Thunderstone Blog: Customized Search Engine & Search Software

Honored for Empowering Thunderstone Channel Partners to Systematically Establish Enterprise Search Profit Centers

CLEVELAND, OH — Thunderstone Software LLC, the R & D leader that pioneered simultaneous searching of both structured and unstructured data with Thunderstone's TEXIS relational database optimized for full-text search, today announced its Channel Director & CSO Frederick A. Harmon has been named a 2010 Channel Chief by the Everything Channel's CRN. Channel Chiefs are leaders in creating effective channel programs for solution providers. They consistently defend, promote and execute effective channel partner programs and strategies.

Mr. Harmon, in collaboration with other members of Thunderstone Software's executive leadership team, has recently and successfully implemented several noteworthy enhancements to the growing Thunderstone Reseller/Channel Partner Program.

1. Thunderstone developed a Thunderstone Reseller/Channel Partner Portal where you can automatically register targeted sales opportunities and gain immediate access to relevant account information, current SPIF details, Thunderstone-generated marketing tools, product spec sheets personalized with your own company logo/phone number, and more.

2. Thunderstone began offering practical, fast-track training of qualified Thunderstone-Certified Professionals (both sales and technical staff) for Channel Partners who want to build Enterprise Search Practices and Enterprise Search Profit Centers.

Thunderstone has always delivered free and personalized online demos tailored to the customer's particular needs, plus 30-day eval units shipped pre-configured to the unique requirements of each customer. For Channel Partners with one or more employees who become Thunderstone-Certified Professionals – Thunderstone now offers FREE virtual versions of Thunderstone search solutions that certified personnel can use themselves to provide demos and evaluations for their own customers and prospects. All Thunderstone products come with a one-time, perpetual license which often saves customers 40 percent or more on their initial purchase. Thunderstone customers also enjoy an Investment Protection Program that makes upgrading their search solutions easy, desirable and affordable.

According to Harmon, "We have everything you need to succeed in the enterprise search marketplace. Our online portal has deal registration and lots of useful sales resources. We've created attractive incentives such as SPIFs up to $3,000 on sales of Thunderstone Search Appliances. We make available to Resellers an automated Thunderstone product quote tool you can use on your websites and in your sales-related emails. We provide superior tech support by phone, email and message board. For Channel Partners who choose to have some of your employees trained as Thunderstone-Certified Professionals – we offer FREE virtual versions of Thunderstone Search Appliances, as well as increased product discounts, joint promotional opportunities and the potential to receive market development funds depending on quarterly sales volume."

For the eighth consecutive year the Channel Chiefs were chosen by Everything Channel editorial based on criteria including: policy and program innovations made during the past year, the amount of revenue their company generates through partners, their willingness to speak out publicly on behalf of the channel, and the number of years they have dedicated to channel activities.

"Being named a Channel Chief is one of the most prestigious honors in the I.T. industry. This year's Channel Chiefs list offers tremendous insight into the who's who of the Channel," said Kelley Damore, Vice President and Editorial Director at Everything Channel. She continued, "Top channel executives consistently ensure that the Channel's voice is heard when strategic decisions are being made and continually nurture mutually profitable relationships. We applaud the 2010 Channel Chiefs for their successful partner programs and strategies."

Click here to see additional details about Frederick A. Harmon and the Thunderstone Reseller/Channel Partner Program published by CRN in its February 22, 2010 issue.

About Everything Channel
Everything Channel (http://www.everythingchannel.com), headquartered in Framingham, MA, is a technology marketing and sales solutions company. Through its "Complete Technology Channel Solution," Everything Channel offers the right business tools to accelerate technology sales. From branding and recruiting to marketing and sales, Everything Channel offers technology marketers the unmatched breadth and depth of global brands and market intelligence combined with unparalleled audience loyalty and credibility serving all technology sales channels through an extensive database. Everything Channel provides innovative field sales and marketing solutions to the sellers of technology to achieve measurable and significant results.

About United Business Media Limited
UBM (UBM.L) focuses on two principal activities: worldwide information distribution, targeting and monitoring; and, the development and monetisation of B2B communities and markets. UBM's businesses inform markets and serve professional commercial communities – from doctors to game developers, from journalists to jewelry traders, from farmers to pharmacists – with integrated events, online, print and business information products. Our 6,500 staff in more than 30 countries are organised into specialist teams that serve these communities, bringing buyers and sellers together, helping them to do business and their markets to work effectively and efficiently. For more information, go to http://www.ubm.com.

About Thunderstone
As a true industry pioneer – providing some of the world's most powerful, flexible and scalable search solutions since 1981 – Thunderstone Software LLC (http://www.thunderstone.com) has developed hard-to-match expertise in creating high-performance products with tremendous value for governments, NGOs, educational institutions and businesses of all sizes.

Thunderstone has a comprehensive, deep and broad range of enterprise search products that include:

• Thunderstone's TEXIS RDBMS optimized for full-text search
• The Webinator web indexing and retrieval software
• Thunderstone Parametric Search Appliances
• Thunderstone Search Appliances
• Texis Catalog Solutions (Thunderstone's eCommerce search engines)
• Virtual Versions of Thunderstone Search Appliances
• Virtual Versions of Thunderstone Parametric Search Appliances
• Thunderstone Data Services (SaaS; Hosted Search Solutions with licenses to both TEXIS and the Webinator)

Sales contact: Frederick A. Harmon

+1 216 820 2200 ext.105

Media contact: Peter Thusat

+1 216 820 2200 ext.118

January 2010 - Archive

CONTENTS

• New Pricing for Parametric Search Appliances
• Happenings
• Customer Quote of the Month
• Tech Tip: Search Appliance Test Page Fetcher
• Subscription/Unsubscription and Contacts

NEW PRICING FOR PARAMETRIC SEARCH APPLIANCES

Thunderstone has lowered prices on Thunderstone Parametric Search Appliances, and the entry-level model supporting 250,000 records or documents is now $20,000.

The Thunderstone Parametric Search Appliance still includes one day of consulting with the purchase, and additional optimization and training services can be purchased to make sure it meets your needs.

All Appliance customers continue to enjoy one-time, perpetual licenses with two years of bundled maintenance and software updates (available in year three and beyond for an optional 18% annual maintenance fee; Thunderstone will never turn off your Appliance just because you choose not to continue the maintenance,) as well as affordable upgrade paths plus superior tech support by phone, email and message board.

Call Thunderstone sales today at +1 216 820 2200 for more information about any Thunderstone hardware or software products, including VMware and hosted (SaaS) Data Services.

HAPPENINGS

New York-based freelance writer Thomas Hoffman included noteworthy input from a Thunderstone Search Appliance customer in his December 29, 2009 Computerworld article entitled "Innovative tech projects won't slow down for some." In the article, distributed via the IDG News Service, Hoffman shared information provided by Russ Finney of Tokyo Electron U.S. Holdings – relating how Thunderstone's advanced technology enables engineers at Tokyo Electron to successfully search many data sources and obtain different query results based on their roles in the company. Finney said, "It's another step forward in knowledge management."

See http://www.thestandard.com/news/2009/12/29/innovative-tech-projects-wont-slow-down-some.

CUSTOMER QUOTE OF THE MONTH

"This search device rocks..."

 

Brian Michalovic
Director of Internet Services
Sea Gull Lighting (A Generation Brands Company)
http://www.seagulllighting.com/

TECH TIP: SEARCH APPLIANCE TEST PAGE FETCHER

Finding out exactly what's going on – Test Network and Servers

Thunderstone has added a powerful new tool to the Search Appliance, "Test Network and Servers," that makes it easy to troubleshoot URL problems.

It allows you to "test" any given URL for a profile, providing you with information including:

• Statistics, such as time elapsed (DNS & content), security used, content-type (and where it came from), characters sets, and more
• All headers provided, both HTTP and HTML
• Any extracted meta content
• All extracted links, and whether they would be included/excluded by the selected profile (and why)
• The full formatted text of the page, and optionally the raw pre-processed data

In addition, there are lower-level testing tools for things like:

• Resolving network names
• Pinging machines
• Performing traceroutes
• Sending test emails

"Test Network and Servers" can be found under "Maintenance" in the Search Appliance interface.

Feedback, suggestions and questions are welcome. Send your email to .

December 2009 - Archive

CONTENTS

• Merry Christmas from Thunderstone Software
• Marzipan Recipe
• Quote of the Month
• Subscription/Unsubscription and Contacts

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR

Thundersone Software wishes everyone a most joyful holiday, and we would like to extend our special gratitude to the many long-time and new customers who have kept our Thunderstone Professional Services staff very busy this year with your enterprise search-related development, consulting and training projects. We highly value our ever-growing number of productive and friendly working relationships, and we sincerely look forward to more opportunities to serve you in 2010 and beyond.

MARZIPAN RECIPE

This recipe could be used as part of a 12-course meal known in Polish as Wigilia, or on its own. Wigilia is eaten after sundown on Christmas Eve.

Makes 2 lbs

Ingredients

• 1 lb blanched almonds, finely ground
• 1 lb powdered sugar (confectioner's sugar)
• 2 Tbsp orange water or rose water (Can be obtained from your local drugstore)
• food colouring and decorations

Method

1. Combine ground almonds, sugar and flavouring in a saucepan. Cook until mixture leaves side of pan.
2. Roll almond mixture on a flat surface to a 1/2 -inch thickness. Cut into shapes, mold, paint with food colouring, decorate, etc.
3. Place on wax paper to dry for 2 hours.

Difficulty: easy.

Time: 1/2 hour plus time to decorate.

Precision: Approximate measurement OK.

Looking for more Christmas recipes? See http://www.thunderstone.com/texis/site/demos/recipe/search.html.

QUOTE OF THE MONTH

"I just wanted to drop you a quick note to thank you for helping us successfuly implement our 2009 Sleigh-Ready Process Improvement Initiative here at the North Pole. As you know, speed and accuracy have always presented unique challenges in creating and twice-checking Santa's official Naughty & Nice List. This year everything went off smoothly and without a hitch, now that we've deployed the Thunderstone Texis Catalog Solution. Your eCommerce Search Engine easily handled all our important search parameters, including rapidly-changing information from that formerly troublesome Coal-Lump-Recipient Database. Thanks again for your awesome, customer-centric approach to helping us make the season bright."

 

Lead Knowledge Architect
& Personal Assistant to the Chief Elf
Distribution Center at Santa's Workshop

Feedback, suggestions and questions are welcome. Send your email to

November 2009 - Archive

CONTENTS

• Happy Thanksgiving
• Introducing Thunderstone's Texis Catalog Solution (our new eCommerce search engine)
• Customer Quote of the Month
• Tech Tip: Using Synonyms in Your Search
• Subscription/Unsubscription and Contacts

HAPPY THANKSGIVING

"November had come; the crops were in, and barn, buttery, and bin were overflowing with the harvest that rewarded the summer's hard work. The big kitchen was a jolly place just now, for in the great fireplace roared a cheerful fire; on the walls hung garlands of dried apples, onions, and corn; up aloft from the beams shone crook-necked squashes, juicy hams, and dried venison – for in those days deer still haunted the deep forests, and hunters flourished. Savory smells were in the air; on the crane hung steaming kettles, and down among the red embers copper saucepans simmered, all suggestive of some approaching feast."

 

From An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving
November, 1881. By Louisa May Alcott

 

INTRODUCING THUNDERSTONE'S TEXIS CATALOG SOLUTION
(OUR NEW E-COMMERCE SEARCH ENGINE)

Thunderstone's Texis technology has a long tradition of hard-to-match success in efficiently handling the search requirements for very high-volume eCommerce applications such as real-time online auctions, large-scale retail websites and many others.

Now organizations of all sizes can put this same powerful capability to work on your own B2B/B2C shopping sites, on your own web-based catalogs, etc.

The Texis Catalog Solution offers an amazing value proposition, and it comes available in your choice of:

• downloadable software with a one-time, perpetual license;
• custom-configured Parametric Search Appliance with a one-time, perpetual license; or
• a hosted service (SaaS) – provided by Thunderstone for an affordable monthly rate.

You can arrange to see the Texis Catalog Solution "in action" by scheduling a free demo that employs your own unstructured and structured product data.

Please contact Thunderstone's Fred Harmon at or call +1 216 820 2200 if you would like more information.

CUSTOMER QUOTE OF THE MONTH

"Thank you so much for your prompt and amazing customer service. We really enjoy working with you guys, especially because we get to interact with real people at your company rather than dealing with random customer service folks overseas."

 

H.B Vess

TECH TIP: USING SYNONYMS IN YOUR SEARCH

Thunderstone search products have the ability to use a thesaurus when searching to match alternate words with the same meaning. There are two types of sources for synonyms:

1. built-in – There's a built-in English thesaurus for matching normal words and synonyms.

1. custom – You can use your own custom thesaurus. This can be useful for things that aren't necessarily really synonyms but you want to treat them as such – acronyms that get expanded out, product name changes, etc. Please see your product's documentation for details on setting this up.

The custom thesaurus can be used instead of or in addition to the built-in thesaurus. The profile's "Synonyms" search setting affects how synonyms are used.

Possible values are:

• Disabled (default) – no synonym processing is allowed.

• Phrase Recognition only – synonyms are not used, but the thesaurus is used to recognize phrases. If someone searches for state of the art searches, it will recognize 'state of the art' as a phrase and search for "state of the art" searches and not match a page about the current state of searching for art treasures.

• Phrases & Allow Synonyms – recognizes phrases, as above, and allows uses to turn on synonym processing for a query word by adding ~ (a tilde) to the beginning. Searching for New York ~bridge would match a page about a New York underpass.

• Phrases & Use synonyms by default – phrase recognition and synonym processing is turned on by default, the ~ disables it. Searching for New York bridge would match the underpass article, but New York ~bridge would not.

Feedback, suggestions and questions are welcome. Send your email to

October 2009 - Archive

CONTENTS

• Appliances Add OpenSearch Support
• Customer Quote of the Month
• Upcoming Event

HAPPY HALLOWEEN from Thunderstone Software!

"Halloween.
Sly does it. Tiptoe catspaws. Slide and creep.
But why? What for? How? Who? When! Where did it all begin?
'You don't know, do you?' asks Carapace Clavicle Moundshroud climbing out
under the pile of leaves under the Halloween Tree. 'You don't really know!'."

 

Ray Bradbury,The Halloween Tree

NEW OPENSEARCH FORMAT RESULTS IN THUNDERSTONE SEARCH APPLIANCES

All Thunderstone appliances are now capable of producing results in the OpenSearch format. This standardized format makes it even easier for other products to integrate with our Thunderstone Search Appliance.

The most apparent effect of this is the ability to add your profiles to the "quick search" box to the right of the address bar in your web browser, such as Internet Explorer or Firefox. Once you have performed a search, the drop-down next to the quick search box will allow you to "add" that profile's search to the list of selectable search engines.

Please see the "OpenSearch Support" documentation on your appliance for more information, or feel free to contact Thunderstone Support if you have any questions.

CUSTOMER QUOTE OF THE MONTH

"Improving search results and removing outdated Intranet content was just the tip of our iceberg. We plan on migrating our Intranet media content, document content and information/news delivery to separate server platforms. Once the new systems are operational we will create separate Profiles on the Thunderstone SBE Appliance and continue providing a single search point for our associates. I am certain we will rely on assistance from Thunderstone Support during these future transitions."

 

Britt Bullock
Web Developer
Arvest Bank

UPCOMING EVENT

Strongsville Rotary Biz Expo
November 10, 2009
4:30 p.m. - 7 p.m.
Walter F. Ehrnfelt Recreation & Senior Center
18100 Royalton Road
Strongsville, Ohio 44136

John Turnbull (CEO) and Peter Thusat (CMO) plan to represent Thunderstone Software as exhibitors at this free Northeast Ohio event sponsored by the Rotary Club of Strongsville. The Expo will feature 50 booths of local companies, as well as light food and beverages. The sponsors request that attendees bring non-perishable food items suitable for donation to the Strongsville Food Bank.

Feedback, suggestions and questions are welcome. Send your email to