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RESOURCES FOR EVALUATING ENTERPRISE SEARCH TECHNOLOGIES
February 07, 2007

Table of Contents

Featured Content: Search Finds Usability with the Right Information Architecture
WebFeat Releases WebFeat Express 2.0 with Results Clustering; Partners With Inmagic
Focusing on BI search
Arity Announces LexiLink
ISYS Search Software Supports Microsoft Office 2007 Document Formats and Vista
New search platform for NLM
Upgrade for SearchInform
Clarabridge Secures $7.2 Million in New Funding
IXIASOFT Signs OEM Agreement With 3Squared
Fios Announces Consulting Services; Launches Portal
New options for the enterprise
Microsoft CETS and LTU Image-Seeker Partner at European Police Agency
The soul of search
Lijit Secures Over $900,000 in Funding; Partners With FeedBurner

Featured Content: Search Finds Usability with the Right Information Architecture

Search technology has long been in the vocabulary of the IT department.Within the last decade, it has entered the vernacular of business users as well.Whether fueled by info glut, the growing number of internet and intranet sites, knowledge management initiatives, or online collaboration, search is viewed as a tactical component to virtually any online content strategy. Search is not a new technology or concept. As a venerable veteran on the content management market, search seems poised to become commodity software, ubiquitous in availability and standardized in delivery.Today, however, nothing could be further from the truth.

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Despite a long history, the search market continues to thrive in growth, positioning, and market dynamics. Consider that in 2004, FAST introduced the concept of an enterprise search platform and Steve Jobs trumped up Spotlight as part of OS X. In 2005, Accenture announced a $100 million information management practice based on search; IBM contributed UIMA to the open source world raising the visibility of Omnifind; Microsoft Windows integrated Live Search; and Autonomy was acquired by Verity. Even the U.S. government got involved, announcing the eGov Data Reference Model, requiring search and taxonomy.

This frenetic activity level and focus continued in 2006. The year's highlights include IBM's announcement of a $1 billion information management practice; Oracle's announcement of Secure Enterprise Search; the acquisition of Hummingbird by OpenText; and the skyrocketing market caps on Google. These events reflect a focus on search, not as a silo technology, but as a fundamental enterprise-wide function that empowers applications ranging from business intelligence to ecommerce.

Plainly put, search is not commodity software. Features, interfaces, adjunct functionality, and a growing diversity in content resources impose great demands on the search market as it morphs to better serve the needs of its user communities. Therein lies the impetus for this change: Despite its years of availability, search remains a focus for many users. User needs continue to grow and mature, and as they do the demands on the search solution providers increase.

Indeed, consider that in a recent survey of over 200 enterprise users of search technology, conducted by Delphi Group, on the effectiveness of corporate intranet search experiences, 25% of the respondents indicated that the search function provided in their corporate intranet environment needed to be completely re-architected. Another 55% indicated that search caused problems but were not sure if a complete overhaul was necessary. Either way, the majority of respondents indicated that search within the corporate firewall was not meeting their expectations and needs.

Thrashing About

Despite progressive improvements to search technology through the years, certain fundamental issues fail to be resolved. In the same user survey, a great majority of respondents indicated that search is still not strategically positioned as a corporate platform or resource. An overwhelming 81% pointed out that a single integrated search interface is not available to the organization.

In fact, a minimum of two or three search tools are routinely used by 90% of the survey's users. Search is not being deployed as a fundamental corporate platform, but as a fragmented function. Approaching search in this manner is not only a source of user frustration, but it can also directly contribute to decreases in efficiency. The need to execute searches repeatedly in multiple search tools leads to the phenomenon of search thrash—the process of executing disjointed iterative searches manually. It is not uncommon for today's user to embark on a search for a particular idea only to end up executing multiple similar searches— within the email system, within a corporate intranet (or multiple departmental intranets), within a document management system, in several databases, and on one or more internet sites. This thrashing is fundamental to user dissatisfaction and often leads to a lack of focus, loss of time, and the potential for relevance to be lost while surfing across multiple silos.

This last point is further aggravated by deficiencies in several areas: efficient relevancy ranking, user sensitivity, and integration of search into effective corporate taxonomies. These systems also often lack a means to categorize content resources. As a result, a majority of users reported spending upwards of 20% of their search time reviewing irrelevant documents—that is, documents retrieved by a query but deemed, after a quick reading by the user, to not be relevant to the original question or focus.Thus, between thrashing amid multiple applications and interfaces and the "processing" of irrelevant information, users experience loss of time, loss of focus, and loss of productivity. Is it any wonder that satisfaction with current corporate search environments is so low?

Finding Answers

The solution to this situation is not the selection of the "right" search tool or even in search technology per se. The solution lies in the understanding that search is a component part of an overall organizational strategy and a commitment to an Information Architecture. The efficiency and effectiveness of the search experience is maximized when it is addressed holistically, as part of an organization-wide strategy to content management, embodied in an Information Architecture. The Information Architecture positions and establishes search as a platform function, not as a standalone function. In this way, search is related to and tailored towards the needs of a community, the nature of the content to which it is directed, and the business goals and objectives of the owners of the content.

The definition and creation of such an Information Architecture, however, is not without cost.The development of an Information Architecture has to be addressed deliberately and uniquely with each installation. It is not a product that can be purchased, but an environment that requires analysis, design, and ownership. Development of an effective Information Architecture requires multiple disciplines. It is part art and part science. It encompasses approaches to structuring, organizing, and labeling content to enhance the user's ability to find and manage that content.

From a technology perspective, this approach includes components such as automated classification, taxonomical and facet-based interfaces, linking and navigation, and yes, search. In this approach, the search function is potentially complex, comprised of many features and functions such as natural language processing, concept analysis, and user sensitivity.The goal, however, is not to target search as the only way, or as a standalone approach to achieving findability, but to position it as an integrated part of an overall Information Architecture. This is the more difficult aspect of designing and executing an Information Architecture. Each component should complement and leverage the capabilities of the others, in a seamless and intuitive manner. The end result or "total solution" should be an interactive, personalized user experience that provides a single, albeit dynamic and heuristic, approach to retrieving content.

This rising swell of demand for a "total solution"within the enterprise is being brought to the forefront and accelerated by employees who find themselves also general consumers of search within the commercial internet world. Users of commercially available tools such as Yahoo!, Amazon, and eBay often wonder why such functionality does not exist in the corporate world.

Technology solutions and related strategies (i.e., Information Architectures) are no longer viewed as solely the purview of IT. Business users are also consumers, educated enough to be dangerous. They are now confident enough to know they can demand more. They become frustrated when they cannot simply have the experiences they are accustomed to "outside the firewall" on the inside as well. If only it were that easy.What these newly enlightened users fail to realize is that while their goal of end results that are equal to those achieved with commercially available tools on the web are obtainable, accomplishing the same in the enterprise is not as easy as replicating what the commercial sites do simply by deploying the same technology. Remember, the definition of Information Architecture includes coordinating the needs of a community, the nature of the content, and the business goals. I refer to these as the three C's of Information Architecture: Content, Community, and Context.

Each time an Information Architecture (and search as a component therein) is looked at, it must be done deliberately and uniquely to satisfy each of the three C's. Thus, what works in organizing a collection of digitized video and audio files to facilitate purchase and download by a general interest world consumer community (Apple's iTunes site is a stellar example of this type of well-defined and executed Information Architecture) may not work at all for a collection of scientific findings and observations needed by a community of chemical compound marketers and developers looking to increase collaboration and the rate of innovation.What remains the same in each instance, however, is the requirement for some form of search, working in a coordinated effort with navigation, taxonomy, personalization, and interface. Although the potential technical components remain the same, the individual features, make-up, and execution should differ.

Planning Advice

When determining the need for search within the organization, start by looking inward. Define the three C's of your Information Architecture deliberately and succinctly. What is the volume of content? What similarities and differences exist within the body of content? How dynamic is the content collection? Who makes up the intended community of users? Is it one community or several? If several, how similar or different are their needs and proficiency with the content? Why do they seek the content?

Pay particular attention to the third C: context.What is the ultimate goal of the Information Architecture? Is it to enable customer self-service, ensure compliance, detect detection, identifiy expertise, broker tacit resources, facilitate collaboration, expedite knowledge discovery, expedite targeted retrieval, detect brand sentiment or business intelligence? Search should not be positioned and used as a means of last resort to access knowledge, but rather as a core capability baked into the enterprise business model. Don't position search as merely a ubiquitous box that enables user query, but as an underlying and integrated Information Architecture component.

Build a search strategy that supports process intelligence. Imagine a search tool on a consumer site that does not simply return "products" that satisfy a user's query, but interfaces with inventory systems, marketing campaigns, and customer tracking systems, and dynamically uses this input to better personalize the manner in which products are retrieved, ranked, and displayed. Similar scenarios can be supported for product developers looking for best courses of action when dealing with particular types of content or customers looking for practical remedies to very specific experiences.

Build a search strategy that supports information intelligence.This is a new way of looking at and leveraging search. New advances in the underlying technology and innovative deployments of search are enabling not just user query and retrieval scenarios, but business intelligence detection and harvesting. Many of the techniques provided by search tools to support advanced, conceptbased queries can and are being leveraged to perform content analytics. Search, as part of a finely tuned Information Architecture, can be used to cluster similar pieces of content coming from streaming media to detect an overall sentiment to brands/products/communities, or to detect fraud or trends and prevent pirating.

Only with the enterprise strategy clearly defined and an Information Architecture aligned to that strategy can you turn your view outwards. Keeping focused on the search component of the architecture, look for technology providers that stress ubiquitous integration across business applications, with highly customizable, contextsensitive interfaces. Look for integrated text and data analytics, contextual search and navigation, multimedia search, intelligent value/entity extraction and linking, social and collaborative search/tagging, and transparent and accurate security.

It must be stressed that the full value of your search technology investment will not be realized by purchasing the "best" search engine but by integrating the best engine for your needs into an overall architecture. Take the time at the outset to define a business strategy. Knowing what that is helps you frame search technologies as a fundamental system platform. In the end, you give your users the flexibility to recover information with efficiency so they can use it in innovative and targeted ways.

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About the Author 

CARL FRAPPAOLO is co-founder and consulting practice leader of the Delphi Group, a Perot Systems Company. He has more than 25 years of experience advising enterprises on a broad array of business solutions including search engines, information architectures, taxonomies, knowledge/content/document management, workflow, BPM, records management, imaging, electronic document databases, and evaluating outsourcing options. He can be reached at carl.frappaolo@ps.net.

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WebFeat Releases WebFeat Express 2.0 with Results Clustering; Partners With Inmagic

WebFeat has released version 2.0 of its WebFeat Express federated search prism. The WebFeat Express 2.0 system includes results clustering, expanded customization options, support for 7 languages, thesaurus, and WebFeat API integration. New enhancements to the WebFeat Administrative Console (WAC) are designed to enable WebFeat Express systems to be configured in a fraction of the time of traditional federated search engines.

WebFeat users can select a variety of on-the-fly merge and sort options for results--including clustered, grouped by resource, and sorted by date, author, title, and relevancy. WebFeat's results clustering capabilities deliver both conceptual and contextual analysis and clustering of retrieved content, offering a level of linguistic sophistication. The WebFeat search experience guides users to relevant information. The expanded WebFeat Express 2.0 branding and customization options are designed to enable WebFeat systems to be integrated with existing library web pages. Administrators can choose from a variety of user interfaces then customize to match the library website by adding header, footer, and sidebar art and HTML, custom descriptions and help text; create subject categories and sub-categories; and select languages. Database titles may be customized and linked to native search interfaces. WebFeat Express 2.0 "Quicksearch" search boxes may be generated using the WAC and pasted into any library webpage, including Blackboard and WebCT pages. Additionally, custom library applications may be developed using WebFeat's Applications Programming Interface (API). The heart of WebFeat Express is its WAC. With WAC, administrators can add and delete databases and subject categories, configure authentication, and customize user interfaces. WAC can seamlessly import configuration from EBSCO's A-to-Z service. WebFeat is compatible with virtually all databases, catalogs, and authentication protocols.

WebFeat has also announced a partnership with Inmagic, Inc., a provider of enterprise Research Asset Management. This partnership will enable Inmagic Presto customers to conduct federated searches across virtually unlimited external data sources. Inmagic Presto is a web-based enterprise application designed to enable organizations to provide authorized end users with immediate and consolidated access to information, even when it appears in varied formats and multiple locations across and outside of the organization. Presto enables end users to both search full text and browse, in order to access critical information. WebFeat users can simultaneously search across unlimited numbers of resources from a single interface. WebFeat's patented translator authentication and session management technology enables WebFeat to searcdfh virtually any searchable database--a feature unique to WebFeat. WebFeat maintains a library of over 6,000 database translators.

(www.webfeat.org; www.inmagic.com)   

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Focusing on BI search

Information Builders has unveiled WebFOCUS Magnify, a search and navigation tool that categorizes search results and supplements them with analysis and reporting capabilities. Magnify uses the metadata from Google or other search engines to index structured data records and provide access to all WebFOCUS capabilities through the search interface.

The company explains that Magnify captures data on a message bus. Using standard integration technology from iWay Software (an Information Builders company), Magnify enriches the messages, adds metatags and submits it to the search engine indexing mechanism, avoiding the need for crawling data stores, particularly database records, combining structured data in databases with unstructured search. WebFOCUS Magnify leverages the metatags and provides results in a navigation tree to guide users to the information they need.

Features of WebFOCUS Magnify include:

  • dynamic categorization of search results,
  • search-driven parameterized reports,
  • dynamic directories, and
  • search engine agnosticism.

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Arity Announces LexiLink

Arity Corporation, a Semantic Web technologies company working in knowledge management problem solving, has announced LexiLink, which gives life science professionals the ability to build and manage the complex knowledge bases that inform research and development. The Life Sciences rely on lexicons and ontologies to describe, analyze, and drive scientific investigations. LexiLink builds, curates, and manages multiple lexicons and ontologies in one web-based application.

LexiLink manages the provenance of concepts and attributes and provides alerts to specific changes in source lexicons that are relevant to the user. This allows users to absorb changes and new versions directly into their new lexicon. Developed in cooperation with Pfizer, Inc., LexiLink can import many lexicons and ontologies in the biomedical field such as UMLS extracts, MeSH, MedDRA, GO, GOA, and ChEBI. LexiLink can manage vocabularies with millions of entries. Companies can incorporate their existing, proprietary vocabularies as well as create new ones within LexiLink. They can also use LexiLink to export these vocabularies to feed text mining and other applications within the organization. LexiLink ships with extended web service APIs to set the stage for a range of knowledge management applications. LexiLink can be used alone or as a companion product to Arity's @tlas and EXPRESSway investigative research applications.

This tool was designed to let scientists view concepts, similar terms, and detailed information to instantly see relationships and hierarchies. They can annotate entries, view full synonym expansion, and establish links between terms across lexicons. LexiLink generates alerts whenever a linked concept is modified internally or externally (because LexiLink also lets users import lexicon updates without disrupting their customizations). And, LexiLink can automatically fix logic errors in imported data (such as parent relationships to ancestors).

(www.arity.com)

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ISYS Search Software Supports Microsoft Office 2007 Document Formats and Vista

ISYS Search Software, a provider of enterprise search solutions for business and government, has announced support for the newly released Microsoft Office 2007 document formats, offering immediate enterprise search functionality across core Office 2007 applications. ISYS has also announced full support for Microsoft Windows Vista. Microsoft Office 2007 includes new document types for all main Office applications such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Access. Microsoft has also included enhancements in the form of XML Paper Specification (XPS), its new alternative to the Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF). Congruent with enhancements in the Office product, Microsoft Windows Vista also comes with built-in support for XPS. ISYS has incorporated support for these new formats into its ISYS 8 platform, designed to ensure a seamless transition for its customers moving to Office 2007 or Vista. In addition to support for new Microsoft file formats, ISYS 8 also introduced support of .wma and .wmv. formats.

(www.isys-search.com)

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New search platform for NLM

The National Library of Medicine's (NLM) new enterprise search platform will improve access to information for the public, as well as for the healthcare professionals, researchers, librarians and publishers who use the site.

The NLM, located on the campus of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., is the largest biomedical library in the world. The deployment will enhance search functionality on the NLM's linked Web pages and will enable search on its consumer-oriented health MedlinePlus Web sites, and MedlinePlus en espanol, which aggregate medical data from national organizations and government agencies.

With the new solution, Velocity from Vivisimo, visitors can search for health topics like "arthritis" or "back pain," and easily access data from the respective site's pages, Vivisimo reports. Users can also find answers quickly to specific questions like "What causes chicken pox?" or "What are the symptoms of Lupus?"

Joyce Backus, head of the NLM's reference and Web services section, says the library rated proposals based on prototypes, not paper. "Based on our scoring criteria for the prototypes," she says, "Vivisimo offered the best search results, based on the content and metadata of the NLM Web documents." Backus added that the solution provides search results that most closely match user expectations.

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Upgrade for SearchInform

SearchInform Technologies has released a new version of its namesake software. SearchInform provides full-text search and search for documents with similar content, with new interface settings and enhanced functionality, the company says.

Due to the implementation of new auto-searching servers, working with previously created indexes stored in the local network is less complicated. Now, the company explains, whenever a new index is required, the software will automatically scan the network and show all existing indexes available for connection.

Main features of the new version include:

  • phrase search with consideration to stemming and thesaurus,
  • new technology for similar document search,
  • high indexing speed (from 15 to 30 GB/hour),
  • index size of 15 percent to 25 percent from the actual size of the text data,
  • query caching system, and
  • support of more than 60 text formats.

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Clarabridge Secures $7.2 Million in New Funding

Clarabridge, a text-mining software company, has secured $7.2 million in funding. Intersouth Partners led this round, with participation from all of Clarabridge's previous investors. Clarabridge will use the new financing to boost sales and marketing operations, broaden customer service and support capabilities, and better serve existing and new vertical markets. Clarabridge previously raised $3 million in venture capital, led by Boulder Ventures, bringing the company's total amount raised to date to more than $10 million.

(www.clarabridge.com)

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IXIASOFT Signs OEM Agreement With 3Squared

IXIASOFT, a XML database and search engine market provider, has announced an OEM partnership with 3Squared, a provider of web content management solutions and consultancy based in the UK. As part of this agreement, 3Squared has developed Arca, a document management solution based on TEXTML Server, IXIASOFT's XML database.

Aimed at organizations looking for a complete document management solution, Arca is designed to enable management for growing enterprise content. Arca features complete document and content management capabilities providing users with a collaborative solution designed to allow them to better control their content, store and retrieve documents, and manage and compare versions.

(www.ixiasoft.com; www.3squared.co.uk)

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Fios Announces Consulting Services; Launches Portal

Fios Inc., a provider of electronic discovery and litigation readiness services, has announced new consulting services. Fios' new Review Management Services are designed to help clients assess and identify gaps in existing or proposed review strategies, identify opportunities for process improvement, and implement recommendations to improve attorney efficiency. Fios' Review Management Services are an expansion of the litigation readiness services the company has been offering since 2003.

Fios Inc. has also announced the official launch of its third sponsored information portal, TechnologyCounsel.org. This new web portal is dedicated to supporting the role of Technology Counsel and the legal practitioners who are bridging the gap between law and information technology. TechnologyCounsel.org offers news, trends, research, legal blogs, job boards, and articles focused on legal and technology issues related to litigation, governmental investigations, and compliance. In addition to news, articles, and industry research, TechnologyCounsel.org features a new industry Blog, entitled "Enterprise Matters," which provides observations on issues that technology counsel professionals can apply to their practices. The blog is supported by Mary Mack, Esq., and Daniel Pelc, Esq., Fios' Office of Technology Counsel, and electronic discovery experts.

 

(www.fiosinc.com; www.technologycounsel.org)

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New options for the enterprise

Exalead has released Exalead one:enterprise, which has been designed to provide users with a unified access point to content and both structured and unstructured data regardless of format or location. The company says Version 4.5 provides a new, simpler user interface, greater search refinement options, improved performance for both 64-bit and 32-bit system environments, expanded language and file format support as well as new management tools for administrators.

The new release offers customers three user interfaces (UI) from which to choose, including:

  • the UI available in Version 4.0;
  • a new, streamlined UI found on Exalead's Web search engine for business-related searches inside the firewall; and
  • a white label version for organizations hoping to customize the look and feel from top to bottom.
Exalead reports that all of its products are optimized for 64-bit systems. However, the new release offers performance improvements for 32-bit systems to ensure that response time is consistent for all users, in any technology environment. Version 4.5 is compatible with most major operating systems, including Windows, Linux, Solaris and UNIX, as well as new support for IBM AIX versions 5.2 and higher to ensure quick installation and deployment, Exalead says.

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Microsoft CETS and LTU Image-Seeker Partner at European Police Agency

LTU Technologies, a provider of image search and recognition solutions, has announced two investigative technologies have been linked together to provide enhanced resources for victim identification and rescue. Requested by the Italian Police, the Microsoft Child Exploitation Tracking System (CETS) and the LTU Technologies Image-Seeker have been integrated to expand and accelerate evidence research.

Through the integration of the two systems, authorized agents of the Italian Police (Polizia delle Comunicazioni) can check if suspect images--captured on a website or seized from perpetrators--have already been seen in previous or ongoing investigations. By connecting to the LTU Image-Seeker, agents (CETS users) may also know if there are similar images in the database of known images (such as images taken at the same time or in the same location). This ability is designed to enable agents to share multimedia information through all the Italian territory and assemble clues to help identify the location and identity of victims--all necessary in trying to rescue these children.

The CETS deployment at the special unit of the "Polizia delle Comunicazioni", announced jointly in October by Microsoft and the Italian Ministry of the Internal Affairs, was the first European installation of CETS (following the original CETS installation for the Canadian police and subsequently for the Indonesian National Police). CETS tracks information on known offenders, traffickers of abusive images, financial transactions, messaging identities, chatroom discussions--all which may be useful in determining the identity of victims and perpetrators.

(www.ltutech.com; www.microsoft.com)

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The soul of search

Solcara has announced a partnership whereby it will integrate ISYS Search Software's indexing technology into its federated search engine, Solcara SolSearch. ISYS' software suite offers a broad range of products designed for searching file servers, document repositories, e-mail, Web sites and intranets.

SolSearch simultaneously searches multiple repositories, both internal and external sources, providing the user with a definitive list of informative and precise information with only one query.

In other ISYS news, the company announces support for Microsoft Office 2007 document formats through the ISYS 8 platform, offering immediate enterprise search functionality across core Office 2007 applications. ISYS also provides full support for Vista.

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Lijit Secures Over $900,000 in Funding; Partners With FeedBurner

Lijit Networks, Inc. has secured over $900,000 in funding from an investment syndicate including Colorado Fund I, managed by High Country Venture; Brad Feld, managing director of Foundry Group; Seth Goldstein, co-founder of AttentionTrust.org, Majestic Research and ROOT Markets; and Paul Berberian, former CEO of Raindance Communications. The syndicate is rounded out by investments from Lijit's management team and other Colorado- and nationally-based angel investors.

 

Lijit has also announced a partnership with FeedBurner, a provider of online media distribution and audience engagement services, to provide search services for FeedBurner's collection of publisher-organized networks.

(www.lijit.com; www.feedburner.com)

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