claim to fame is annual reports that summarize product offerings at a premium price. Their blogs and newsletters will help you keep up to date.
Even if you're not FAST customer,. you'll find the FASTForward blog at http://fastforwardblog.com/ a good way to keep up on the hot issues in enterprise technology today - Web 2.0 and other leading edge technologies. FAST has done a great job of turning their annual user conference into an industry event, and this blog is the ongoing by-product. Not as technical as some, but quite useful.
IBM OmniFind Yahoo! Edition Blog
For up-to-date information about the free IBM Yahoo! Edition is http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-oPfvMkQ.dqhYv3g7luZuJw--?cq=1. Not a great deal of traffic - but informative. You might remember we reviewed the product last month.
Official Google Enterprise Blog
The Google Search Appliance is included in this Google blog covering their enterprise products. The URL for this active blog is http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/, and while it may not have heavy duty technical content, it is good for keeping up with Google events in your area.
Yahoo Search Blog While Yahoo seems less of an enterprise player even considering its partnership with IBM, the Yahoo Search Blog at http://www.ysearchblog.com/ often has interesting insights relevant to enterprise search as well as to search technologies in general.
Vivisimo's founder and CEO Raul Valdes-Perez has an informative blog going at http://searchdoneright.com/ with articles from his marketing and technology managers as well as from Raul himself. Good source of information on search in general with not too much vendor-specific marketing.
Know of any other vendor blogs? Let us know!
Vendor Neutral Search Blogs
http://www.enterprisesearchblog.com/ New Idea Engineering writes for this blog at http://www.enterprisesearchblog.com/, covering the business and technology of corporate search We'd say more but you know who we are. You could add us to your favorites list at Technorati though!
The independent search developers forum on Yahoo at http://www.searchdev.org has over 100 individuals involved in search technology and implementation participating. A great place to ask for help or for an opinion. Full disclosure: we at New Idea Engineering help moderate the group.
Avi runs SearchTools Consulting, and like her site, her blog at http://searchtools.livejournal.com/ provides product reviews of just about every search engine you would ever find. Avi, who has a background in Library Science, is well known at conferences for her talks on making search better.
Other Good Search Related Blogs
Gilbane Enterprise Search Practice Blog
The Gilbane Group is a well known consulting organization, and this blog at http://gilbane.com/search_blog/ is run by their enterprise search practice area. You'll find it another good source of background information.
A person named Cindy Chick runs an excellent conversation on law library technology and knowledge management at http://www.lawlibtech.com/. I have to admit I am skeptical about the authors real name, but this blog offers a great user view on search and knowledge management and deserves a look.
Christopher Even runs this blog about SharePoint and search at http://sharepointsearch.blogspot.com/. If SharePoint is your search, this site is one for you.
Todd Leyba's perspectives on search and discovery
Todd is an engineer in IBM's 'Discovery, Search and Analytics' group, and his blog at http://todd-leyba-search.blogspot.com/ is good for both technical and non-technical search-related content. His blog was the initial source of the sample code we provided last month for the IBM Yahoo! search engine.
Other Blogs
Andrew is an Associate Professor at Harvard who writes extensively on productivity and the issues facing IT at http://blog.hbs.edu/faculty/amcafee/. He has some fascinating observations and insights relevant to productivity and search. Andrew is an excellent speaker: if you ever have a chance to hear him speak at a conference, be sure to go for it.
John Battelle is author of the popular "The Search..." book published last year. A popular speaker at the last two FASTForward conferences, one of my favorite stories is from John, who makes the analogy between the MS-DOS "DIR" command and web search in 2006. In the former, you type the command and get a list of files; in the latter, you type a query and you get a list of URLs. John's blog is always interesting and useful to those interested in Web 2.0 issues.
One of my favorite blogs is David Weinberger's Journal of the Hyperlinked Organization at http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/. You'll recognize David as a popular speaker and writer whose most recent book, Everything is Miscellaneous, offers great insight into the issues of tagging and metadata. He spent time at Interleaf and Open Text before settling at Harvard's Berkman Institute for Internet & Society. His blog is interesting, useful and will keep you up to date on issues of Web 2.0. I especially love his Right Brain Bio.