DHS implements Attensity's Text Analytics
The heroine in one of E. M. Forster’s novels says, “Only connect!…. Live in fragments no longer,” and this is what the sophisticated text analysis solution from Attensity does with free-form text; DHS is implementing the system
In E. M. Forster’s Howard’s End, the novel’s protagonist Margaret Schlegel utters two of the most famous words in English literature: “Only connect!” It occurs to us that these words may well serve as a good motto for Palo Alto, California-based Attensity, the developer of Text Analytics software solution which has just been selected by DHS for immediate implementation. Attensity’s technology, which originated in research in linguistics done at the University of Utah, allows computers to understand and process free-form text, thus offering government and commercial organizations the opportunity to understand patterns in — and leverage — the vast amounts of information contained in nonstructured formats. The technology allows users to extract and analyze facts such as who, what, where, when, and why — and then allows users to drill down to understand people, places, and events and how they are related. The result is conveyed in XML and in a structured relational data format which can be merged with existing structured data. The data may then be analyzed using other Attensity applications such as Attensity Discover and Attensity Analytics, or through intelligence applications already installed in the organization.
Text Analytics thus automates the transformation of unstructured text — from newspaper articles to e-mail messages - into structured, relational data, making it much easier - and much quicker — to spot trends, anomalies, patterns, and associations. The company says that with its software, it takes about one minute on a standard laptop to extract every fact and every linguistic relationship from all 1,500 pages of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, producing more than 300,000 extractions.
U.S. intelligence, security, and law enforcement agencies already use Attensity’s solutions to mine intelligence contained in freeform text, which comprises the vast majority of information collected. Attensity last year won IT Week’s award as one of 2005 Top 50 Technological Innovators.
Come to think of it, the first and last portions of the quote from Forster’s novel would indeed be suitable for Attensity’s motto: “Only connect!…. Live in fragments no longer.”
-read more at Attensity Web site
