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MC+A has announced that it will be sponsoring a CIO Chicago event in partnership with CIOsynergy.

Security is always a major area of interest in the enterprise. The event will feature Frank Abagnale, security and fraud expert, whose life was made famous by the 2002 film Catch Me If You Can. The evenings presentation and discussion will center on the latest technologies for detecting and preventing cybercrime.

“E-Discovery and effective knowledge management are at the heard of technologies providing insight into information that would otherwise be ignored. We’re happy to participate again with CIOsynergy Chicago to bring great speakers into Chicago to discuss topics that matter,” said MC+A President Michael Cizmar.

It should be an informative and entertaining evening. For more information on this and all MC+A event be sure to check out our events page.

Monopoly powered by Google Maps

An interesting project is set to launch on September 9th. Hasbro, the toy and boardgame maker, will be launching Monopoly City Streets. Their description:

A live worldwide game of MONOPOLY using Google Maps as the game board. The goal is simple. Play to beat your friends and the world to become the richest property magnate in existence.

We’re excited to see what they’re going to be doing with the Google Maps API. Monopoly fans, looks like your going Google.

Several projects have been recently promoted to the Google Labs page. These have previously been hosted on code.google.com. Two of interest are side by side search results.  This is is very help for comparison of biasing policies or to do a Google Search Appliance versus SharePoint demonstration. 

The second project promoted was the Salesforce.com connector for google search Appliance.  This utilizes the Connector Manager 2.0 framework and the Salesforce.com API.  Everyone who uses salesforce.com realizes that its search is fairly limited.

Side By Side Comparison

Screenshot of side by side search

Salesforce.com Connector

Here is a search results page with integrated salesforce.com results via the salesforce.com Google Search Appliance connector works with the connector manager 2.0.  A side note, this connector requires API access which is not available on the team or professional edition.

Answer: Yes – The Google Mini Can Index documents stored in Micrsoft SharePoint!

The Google Mini along with the MC+A Google SharePoint Sitemap can effectively be configured to crawl Microsoft SharePoint sites.  The MC+A Google SharePoint Sitemap produces a dyanmic site map which the Mini can use to crawl deep within SharePoint.   You can further enhance this by adding a Content Web Part onto the search page which will allow you to have the Google Mini produce search results within SharePoint.

Here’s it working in our environment.

and in edit mode:

How is the integration achieved?

Step 1 – Navigate to the search results page
Step 2 – Switch the search results page to edit mode
Step 3 – Delete the SharePoint search web parts
Step 4 – Add content editor web part
Step 5 Add the following code(modify for your environment)
Content for web part

How does this work?
1) SharePoint search web part reads the k parameter query string and makes an ‘ajax’ type of request to the appliance.
2) The end use broswer communicates directly with the Mini.

If you purchase a Google Mini from MC+A, we offer a free GSS with support matching for the term of the Google Mini. Otherwise, the product lists for $500 and includes a 30 day trial support during the trial. MC+A professional services can be engaged to assist with the integration within SharePoint.

MC+A is conducting a small online survey to see how customers with Google appliances are utilizing their appliances and some basic information regarding their implementation. We’ll publish the results of the survey on this blog post.

Link to survey

For models GB-1001 and GB-7007, there has been a software patch release. Current Google customers under support can go to:

https://support.google.com/enterprise/doc/gsa/00/update_index_page.html

Customers under current support contracts with MC+A will be contacted by MC+A Support.

“Suggest” is a new beta feature on the Google Search Appliance 6.0.  Out of the box, it is designed to work with the default style sheet.  However, many of our clients have chosen to use a scripted page (asp/aspx/php/jsp).  In order to get this functionality working, additional coding is required.  This article describes wiring up the search box via a proxy and asp.

The Service

There is a new service located at /suggest.  When you type the queries are sent to it.  The response comes back as a simple JSON package.  It is not encoded in JSONP so if you develop a separate page and want to use it, you’re faced with  a cross site scripting issue.

The Solution

1. Copy suggest_js.js to the site which you want to utilize the service.
2. Create a proxy in your server (code below)
3. suggest_js.js is obfuscated.  But you just need to replace “/suggest” with the location of your new service (has to be at the same domain
4. Add the .ac-renderer, .ac-row, .ac-highlighted and .ac-active styles to your page
5. reference the new suggest_js.js file is reference in your html
6. call the function sgst(‘q’);
7. Start typing!

Proxy Example:

dim srcFile
srcFile = "http://gsa.mcplusa.com/suggest?"
srcFile = srcFile & "token=" & Request("token") & "&max_matches=10"</div>
'Get the JSON
Response.Buffer = True
Dim objXMLHTTP, xml

'Create an xmlhttp object
Set xml = Server.CreateObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP")
xml.Open "GET", srcFile, False
xml.Send

Response.Write xml.responseText
set xml= Nothing

Update!

Mahesh T published a java servlet here.

We recently encountered an issue with database content on a Google Search Appliance implementation.  The client had used wild cards to describe their data.  The system could interpret these into the particular items, but the sku 8% did not mean anything to the client.  This sku additional represented a brand name.  People are more likely to type in the brand name than a partial SKU.

Query Expansion

The Appliance has the feature to make terms related.  For example Apple and Apples can both mean the same thing.  In our case, we can make model 8A equal to the brand name.  However we can make 8% mean the brand name.  Also the appliance will not daisy chain query expansion related terms…ie. X means Y means Z.  So X means Z.  Also since it was a wild card X could mean A could mean B…and Z does not equal B.

The Solution

The solution was to employ a SEO trick.  We expanded the 8% in a feed to mean all of the possible combinations of the base Sku.  We then made those base SKUs related to their brands.  Simple, yet effective.

8% = “8A 8B 8C and so on

I just installed OffiSync.  I’m excited about it’s capabilities.  I love the online collaboration abilities of Google Docs, but I constantly find myself needing more advanced features.

OffiSync is suppose to:

• Allow you to open a Google Doc directly in Microsoft Word
• Add collaborators within Word
• Constantly save your updates to Google Docs.

It’s currently in beta.  We’ll update as we find more about this product.

Download a copy of OffiSync here.