Abe Lederman, Deep Web Technologies’ president, will be visiting the D.C. area next week from Monday the 8th through Thursday the 11th. Along with a few client meetings, he’ll also be demonstrating an Alpha version of our new federated search application. We’re looking forward to getting feedback. (Note: If you’re in the D.C. area and would like to meet with Abe, please let us know A.S.A.P. – info at deepwebtech.com.)
We’ll also be looking for additional feedback on our new application in the near future through beta testers…interested?
The Federated Search Blog contest, sponsored by Deep Web Technologies, now has a winner! The contest was this: 
Tell us about the most impressive federated search application you’ve ever seen, or about one you’ve dreamed up. How innovative can federated search be? What unique problems can it solve?
You can read more about the contest, the judges and prizes on the Federated Search Blog.
Software as a Service, otherwise known as SaaS is quickly becoming THE standard for purchasing software solutions. Systems such as Google Apps, Salesforce and Constant Contact have helped exponentially increase the 
popularity of the SaaS application delivery model.
Deep Web Technologies is undergoing an intense engineering effort to deliver our best in class federated search platform under a SaaS-based delivery model and we are looking to the Deep Web Technologies community to recruit and select beta testers, focus group members and development partners. Many clients are finding that budgets simply can’t support the IT staff it takes to maintain a locally installed application. The SaaS model allows clients to shift their investments to where it counts, providing significant ROI through a reduction in overhead and maintenance costs by using a shared application hosting environment. Here at Deep Web Technologies, we want to make your life easier by making access to our product fast and efficient. If federated search is right for you, or you currently have an application installed locally, you may be interested in some of the benefits of our SaaS application:
- No installation hassles: SaaS federated search is hosted on our server, so you don’t need to involve IT staff. A noted concern with this could be application down times should our servers go down. Deep Web Technologies hosts its applications using a failover architecture and load balancing to ensure your application is always up and running.
- Automatic upgrades: A centralized architecture means you get the benefit of fast, reliable and free patches and upgrades.
- Fast Implementation: The SaaS model makes new applications a breeze to build through an intuitive point-and-click interface.
- Predictable budgets: With a fixed, hosted application fee, your budget for federated search is consistent each month as opposed to installed software.
- Connector monitoring and maintenance: Connector maintenance is a big part of federated search. When a source is unavailable, our connector team is alerted and investigates the problem immediately. If the connector requires an update, we take care of it for you to make sure your sources are at their optimal health at no additional charge.
- Scalability: As you grow, so do we!
Granted, many of our clients require secure, standalone installations behind firewalls. For these clients, licensing an application to ensure proprietary information is safeguarded is a must and we have the solution for you. At Deep Web Technologies, we offer the choice of an installed or hosted application. The SaaS alternative is an excellent choice for those organizations wishing to bypass the overhead associated with on-site installations of federated search.
If you are interested in participating in our Beta Program or becoming a development partner, please sign up here and we’ll send you information. Our Beta Program is slated to begin the 2nd quarter of this year.
Yesterday I read Grace 
Baysinger’s post on Stanford University’s new xSearch – Multidisciplinary Search Tool which uses the Deep Web Technologies Federated Search, and I need to say that I’m thrilled! Our product offers features that Stanford wouldn’t have found in one package elsewhere. For example, we coordinated with their IT department to integrate federated search directly with their WebAuth and LDAP servers – a powerful way for users to authenticate automatically to secure web pages and applications.
We also integrated our Search builder tool into xSearch so that an unlimited number of unique search engines can be created for courses or individuals. Grace mentioned this capability in her article, referencing Stanford’s accessibility to these specially created search engines:
Create Your Own Search Cluster
It is possible to create your own custom search engine by choosing among the resources available in xSearch. The saved cluster of sources is accessible later in three different ways:
- Through the xSearch interface after logging in,
- As a link that you can bookmark or include on a Web page, and
- As an embedded search box that you can include on a Web page.
Working with Stanford was a unique experience. They were a great team! I look forward to our continuing relationship as we unveil new functionality and continue to refine our product to Stanford’s specifications.
Judging is underway for the second annual federated search blog contest. Read bios of the judges here.
Earlier this year, Deep Web Technologies announced the development of a multilingual translation capability. Since then, we’ve been talking with a number of people regarding this groundbreaking service that will be released in 2010. Don DePalma, Chief Research Officer at Common Sense Advisory wrote a post on the 17th of December about this feature. Please visit his company blog to read the entire article.
Clicking on the Advanced Search tab, we thought of the U.N. Climate Change Conference as we looked for “global warming.” We limited our search to sources in the Czech Academy of Science, just two of the dozens of scientific sites from around the world in languages ranging from Chinese to Japanese to Russian. The first hit was an English-language paper on “Modeling mortality risks due to heat stress in East Asia” from the Czech Academy, while the second was “Budeme žít v globálním Somálsku? : O klimatickém konci civilizace a strachu z katastrofy” (”will we live in a global Somalia? The climatic end of civilization and fear of disaster”). Being in a 2012 on-the-road kind of mood, we also looked for “pandemic” in a broader pool of sites, yielding French, Chinese, and Spanish articles (click here for a screenshot of our query results).
What happened behind the scenes? Deep Web translated the search terms into the languages of the sources, searched them, and returned some translated details.
Read the rest…
‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house,
The only things moving were me and my mouse.
The stockings were lying on the long coffee table,
Waiting for gifts like a doll or a dreidel.
And I with my spectacles on the end of my nose,
Was searching for those, a bit late, I suppose.
My cursor was flying all over the screen;
My forehead was covered in a light oily sheen.
When suddenly before me what did appear?
But a search box for stockings – how totally queer!
I blinked a few times and then ate a Pringle,
Opened the window and heard a faint jingle.
Pandora, I thought, as the fireplace roared,
Glanced at the stockings, they couldn’t be ignored.
So I settled myself down, ergonomics were shot.
My fingers were flying, the keyboard grew hot.
And I entered and searched and everything I found
Was perfect for my family and those all around
I printed purchase after purchase, draining printer ink,
Then noticed a flashing on screen – a new link.
“Delivery Schedule” it shouted silently
And a feeling of dread engulfed me
Did my search box not work? Was it false advertising?
I let my head fall; was it really surprising?
When at the tree, there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from my desk to see what was the matter.
The cookies were gone, the milk had been sipped;
I turned to the stockings, brows furrowed, tight-lipped.
And gasped as each one was filled to the brim
With presents and candy – my sight grew quite dim.
When suddenly my computer screen flashed so bright,
“Merry Christmas to all,” it said “and to all a good night!”
Deep Web Technologies was named to the Econtent 100 list for 2009-2010. The Econtent list, published by Econtent 
Magazine selects technology companies the panel of judges thought might help to re-ignite the economy, demonstrate leadership and innovation in their particular category. We’re listed in the “Search Engines and Technology” category.
Description: There’s a lot more to searching than the G-word. Through algorithms, bots, spiders, metatext, and more, people are using more than single-keyword searches to find ever-more-targeted information on the web or behind the firewall.
Michelle Manafy, editor-in-chief of EContent Magazine, says that Deep Web Technologies earned its place on the list for “its leadership in the commercial and government federated search sectors” and added, “We seek to recognize companies like Deep Web Technologies that are not complacent but are constantly innovating.”
This is exciting news and our company is very grateful for the recognition!
Deep Web Technologies is visiting London for the Online Information 2009 annual conference. Starting today, December 1 through Thursday, December 3 Abe Lederman, our CTO and founder has a full schedule of conversations, seminar activities and visiting with current and future clients.
We hope he makes it back in time for the Deep Web Technologies’ holiday party here in beautiful Santa Fe, New Mexico on Friday evening! Employees and their families will be gathering at a small Italian restaurant, Osteria d’Assisi, on the historic Santa Fe Plaza for some holiday cheer and to hear all about London in December.
I liked reading the DaVinci code, Dan Brown’s fictional mystery novel, so thought I’d give his newest bestseller a try. The Lost Symbol deals with codes and puzzles as you’d expect, but much to my surprise one of the main characters in the book, Katherine Solomon, asks Trish Dunne, a “metasystems” programmer, to do a comprehensive search for information. A concept mighty similar to federated search is introduced. Here’s an excerpt from page 72:
“How long for results? Katherine asked.
“A few minutes to write the spider and launch it. After that, maybe fifteen for the spider to exhaust itself.”
“So fast?” Katherine looked encouraged.
Trish nodded. Traditional search engines often required a full day to crawl across the entire online universe, find new documents, digest their content, and add it to their searchable database. But this was not the kind of search spider Trish would write.
“I’ll write a program called a delegator,” Trish explained. “It’s not entirely Kosher, but it’s fast. Essentially, it’s a program that orders other people’s search engines to do our work. Most databases have a search function built in – libraries, museums, universities, governments. So I write a spider that finds their search engines, inputs your keywords, and asks them to search. This way, we harness the power of thousands of engines, working in unison.”
Katherine looked impressed. “Parallel processing.”
A kind of metasystem. “I’ll call you if I get anything.”
Clearly, if Dan Brown is penning the concept of “metasystems” in his fictional books, and popular search vendors such as Yahoo! are playing with federation in their labs, large-scale, real-time single search has arrived to the masses.
