The Future of Local News – The Smaller, Entrepreneurial Media Outlet

October 20th, 2009 by Jeff Hoffman

Forbes’ article San Diego News Shoot-Out offers a glimpse of what local news may look like in the not too distant future – entrepreneurial startups and a former monopoly vying for consumers’ attention.

How does a minimally staffed media company deliver enough content to effectively compete when good journalism is a slow, labor-intensive business?

Focusing on the local
Web content extraction & aggregation technologies - Corporate Web sites, social media sites, e-commerce sites, government sites, internal Web sites and other sources of digital media not typically used as editorial resources are undiscovered treasure troves from which publishers can automatically extract and deliver new sources of data and information.

After implementing Connotate’s solution, a unit of Reed Business was able to drastically reduce and re-assign the number of staff that monitors and aggregates content from the Web.

Web content aggregation technologies enable publishers to automate the acquisition of the most important portions of Web pages in a normalized format that’s easily transformed and organized into new ready-to publish editorial assets.

Delivering a Neighborhood Intelligence Portal using Web Data
As an example, a media outlet could use Web extraction technology to automate delivery of online intelligence about their area. What the local technology jobs available are, public school data, current year home sales, foreclosures, local interest rates, coupons and even babysitting services. Below is a “Neighborhood Intel” portal tab Connotate built for the New Brunswick, NJ – 08901 area. To select information on Brooklyn, Boston, Chicago, Miami Beach, Los Angeles, Denver, Dallas, or Detroit from a drop down menu click here (using Internet Explorer 7 or higher).

Publishers need to consider what can be achieved with technologies that enable the exchange of knowledge and information in unprecedented ways.

Whatever strategy media firms use to deliver news, Connotate can help automate the aggregation and delivery processes surrounding digital information workflow efforts. To get started building Agents now sign up for a free 2-week trial of Connotate’s On-Demand Library Beta.

Posted in General, Intelligent Agent Technology | Comments Off

One-Stop Shopping for NJ Governor Candidate Twitter Postings

October 14th, 2009 by Gina

Check out Connotate’s NJ Gubernatorial Candidate Twitter Posting application

Barely 3 weeks out from election day, I see the ad campaigns, read the newspaper articles and listen to talk-radio to keep myself up-to-date with the viewpoints surrounding the candidates and election. I want to know what each candidate stands for. I want to know what message they find most compelling to share with the voters. However, if I want to know how a candidate stands on an issue, or what issue is top-of-mind for them, I have to seek out their website (which in many cases is not easy to find) and take a click-stroll through their site to discover the information I’m looking for.

Thankfully, some of the candidates are using Twitter to promote themselves. This makes it easy for people who follow a candidate to keep up-to-date with what’s on a candidate’s mind. However, once again, I have to be checking/following up to 12 people’s (yes, contrary to the Star-Ledger’s Full Coverage of the New Jersey Governor’s Race, there are more than 3 candidates!) Twitter postings if I want to stay up-to-date with the electoral buzz.

Like most of you reading this, my day is pretty busy so I really don’t have much time to check all those individual Twitter postings. I’d much prefer to check the most recent 5 to 10 Tweets of ALL the candidates at any given time. With this in mind, Connotate is sharing a NJ Gubernatorial Candidate Twitter Posting application that will allow you to see the 5 most recent Tweets by all candidates any time you want. Our Agents check the candidate accounts for new postings every half hour (although they could be monitoring the accounts even more frequently). We were successful finding the Twitter accounts for 9 of the 12 candidates (trust me, some were not that easy to find!) and they are all being monitored by Connotate’s intelligent software Agents for new postings.

So, if you want to know what’s on a candidate’s mind, try the one-stop shopping our NJ Gubernatorial Candidate Twitter Posting application offers and take a look at their latest Twitter postings below. For the candidates who only posted one time or opened an account but didn’t post at all, shame on them! For the candidate’s who didn’t create a Twitter account or we couldn’t locate it, feel free to send us the account detail and we’ll be happy to add it to our NJ Gubernatorial Candidate Twitter Posting application.

Want to create your own Agent to monitor the candidate posts or news (or any other kind of web-based data) contact Connotate at 732-296-8844 or try out a free 2-week trial of Connotate’s On-Demand Library Beta

[So as not to show favoritism, Connotate’s NJ Gubernatorial Candidate Twitter Posting application results are in alphabetical order from left to right. We found the accounts for Chris Christie, Jon Corzine, Jason Cullen, Chris Daggett, Kenny Kap, Joshua Leinsdorf, Kostas Petris and Gary Steele. We could not find the Twitter accounts for Alvin Lindsay, David Meiswinkle, Greg Pason or Gary Stein.]

Posted in General, Intelligent Agent Technology | Comments Off

Intelligent Agents Keep a Watchful Eye on Green Initiatives… For You

October 5th, 2009 by Gina

Everything seems to be “green” these days… There’s “green investing”, “green energy goals”, “green collar jobs”, “green building certification”, “green funds”, “green companies”, “green cars”… And let’s not forget about that “green” that fuels the economy…

Keeping on top of all the “green” developments can be overwhelming. Every time I read the news, check out the latest hot topics in an industry publication or surf the blogs, I come across some kind of “green” story. Like many, I try to do my part. I’m as “green aware” as I can be. My “green” efforts are reflected in many aspects of my life and I have to admit that I like to keep up on the new programs that promote “green” grants, stimulus packages, and guidelines.

Green Resources are Abundant

I recently went to a seminar focused on green collar jobs and green building initiatives. You can imagine the lengthy reference list of online sources that was given to me (as a printed hand-out if you can believe it) so that I could stay on top of “green” initiatives and announcements. Potentially, there were hundreds of resources for me to monitor but no two sources were identical in navigation or layout or format.

So, I went through the lengthy list of “green” resources given to me at the seminar and identified two sources that reported headlines and news that mattered to me. Unfortunately, the site didn’t have any kind of RSS feed option or subscription option. Now, I don’t know about the rest of you but, I’m pretty busy so there is no way that I’m going to remember to go and check that site every few days for new developments, headlines or initiatives. I decided to train an Agent on these 2 sources and have any new postings sent to me automatically. In a matter of 2 minutes (really, in barely 2 minutes), I trained an Agent to monitor the State and Local Climate and Energy and the National Action Plan for Energy Efficiency pages and send me any new stories that get posted to these pages. In this case, I just want the posting date and linked headline to the full story but, I could have trained my Agent to send me the entire story as well.

Connotate Agents go Green

Anybody Can Stay “Green Aware”

I don’t have a programming background… I don’t know how to write code…. But, I do know how to point-and-click so I had the skill-set required to monitor the EPA site each day for new “green” news that focuses on energy efficiency. Now I just sit back and wait for my Agents to shoot me an email with any new headlines as they hit the EPA web pages.

Now this is a pretty simple example of what an Agent can do in the “green” arena. Imagine that there are hundreds (thousands) of sources out there like the two pages I’m monitoring. Imagine you’re interested in “green” investments or new “green” job postings – you can have Agents monitoring all the sources for you and keep you “green” aware.

Create Your Own Green Agents

Want to train your own Agents or subscribe to the ones that I’ve created? Try Connotate’s On Demand Community Trial free for 2 weeks. See how easy it is to train Agents to monitor almost any web source and report changes back to you.

Posted in General | 1 Comment »

Leveraging Web Data to Anticipate Real Estate Market Trends

September 29th, 2009 by Jeff Hoffman

In early September, prominent banking analyst Meredith Whitney said home prices have another leg to drop, perhaps another 25% over the next two years as high unemployment levels continue. While S&P/Case-Shiller shies away from predictions, David Blitzer, chairman of the index committee, thinks Ms. Whitney’s estimate is too negative. Moody’s expects a drop of about 10% from current levels.

How could web data help you determine which (if any) of these predictions is accurate before Commerce Department figures are released?

Monitoring, collecting, and aggregating precise real estate data points from the web can help you anticipate market trends as part of your day-to-day routine.

Imagine the unique insight you’d gain by automatically extracting and aggregating thousands of data points every 24 hours from home builder, MLS, for sale by owner, and/or foreclosure websites. In 1 place you’d be able to view average price, average price per square foot, total count of inventory, data on employment, interest rates, rental prices, sentiment and other quantitative or qualitative variables you deem important. This information could be further segmented by price point and region.

As examples, the 2 screen shots below are the result of Connotate’s intelligent software Agents collecting thousands of real estate data points from 8 U.S. Homebuilders every 24 hours. This data gives unique insight into new home sale pricing trends before Commerce Department figures or Earnings are released.

Agents monitor and collect data on your behalf

The intelligent Agent technology interacts with data sources the way you and I would, but on an automated basis — and at a disciplined and scalable pace (that would be impossible for us to do ourselves). Agents are smart, tireless and effective, and may provide you with unique insight.

Those firms equipped with the tools to transform the infinite Web (and internal sources) into a focused set of actionable, highly personalized and differentiated data will be the clear winners in this turbulent and competitive market and well beyond.

For more information on creating real-time feeds of real estate data (or any other kind of data feed) contact Connotate at 732-296-8844 or try out a free 2-week trial of Connotate’s On-Demand Library Beta.

Posted in General, Intelligent Agent Technology, Agent Applications in Finance | Comments Off

What can Fantasy Football Sites teach Content Oriented Businesses and Intelligence Professionals?

September 22nd, 2009 by Jeff Hoffman

The participation in and popularity of fantasy football has exploded over the last decade. By some estimates the industry grosses more than $1 billion a year.

In early September I began gearing up for a twelve team fantasy football league that uses an auction style draft. With little spare time, I wasn’t looking forward to the annual task of manually collecting and aggregating predicted stats, point totals and other data on the top 200 players/defenses from disparate sources and monitoring news sites for player news and updates that might make them more or less valuable.

ESPN.com came to the rescue eliminating the tedious tasks that drain 40% or more of my time preparing for the fantasy football auction. ESPN provided not only player’s aggregated point totals for the season based on my league’s scoring but also links to really useful, up-to-date player information and alerts about breaking news.

This illustrates two important lessons for content oriented businesses and intelligence professionals:

Content oriented businesses can differentiate themselves by offering a one-stop solution that is comprehensive (yet actionable), timely and relevant to their consumers needs.
Being able to focus your time strategizing versus collecting and aggregating data from the web can be the difference between being in the game versus prospering.

In all the economic gloom many people have forgotten that we live in the most extraordinary technological age in history. While my fantasy competitors had access to the same ESPN data as I did, in the real world, your competition is (or may soon be) using intelligent Agent technology to monitor, extract, aggregate and normalize data, text and graphics from tens of thousands of Web Sites or internal sources– effortlessly, for competitive advantage.

To learn more about how intelligent Agent technology can help you gain a competitive advantage in the real world visit Connotate.com.

Interested to see an example of how I used intelligent Agents to help me with fantasy football last year? If so, please view the chart below (in Internet Explorer 7). In summary Agents collected and graphed data on the number of touches (defined as the number of handoffs and receptions combined) by player helping me figure out who to start and/or pick-up. My take away from the example below was to sit both Hightower and James towards the end of the season because the Cardinals were increasingly passing the ball.

Unfortunately the data source I used to collect this data last year isn’t available….so if anyone knows where I can find data on the number of handoffs and receptions combined by player for this season please send me a comment and let me know.

Posted in General, Intelligent Agent Technology | No Comments »

How can Your Business Benefit from Using Twitter?

September 15th, 2009 by Jeff Hoffman

Twitter, the social networking site that allows users to post short, 140 character updates on what they’re doing right now, passed a big milestone in July. According to comScore, Twitter passed 50 million unique visitors worldwide in July.

How can your business benefit from using Twitter?

In March 2009 Gartner released a report listing 3 ways enterprises are using Twitter to benefit their company. In summary:

Direct - Using Twitter for marketing, public relations, and customer relations purposes. JetBlue offers Twitter-based customer service (they even provide the names of the customer support employees currently working).
Indirect - Letting employees use Twitter to enhance their own personal reputations; as the company’s reputation is also enhanced by proxy. This list of Forrester analysts on Twitter offers a great example.
Inbound signaling- Tuning into Twitter conversations to get early warnings of problems, collect feedback on product issues or ideas, or monitor the competition.

How can your organization automate the monitoring of inbound signals on Twitter to?

Mitigate information leaks (and other potential brand liabilities)
Spot opportunities to engage consumers
Derive brand sentiment (or other intelligence) over time from what might otherwise be an information overload

With Connotate’s Twitter Search Agent – live sample Twitter Agents we have running on the swine flu, the Beige Book, and Obama’s health care plan can be seen below — keeping on top of Twitter is easy.

Multiple Twitter Search Agents can be created, each with their own search term, to keep your content segmented by topic; or use multiple search terms for a single Twitter Search Agent to combine your deliveries into a single view. Have agent results delivered to your email or to the Connotate Portal. Want to try creating Twitter Agent(s) for yourself? Try out a free 2-week trial of Connotate’s On-Demand Library Beta.

There are plenty of strategies for approaching Twitter. Signing up for a free trial of Connotate’s Twitter Search Agent is a great way to dip your toes into the water.

To sign up for Connotate’s free ODL trial visit our sign up page here.

Posted in General, Intelligent Agent Technology | No Comments »

Optimizing Pricing Strategy Wins Back-to-School Shoppers this Season

September 11th, 2009 by Jeff Hoffman

With many students returning to school this week, it’s a great time to look at back-to-school shopping trends and the lessons they offer product managers, retailers, and shopping search engines this holiday season.

Back-to-school spending (second only to the winter holidays in the USA), offers a great opportunity to boost sales and traffic. How could price intelligence be used to achieve these dual objectives? “As people focus primarily on price, strong promotions and deep discounts will ultimately win over back-to-school shoppers this year,” said Tracy Mullin, President and CEO of NRF.

Let’s take college text books for example. Students are strapped for cash so they’ll check the local college bookstore, Amazon and a plethora of other budget conscientious options for purchasing their books. Being on top of your competitor’s price and inventory can help you better adjust your pricing to attract those budget-conscious students.

Automating the collection, sharing and publication of key product and pricing indicators could be used to:

Better educate consumers and provide more up-to-date information (increasing the stickiness of a site while decreasing reliance on employees and other companies to update feeds).
Drive business decisions on product, pricing, distribution channels and promotion to optimize margins and profits.

As the leader of Web-monitoring and mining solutions, Connotate Agents access, share and deliver pricing intelligence at the speed of the Web. Pricing applications include:

Price change alerts– alerts to targeted data about discounts and promotions within minutes
Product pricing – track product pricing trends of specific items or product lines across channels and regions using the sources you rely on
Consumer sentiment – track blog and news sites for product sentiment.

Consumers will soon begin shopping for the 2009 holiday season. With the pressure of the economy, holiday shoppers will likely spend time:

Researching products online and looking for amazing deals
Checking for coupons and sales before hitting the stores.

If you’re a retailer, many potential customers will be lost because a competitors’ price is slightly below yours. If you’re a shopping search engine, potential customers could be lost because a competitors’ site is more informative, engaging or up-to-date. Optimizing timing of price promotions and tracking and publishing consumer sentiment or other unique product information from sources across the web are strategies that can help you boost sales and traffic this holiday season.

Interested in tracking information from the Web? Sign up now for a free 2 week trial of Connotate’s On Demand Library Beta.

Posted in General, Intelligent Agent Technology | No Comments »

Keep Up to Date on Swine Flu News and Confirmed Cases Using Intelligent Agents

June 12th, 2009 by Gina

Unfortunately it’s finally happened. The WHO (World Health Organization) has declared a swine flu pandemic and raised the warning level from 5 to 6. The first global flu epidemic in more than 40 years, it’s important for us all to stay abreast of the confirmed cases, news and commentary being shared each and every day.

Several weeks ago one of Connotate’s Agent Community members asked us to help them stay on top of the outbreak so we quickly built a simple Agent that illustrates the number of laboratory confirmed cases across the nation. The Agents used to populate this chart are monitoring CDC figures and presenting that data to you in an easy-to-understand format. When you click on a marker, you’ll see the date that the data was posted, the state and the number of cases confirmed.

We also have Agents monitoring World Health Organization posted updates on the number of countries effected, changes to the pandemic alert level, transmissibility through pork products, and other breaking news. And, knowing that it’s important to keep your finger on the pulse of the social media commentary, we have Agents bringing back CDC Emergency Tweets every hour should anything new be reported.

All of this information is being delivered to a page on the Connotate website – check it as often as you need to keep up-to-date with the latest figures and news from reliable sources.

Want an Agent created to monitor another reliable source for swine flu updates? Post a comment or email us your suggestions!

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The Future of Local News – The Smaller, Entrepreneurial Media Outlet

One-Stop Shopping for NJ Governor Candidate Twitter Postings

Intelligent Agents Keep a Watchful Eye on Green Initiatives… For You

Leveraging Web Data to Anticipate Real Estate Market Trends

What can Fantasy Football Sites teach Content Oriented Businesses and Intelligence Professionals?

How can Your Business Benefit from Using Twitter?

Optimizing Pricing Strategy Wins Back-to-School Shoppers this Season

Keep Up to Date on Swine Flu News and Confirmed Cases Using Intelligent Agents