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Locator: NIE Home / Publications / Enterprise Search Newsletter / Issue 8 / What's New
What's New - April / May 2004The last month has been a busy one in the world of search. Verity held it's regional user groups in a dozen cities, introducing new products and features; and Google announced its intended IPO. And New Idea Engineering announced the enhanced K2 Check-Up! Verity Regional User Groups Meet Verity sponsored regional user group meetings in a numbe rof cities across the United States in March and April, finishing up in San Francisco. In addition to discussing updates to their flagship search products, they also announced a new product, "Verity Response" based on technology acquired in the NativeMinds acquisition. Verity Response aims to go beyond delivering "just good results" - it provides a way to provide the right answer for users. The Pepsi-Cola site is a great example of how the technology can be implemented to enable customer self-service on a web site. Verity Response can be configured to 'fall through' to K2 or Ultraseek search, providing a backup when a new 'untrained' question comes in. While the presentations were well planned and generally well received, it would be nince to see Verity review their practive from past user group meetings of providing more formal 'birds of a feather' sessions, which provided a great way for technical minds from different customer sites to come together to talk shop. Hopefully, Verity will consider encouraging such user response at the anticipated annual users group meeting next year. More Google Everywhere you turn, the Google IPO is hot news. Everyone seems to want in, and everyone in Silicon Valley is hoping that a hot new IPO will kick-start a return to the days of the late 20th century. Of course, Google won't be like other companies: they want to have a 'Dutch market' IPO where average people around the world can enter a lottery to buy IPO shares at 'fair market price', avoiding the conventional investment bank route. Keep in mind that no matter how good it sounds, almost every IPO sees an initial run-up, followed by a sell-off as the lucky first buyers sell off at a profit. And as the filing gets more visibility, some are questioning the different classes of stock Google intends to issue. The 'common folk' who the Google founders want to include in the event will buy Common Class A stock: one share, one vote. But the Google management and key insiders will buy Class B stock: one share, ten votes. In this time when investors can insure management is doing the right thing by voting at shareholder meetings., Google is stacking the deck from the start. In effect, they are saying "Trust us, we know what's right in the long term". And maybe they do. But your vote won't be able to change their minds. See more at http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4900355. Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway is structured the same way, as are many European companies where the practice is common. But it's uncommon in the United States: maybe Google can pull it off successfully. New Idea Engineering releases improved K2 Check-Up New Idea Engineering introduces a new and expanded Verity K2 Check-up, which examines over 100 options, switches and capabilities to identify how you can make your complex K2 installation work at its best. Can't find content? Search results don't look right? CIO unhappy with ongoing complaints about search? Try a check-up, and you'll have a better search installation. And it takes only 5 days! Learn more about the K2 Check-Up it here.
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