Fogbeam Labs launch new website, release cutting-edge Open Source tools to cut through the information fog and amplify organizational intelligence
08/28/2013
PRESS RELEASE
Media Contact: Phillip Rhodes, prhodes@fogbeam.com
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
AUGUST 28, 2013Fogbeam Labs launch new website, release cutting-edge Open Source tools to cut through the information fog and amplify organizational intelligence
Chapel Hill, NC – Fogbeam Labs today announced the release of new versions of three of their cutting-edge Open Source tools for cutting through the fog of enterprise data and information overload, and also officially announced the launch of their brand new website design at http://www.fogbeam.com.
Aiming to provide enterprise customers with powerful capabilities for locating, creating, sharing, and reusing information, Chapel Hill based startup Fogbeam Labs have released new versions of three components of their Open Source “Fogcutter” suite of products. The Fogcutter products synthesize elements of Social Networking, Knowledge Management, Machine Learning and the Semantic Web to provide a comprehensive suite of tools for supporting transfer, innovation and collaboration.
Neddick, an information discovery platform which shares an essential “look and feel”, and substantial functionality, with consumer web applications like Reddit and Digg, sees the release of Technology Preview Release 4. Neddick allows users to consume information from any repository with an RSS feed, including external blogs, Google Alerts and the like, as well as internal Document Management Systems, blogs, wikis and other applications. New features in this release include the ability to launch custom actions in response to content related events, sophisticated filters for selecting important content, new privacy settings and more sophisticated aggregation capabilities. Neddick is an essential element of what Fogbeam Labs call the Technology Radar - a sample capability case built around the importance of maintaining “situational awareness”.
Quoddy, an Enterprise Social Network, which will be familiar to users of consumer facing Social Networks like Facebook or Google+, sees its first public release today. Quoddy competes with proprietary Enterprise Social Network products like those from Jive Software and Yammer, among others. Compared to competing products, Quoddy features a more fundamental focus on integration with existing enterprise backend systems, and ties together information from all over the enterprise, in order to provide real-time access to important events and relevant context. A powerful Subscriptions feature allows Quoddy to integrate calendar events from groupware applications, business events right off the SOA/ESB backbone, content related events from a Document Management System or blog server, and user tasks from a BPM system, into one cohesive, unified stream.
Hatteras, the Business Events Subscription Engine which glues Quoddy to an enterprise messaging fabric, also sees its first public release today.
Fogbeam Labs Founder and President Phillip Rhodes said “We like to say that we are building the only truly Enterprise focused Enterprise Social Network. The Business Events integration and BPM integration in Quoddy are what finally allow an organization to derive real value from an ESN, rather than letting it serve as just a replacement for email”.
Rhodes gave some background on the Chapel Hill based startup in saying “We are a bootstrapped, self-funded startup with no big-name backers, and no founders from Stanford or an Ivy League school. And that's OK, because our focus is on shipping products and creating customer value, not on winning startup competitions or worrying about what investors will think of our founding team. By actually shipping product, we are demonstrating through action, not words, that we are moving forward and achieving the milestones we have set for ourselves”.
Rhodes further elaborated on todays product releases: “This is our first 'synchronized release', which means we shipped new versions of 3 projects at the same time. Doing this requires incredible discipline and focus, and demonstrates our ability to deliver a very complex and challenging project, despite lacking the resources of an IBM, or Cisco or Red Hat. We may be small, but we are intense, determined, and – like my dad always used to tell me - “it's not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog” ”.
Today also marked the public launch of the totally revamped Fogbeam Labs website, at http://www.fogbeam.com. The new website has a brand new, modern look and feel, courtesy of Fogbeam Labs' other founding member, Sarah Kahn. Kahn had the following to say about the new site: “The new fogbeam.com design is more in line with our orange and blue lighthouse brand. It also features a new resource center, where you can find all the educational content Phil has diligently been creating about social enterprise software, the semantic web, and other interesting topics. You can also now find all of our contact information and social media profiles in one place!”
The Open Source releases of all three projects are available now, via GitHub. Source and binary downloads are available from the respective GitHub repos for each project:
- Quoddy: https://github.com/fogbeam/Quoddy/releases
- Nedick: https://github.com/fogbeam/Neddick/releases
- Hatteras: http://github.com/fogbeam/Hatteras/releases
The certified and supported releases of Quoddy Enterprise, Neddick Enterprise and Hatteras Enterprise are available for “Limited Availability” distribution from Fogbeam Labs. Rhodes and Kahn concluded by stating “We are by no means finished. These Open Source releases are an important milestone, but our roadmap has a lot of remaining items on it. And we are looking to engage with a few customers in a co-creation scenario as we refine the roadmap and finalize a 'General Availability' release of Fogcutter 1.0”.
For more information on Fogbeam Labs, visit http://www.fogbeam.com, or email the Fogbeam team at info@fogbeam.com
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New Fogblog Post: What Are We Working On Here?
08/17/2012
Earlier today, someone posted a question on Hacker News asking "What are you working on? I posted the following answer, but the entire thread wound up getting deleted for some reason. I've decided to reproduce the answer here, since it would have made a good blog post anyway.
So, what exactly *are* Fogbeam Labs working on?
Well, we are working on F/OSS knowledge management / collaboration tools, heavily based around social-networking, machine learning, collective intelligence and semantic web technologies.
Read the entire blog post at the Fogblog.
Escape Hatch Hospitality Suite @ CED Tech Venture Conference
08/16/2012
As we mentioned last time, we're planning a "special initiative" to coincide with the CED Tech Venture Conference which is coming up in Raleigh, on Sept 11th and 12th, 2012. A number of local startups and tech firms are going to host a special "hospitality suite" alongside the CED event, where investors, customers, journalists, etc. can get away from the noise and babble of the main conference floor, and interact with a select group of startup founders in a more intimate setting; having one one one conversations, private demos, or whatever is required.
Read the entire blog post on the Fogblog
New Fogblog Post: Fogbeam Status Update
07/20/2012
Dear Friends of Fogbeam Labs:
It's been a while since I had a chance to reach our to all of you with the latest news, and I wanted to take a quick moment and let you all know how things are going.
Since last we spoke, things have been very dynamic and exciting here. We have had a new co-founder join the team, we've made tremendous strides one one of our products from a development standpoint, we've added a new project and some exciting new capabilities to our portfolio, we've had one of our projects used as part of a research project by researchers from The Max Planck Institute for Software Systems in Germany, and we are continuing to iterate through the Customer Development process.
Read the entire blog post on the Fogblog
A Christmas Special: New Neddick Release!
12/25/2011
Neddick Technology Preview Release 3 (tpr3) is available, just in time for Christmas! See https://github.com/fogbeam/Neddick/tree/tpr3 and enjoy!
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all, from Fogbeam Labs.
Fogbeam Labs launches Fogcutter project
07-10-2010
Today we are launching the Fogcutter project, which will deliver the world's most innovative and powerful suite of open-source tools for fostering collaboration, retrieving and navigating knowledge and information, and building intelligent applications.