Thunderstone Blog: Customized Search Engine & Search Software

Cleveland, Ohio, Jan. 27, 2005 -- Thunderstone Software announced a new version of its Search Appliance aimed at the small business market. The new product is called Small Business Edition (SBE) and provides a search of up to 50,000 documents or web pages.

The Search Appliance SBE is available for a total investment of only $4,995, which includes support and maintenance for two years. Its closest competitor costs $7,495 including support for two years.

Thunderstone Search Appliances provide a turn-key search solution for intranets or web sites. They index many document formats including word processing; PDF; presentations; and most anything found on the web. The Appliances can be extensively customized by means of browser menus administered by a non-technical user.

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The Appliance SBE offers many unique features not found in other search appliances, including the ability to:

• Index any third-party information from the internet;
• Perform "wildcard" searches;
• Add or remove documents from the index instantly;
• Crawl file systems directly without webserver software;
• Combine results from multiple collections ("metasearch");
• Index JavaScript and Flash content.
• Raise capacity by remote upgrade.

The Appliance SBE contains most features of Thunderstone's enterprise-level versions, which index 250,000 pages and up. This includes the innovative Adaptive Indexing process, which conserves network resources by determining automatically how often each item needs to be updated.

The SBE optionally can be upgraded to a 250,000- or 500,000-document version. In upgrading, the SBE purchase price is credited in full against the cost of the larger capacity version.

All Thunderstone Search Appliance versions allow customers to index third-party information, such as government or industry web sites. This policy enables customers to create unique targeted collections of web information for their users or for competitive intelligence.

The Thunderstone Search Appliance SBE is ordered directly through Thunderstone's web site. For more information, visit http://www.thunderstone.com or call +1 216-820-2200. For government buyers, Thunderstone's GSA contract number is GS-35F-0914P.

ABOUT THUNDERSTONE SOFTWARE

Thunderstone Software LLC is a pioneer of search engine technology, providing text retrieval products to industry, government, and educational institutions since 1981. Thunderstone's TEXIS text-oriented relational database technology powers the Search Appliance, or may be licensed separately. Applications of TEXIS include online publishing; catalogs; classified advertising; document management; text mining; categorization; intelligence, and web indexing.

Cleveland, Oct. 7, 2004 -- Government agencies have a new solution for searching their archives and internal networks. The Thunderstone Search Appliance, a cost-effective, turn-key system, is now available through the Federal Supply Service of the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA).

The Thunderstone Search Appliance is intended for organizations needing sophisticated and accurate document retrieval while maintaining the simplest possible software administration. The Appliance indexes most document formats including Microsoft Office, other word processor files, PDFs, presentations, and web sites. A business administrator can easily customize the Appliance's operation via web-based menus.

The GSA Federal Supply Service provides government buyers a pre-negotiated "best price." The Thunderstone Search Appliance is listed on the GSA Information Technology Schedule, also known as Schedule 70. Products available through Schedule 70 may be purchased by government customers "off-the-shelf." These transactions satisfy requirements of the Competition in Contracting Act and Federal Acquisition Regulation. Some state and local governments also have arrangements to purchase through GSA Schedule 70.

According to numerous studies, office workers spend large proportions of their time--as much as 30%--trying to locate information. The Thunderstone Search Appliance can dramatically reduce this figure and have a direct positive impact on an organization's ability to accomplish its mission.

The Thunderstone Search Appliance has received high marks from independent reviewers. InfoWorld Magazine's Test Center gave it an "Excellent" rating. EWeek Magazine said its search results were "uniformly excellent." EWeek also noted that the Thunderstone Search Appliance price "works out to less than half the starting price of... rival Google Search Appliance."

Thunderstone's GSA contract number is GS-35F-0914P. GSA pricing for the Search Appliance can be obtained directly from Thunderstone. For more information, call 216-820-2200 or email .

ABOUT THUNDERSTONE SOFTWARE

Thunderstone Software LLC is a pioneer of search engine technology, providing text retrieval products to industry, government, and educational institutions since 1981. Applications of Thunderstone technology include: publishing; catalogs; classified advertising; document management; text mining; categorization; and intelligence. Thunderstone's products are used on major web sites worldwide. Customers include eBay, Corbis, QVC, About.com, and Associated Press. Thunderstone's web site is http://www.thunderstone.com.

Cleveland, Ohio, June 25, 2004 -- Web and intranet managers have a new way to help users navigate their sites. The Thunderstone Search Appliance "Best Bets" feature lets administrators easily designate pages to be highlighted or forced to the top within regular search results.

Best Bets provides, in effect, a private version of the sponsored listings familiar to web search engine users. The difference is that on one's own web site, there are no placement fees! Best Bets is available now in the Search Appliance as well as in Thunderstone's Texis software.

Thunderstone developed Best Bets in response to the increasing complexity of customer intra-nets and web sites. When common searches return hundreds or more result links within your site, the pages considered best by management may differ from those ranked highest by relevance algorithms. Best Bets provides management a simple way to influence results in advance -- and to change the ranking settings at any time.

Best Bets can be used to create suggested links, or to promote specific URLs so they stand out from the main results. There is no limit to the number of pages or search phrases that may be stored. A single phrase may link to multiple pages and vice-versa.

"It's like advertising your own content on your own site," said Doran Howitt, Thunderstone Vice President, Marketing. "If you advertise on web search engines, you probably should be advertising your content within your own site search too!

The Thunderstone Search Appliance is a turn-key solution designed for easy deployment and administration on intra-nets or web sites. The Search Appliance indexes most document formats including word processor files, PDF, JavaScript and Flash.

ABOUT THUNDERSTONE

Thunderstone Software LLC is a pioneer of search engine technology, providing text retrieval products to industry, government, and educational institutions since 1981.

Thunderstone's Texis software is at the heart of the Search Appliance. Texis is the most versatile platform for search application development, uniquely integrating natural language and relevance ranking with structured SQL relational database indexing. Texis is ideal for search requirements where large result sets must be sorted by metadata values or grouped into categories.

Applications of Thunderstone technology include: publishing; catalogs; classified advertising; document management; text mining; categorization; and intelligence. Thunderstone's products are used on thousands of web sites worldwide. Major customers include eBay, Corbis, QVC, About.com, ZDNet, and HotJobs. For more information, visit http://www.thunderstone.com or call +1 216-820-2200.

Cleveland, Ohio -- June 11, 2004 -- Web and intra-net administrators have a new solution for out-of-date search indexes. Adaptive Indexing, an innovative new feature of the Thunderstone Search Appliance, keeps site and enterprise indexes fresher and more accurate than ever before.

Adaptive Indexing uses a learning algorithm to index each document or web page according to a different schedule. The software discovers automatically which items need more frequent updating. The index is updated incrementally -- as often as every minute -- so that users find what they need reliably and quickly.

"Adaptive Indexing represents a significant advance in commercial search software," said Doran Howitt, Thunderstone's Vice President of Marketing. "Other search products must crawl an entire collection or web site on a uniform schedule. That may take too much time and bandwidth to do more than once a day, or even once a week. Adaptive Indexing conserves time and bandwidth, allowing index refreshing to be performed on an ongoing basis."

The Thunderstone Search Appliance is a turn-key solution designed for easy deployment and administration on intra-nets or web sites. It indexes most document formats including word processor files, PDFs, presentations, JavaScript and Flash content. The Search Appliance can be extensively customized by means of menus controlled by a business manager.

Adaptive Indexing is available in the new version 5 of the Thunderstone Search Appliance, available immediately. For more information, visit http://www.thunderstone.com or call +1 216-820-2200.

ABOUT THUNDERSTONE

Thunderstone Software LLC is a pioneer of search engine technology, providing text retrieval products to industry, government, and educational institutions since 1981.

Thunderstone's Texis software is at the heart of the Search Appliance. Texis is the most versatile platform for search application development, uniquely integrating natural language and relevance ranking with structured SQL relational database indexing. Texis is ideal for search requirements where large result sets must be sorted by metadata values or grouped into categories.

Applications of Thunderstone technology include publishing; catalogs; classified advertising; document management; text mining; categorization; and intelligence. Thunderstone's products are used on thousands of web sites worldwide. Major customers include eBay, Corbis, QVC, About.com, ZDNet, and HotJobs.

Cleveland -- Jan. 31, 2003 -- The industry's most powerful search appliance was introduced by Thunderstone Software. The Thunderstone[TM] Search Appliance handles 10 times the load of other turn-key search solutions, serving 1,000 typical searches per minute. Competing products handle only about 100 searches per minute.

The Thunderstone Search Appliance is intended for organizations seeking the simplest possible software administration, but without giving up the security and performance of a locally hosted solution. It is a complete web-search or intranet-search solution ready to use as soon as plugged into a network. The Appliance is based on Thunderstone's renowned Texis software, which powers the search functionality of major web sites such as eBay and QVC.

Unlike products that index a limited number of collections, the Thunderstone Appliance allows customers to create as many separate indexes as needed. Thus the administrator may give different groups of users access to content that is appropriate for each group. The Appliance indexes most document formats including HTML, PDF, and word processor files.

The Thunderstone Appliance is also the only search solution that indexes JavaScript[TM] links and content. Other search products skip over JavaScript and thus miss many web pages, even entire sites. The Thunderstone Appliance also indexes FlashTM links and content.

"As the variety of web applications within organizations grows, customers are finding it difficult to manage all the data on their networks," said John Turnbull, Thunderstone General Manager. "Our Search Appliance provides a turn-key solution that won't add to their administrative burden. It performs sophisticated relevance ranking, so that users find what they need quickly and effectively."

The Thunderstone Search Appliance may be integrated into an organization's web sites by means of a simple HTML form added to any page. The appearance may be customized by adding an organization's "look and feel" template, or by using XSLT.

Thunderstone Search Appliance models are available to index either 500,000 or one million documents. For more information about the Appliance, contact Thunderstone Software at 216-820-2200.

ABOUT THUNDERSTONE

Thunderstone Software LLC is the premier provider of text mining technology, integrating unstructured searching with SQL relational database functionality. Applications of this technology include publishing, catalogs, classified advertising, auctions, content management, and web-searching. Thunderstone is a 22-year-old company whose products are used on thousands of web sites worldwide. Major customers include eBay, Corbis, QVC, About.com, ZDNet, HotJobs, and many others. For more information, visit http://www.thunderstone.com.