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Lucid Imagination Appoints Prominent Search Innovator Brian Pinkerton as Chief Architect
Creator of First Web Full-Text Search Engine and Real-Time Search Feed Crawler to Focus on Lucid Imagination's Value-Add Software for Apache Lucene/Solr
| Source: Lucid Imagination
SAN MATEO, CA--(Marketwire - October 26, 2009) - Lucid Imagination, the first
commercial company dedicated to Apache Lucene and Solr, today announced that Brian
Pinkerton has joined the company as the Chief Architect.
Pinkerton is most noted for creating WebCrawler, the first Web search
engine to provide full-text search, which was acquired by AOL in 1995.
Brian comes to Lucid Imagination from Scout Labs, where he was Vice
President of Engineering. Pinkerton joined Scout Labs following its
acquisition of Minimal Loop, a company he founded and served as President.
Past positions also include Director of Search at Technorati, Principal
Architect at A9, Vice President of Engineering and Chief Scientist at
Excite and Technical Architect at American Online.
Based upon his experience, Pinkerton is an innovator in both internet and
enterprise search technology. While at Technorati, he led the effort to
replace the search engine's relational database-based technology with the
full-text search-based technology used today. At Minimal Loop, Pinkerton
created a real-time feed crawler; the company was later acquired by Scout
Labs, whose search technology offers real-time monitoring of social media
content used by major brands. Pinkerton brings this experience to Lucid
Imagination to help companies using Apache Lucene and Solr solve the
hardest enterprise search problems.
Today, companies of all sizes across sectors are discovering that social
technology innovations can provide competitive advantage, from engaging
customers in support forums to unlocking employee productivity with
advances in collaboration -- all of which depend on accurate search to
ensure that the right content is found by the right people in timely
fashion. One of the biggest search problems today is handling real-time
data produced by social technologies, inside and outside the enterprise.
Enterprise search technologies such as Lucene and Solr have long placed a
premium on accuracy, and given the volume and pace of real-time data,
search accuracy and relevancy are at a far greater premium than with
conventional Internet search.
"As fast as companies, communities and consumers are producing data about
each other and everything else, they need faster, more versatile search
capabilities to find the information they want," said Pinkerton. "They
want search technology that can match pace with the transparency,
flexibility, speed and scale of social media and the data that drives it.
Apache Lucene and Solr offer some of the most advanced technology
available, and are already powering many real-time social networks, making
it a great fit for companies tackling the same kind of data. This is a
tremendous opportunity for me to continue advancing the modern Web and work
with the best companies in the world to solve advanced search problems."
"Brian's background and experience, from WebCrawler to today, along with
the knowledge he's gained over the last two decades, is already proving to
be a real asset to the Lucene/Solr community and to Lucid Imagination,"
said Eric Gries, President and CEO. "The emergence of real-time search as a
critical market need puts ever greater emphasis on accuracy and relevancy,
long a focus of enterprise search applications from government to
e-commerce and many domains in between. And, there is tremendous need in
the enterprise marketplace for search technology that can harness the rapid
growth of data for competitive advantage, and we're excited that Brian can
be a part of it."
Pinkerton will share his knowledge of search innovation and social media on
during the webinar, Search Strategies that Put Social
Technology to Work, which will take place Tuesday, October 27, 2009 at
2:00 ET/11:00 PT. Pinkerton will be joined by Ty Ahmad-Taylor, CEO of
Fanfeedr.com, and David Hendi, Director of Engineering and Search at
MySpace.com. The group will be discussing the need for search technology
that can match pace with the real-time capabilities of social media,
achieving the accuracy for which enterprise is known in tandem with
scalability and speed. To register, please visit the Lucid Imagination web
site at
http://www.lucidimagination.com/Webinar-Search-Strategies-Put-Social-Technology-to-Work.
About Lucid Imagination
Lucid Imagination is a commercial company dedicated to Apache Lucene
technology. The company provides free certified distributions,
commercial-grade support, training, high-level consulting and value-added
software for Lucene and Solr. Lucid Imagination's goal is to serve as a
central resource for the entire Lucene community and make them more
productive. Lucid Imagination is a privately held venture-funded company.
The investors include Granite Ventures and Walden International and its
customers include AOL, Apple, Comcast, and Zappos.