cominvent as

The Norwegian IT newspaper Digi.no today writes that CIA invests in Lucid Imagination through the company In-Q-Tel. This is a great confirmation that the Apache Lucene/Solr search engine is high-end software of key value also for intelligence use.

That would come as no surpise to us who have followed Lucene for some time. And perhaps for intelligence in particular, they do not want to be too heavily dependent upon closed source code. In their press release, In-Q-Tel they say that they want to secure advanced access to Lucene/Solr technology, and state that Lucene/Solr is one of the fastest growing search solutions over the last three years.

This is good news for all users of Lucene/Solr search, also in Norway where Cominvent is Lucid Imagination’s partner. It gives even more credibility to open source search, and makes this platform grow even faster. Time for Norwegian intelligence to follow?

The Apache Solr 1.3 search server is very capable and stable, so there is nothing that should keep you from deploying it just because a new version is around the corner (within a few months that is). Upgrades should be smooth as well.

So what are some of the improvements in 1.4? (more…)

Yesterday the new iPhone 3G S was presented by Apple. Neither Telenor nor NetCom reveals on their home pages when it will be available in Norway, but Apple’s pages say it is already available. (more…)

I was in SF, California last week to dig deeper into Solr and to meet with its core developers (now working for Lucid Imagination). It was a great week with many new connections and new insight.

First of all, as you may know, Lucid Imagination is at the moment the primary commercial marketers, promotors and evangelists for Solr. They bring to the scene what an open source offering often lacks – a professional and polished image, nice wrapping and not least – commercial support. That is great for the future adoption of Solr with customers that need just that kind of safety. Being Lucid’s Norwegian parner, Cominvent AS now offers all of this in Norway as well.

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Microsoft’s new search engine “Bing” which replaces Live Search, promises to be a decision engine rather than a search engine. Cominvent has tried it.
The front page of “Bing” is nice looking. I’m in Alexandria, and want to decide how to get from Alexandria to Hurghada, so I type “how to get from alexandria to hurghada”. The result set is a non-impressive boring listing of results, with exactly the same look & feel as Google results, not very innovative.

Let’s compare: (more…)