Loqu8 Reaches Semifinals at Salesforce.com AppQuest Contest

Loqu8 demonstrated new capabilities in its Insight product at Salesforce.com’s AppQuest contest. Of the worldwide pool of 120+ entries, Loqu8 was invited to the semi-finals round to demonstrate Insight’s groundbreaking capabilities: rapid CRM and Force.com information display and integration with real-time collaboration (Chatter).

“Loqu8 is honored to present our Insight product for consideration at AppQuest,” stated Dr. Timothy Uy, President and CEO of Loqu8. “Our customers are very excited by Insight’s instant information access capabilities and how it encourages workers to expand their use of cloud applications. Insight’s cloud access and acceleration attributes address the key pain points facing today’s mobile and virtual workforce.”

Press Release
More on Insight

Instantly Display and Update Microsoft Outlook Contacts

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – Since the introduction of Loqu8 Insight earlier this year, information workers are expressing enthusiasm for the first instant information solution that meshes key enterprise information with desktop applications. Today Loqu8 is releasing Insight 2.6 with integrated, real-time support for Microsoft Outlook® 2010 contacts plus web services from Google® and Bing®.

“For the 500 million users of Microsoft Outlook, Loqu8 Insight 2.6 extends a powerful new capability: immediate access to Outlook contacts while browsing the web, replying to emails or editing documents,” described Dr. Timothy Uy, President and CEO of Loqu8. “In the past users needed to stop what they were doing and take several steps to open an Outlook window just to see an email address, phone number or other contact information. With Insight 2.6, users merely point and the information is instantly shown with Insight’s popup window.”

Instantly access Outlook email contact information from another application, like Microsoft Word

Seamless Integration with Desktop Applications
Loqu8 Insight 2.6 is targeted at the growing base of business users who rely on cloud-based enterprise applications like Salesforce.com CRM, Microsoft SharePoint and Google Docs. Over 100 million licensees and users of these applications typically open a web browser window and navigate or search for information. Powered by Loqu8’s iNtuition™ engine, Insight improves performance and availability for these popular applications. Insight provides both LiveScan™ (single login; information is available immediately) and RealSync™ (real-time updates with remote updates).

Loqu8 Insight 2.6 quickly integrates search results, news and language translations with desktop applications like Microsoft® Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Access) through a single popup window. As a Windows resource, Insight easily works with web browsers, emails and other popular applications. No embedded plug-ins or special drivers are required to use Insight.

Instant Access to Web Search, News and Foreign Language Translations
Knowledge workers can conveniently access simple translations of emails and documents that were originally authored in another language. Unlike web-based translators that require a multi-step procedure (copy text, open a web browser, find a translator and paste the text), Insight users would only need to highlight text and the translation would appear in the Insight window.

Loqu8 Insight 2.6 supports computer-based, partial translations of: Amharic, Arabic, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Belarusian, Bengali, Burmese, Chinese (simplified), Chinese (traditional), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Esperanto, Estonian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Haitian (Creole), Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Kazakh, Korean, Kyrgyz, Lao, Latin, Latvian, Lithuanian, Luxembourgish, Macedonian, Malay, Mongolian, Nepali, Norwegian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Sanskrit, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Syriac, Tajik, Thai, Tibetan, Turkish, Ukrainian, Uzbek and Vietnamese.

Since the science of machine translation is still emerging, some results may be incomplete or inaccurate. By coupling two translation engines, Insight users may compare translation results by selecting either Bing or Google for the most popular 14 languages: Arabic, Chinese (simplified) Chinese (traditional), Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.

Pricing and Availability
Loqu8 Insight scales seamlessly from an enterprise-wide knowledge management platform (Enterprise edition) to solutions for functional teams and smaller organizations (Team edition). Insight is also available as a personal productivity tool for individuals (Personal edition). Key features for each edition include:

Insight Enterprise Edition is a semi-custom platform for synchronizing data sources in real time throughout an organization. Insight supports Microsoft Outlook, SharePoint, Salesforce CRM and Google Docs spreadsheet. Web services include Google (web search, news, language translation) and Microsoft Bing (web search, news, language translation). Enhanced support for XML and increased capacity for up to a million entries.

Insight – Team Edition includes the core LiveScan and RealSync capabilities of the Enterprise edition plus support for text (120 encodings, including ASCII, CSV, IBM EBCDIC, ISCII and Unicode). Each Team edition is tailored to the unique requirements of functional workgroups:

• Insight Team Salesforce allows users to hover their mouse over opportunities and company names and Insight instantly shows information from the Salesforce.com CRM cloud—without opening a new web browser. Also includes support for Microsoft Excel (XLSX, XLS) data files.

• Insight Team SharePoint improves business productivity by accelerating access to SharePoint 2010 lists and search—plus all databases supported by SharePoint and Excel (XLSX, XLS).

• Insight Team Google is the first power tool for Google Docs Spreadsheet users. Share project milestones, specifications or project details in a spreadsheet and let team members gain immediate access through Insight. Updates from Insight are automatically synchronized with the Google cloud.

Insight – Personal Edition is built upon the same Insight engine, but designed especially for individuals to experience Insight’s intelligent augmentation capabilities on a smaller scope. LiveScan provides quick access to information resources over websites and desktop applications, including Microsoft Office, Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Skype. Insight supports 120 text encodings.
Loqu8 Insight 2.6 is priced from $25 USD per user per month. A perpetual license for Insight Personal Edition is $499 USD. Site licenses and volume discounts are available. Insight runs on Windows 7/Vista/XP systems. A free, full function trial is available at www.loqu8.com/insight.

Licensed users of all earlier versions of Insight are entitled to a complimentary upgrade. Contact Loqu8 Sales for more information.

About Loqu8
Display information from cloud-based applications–without opening a web browser. Just point and Loqu8 instantly displays the information you need. Loqu8′s augmented intelligence model is the result of years of research at Stanford University in cognitive science and information processing. Loqu8 is a privately-held corporation with headquarters in Silicon Valley. For more information, visit www.loqu8.com.

Web Usage Around the World

comScore 1H 2010

comScore’s DataPassport for the first half of 2010 shows a wide range of functions used by web users around the world. The top functions in the world are instant messengers, social networking and entertainment (like video) and account for more than a third of the typical user’s time. Email, games, retail and news account for just 15%. Actual usage rates vary widely by geographic regions. In North America, Email and Social Networking are nearly tied at 12.3% and 11.5%, respectively.

In developing regions, web usage is oriented towards communications (instant messaging, social networking). For example Instant Messengers are by far the most popular web services in Middle East, Africa and Latin America for more than a fourth of the time. For mature markets, users spend more time on Entertainment, News/Info, and Sports, categories which typically include media and content that require faster connections.

Cost of Google Search (and Google Pac-Man)

According to TheRescueTime Blog, the average Google search user spends about 4.5 active minutes a day reviewing up to 22 pages:

• web search
• navigation (entering “microsoft” instead of http://www.microsoft.com)

For each search page viewed, a user spends abou 11 seconds of active attention per Google Search page view. While this may not seem much, imagine counting to eleven every time you do a Google search.

On Pac-Man Friday, the average user spent an extra 36 seconds more on Google.com. For those who tried the Pac-Man game, I’m sure they spent several more minutes to “insert coin” and play at least one game. Fortunately many users missed the game–or used the Google toolbar to conduct their search. With 504,703,000 unique visitors on May 23, the cost in productivity amounted to:

• 4,819,352 hours of time (an increment over the 33.6 million man hours that Google Search normally gets)
• With an average cost of $25 per hour, this amounts to $120,483,800

That’s probably a good justification for organizations to limit access to recreational activities (“gaming”) to lunch time and off-hours.

Loqu8 Announces Insight

Mouse Over Text to Visually Search and Update Key Data from Microsoft Excel, SharePoint and Google Docs Spreadsheets

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – Information workers frequently need to access business information, yet critical data is frequently stored inside spreadsheets and databases. Loqu8 Insight instantly displays information from multiple resources in a single pop-up window. Users can visually search for critical data from a web page or inside a Microsoft Office document (Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint).

“Business users are inundated with information in their workplace,” explained Dr. Timothy Uy, President and CEO of Loqu8. “With employees wasting up to 20% of their time searching, gathering and recreating information, Insight is a powerful instant information tool that can dramatically improve worker productivity and expedite business decisions.”

Insight Empowers Workers with Visual Search
When fast response time is important, Loqu8 Insight enables workers to meet the most demanding requests for real-time information. Mouse over text to view financials from Excel, lists from SharePoint and product specs from Access. Insight consolidates the widest range of information in a streamlined pop-up window for instant access on a web page, Microsoft Office document or other application. Collaborate with others and synch data from Google Docs spreadsheets.

• Products: validate part numbers, pricing and availability
• Organizations: keep employees updated with corporate glossaries, FAQs and LOB scorecards
• Search: visually find, update and share key information everywhere

The Power of Instant Information
Refined through years of research at Stanford University in cognitive science and information processing, Loqu8’s augmented information engine responds immediately when users hover their mouse over words. Windows 7 compatible touch screens are also supported. By understanding the users’ original context (application environment plus words and sentence), Insight shows relevant information through a pop-up window. This knowledge becomes immediately actionable when they apply the information in real-time—saving time plus reducing errors and costs.

Pricing, Promotions and Availability
Loqu8 Insight scales seamlessly from a personal productivity tool into an organization-wide learning and knowledge management resource.

• Insight – Personal Edition is ideal for experiencing Insight’s instant visual search capabilities on a smaller scope. Quickly access information resources over websites and desktop applications, including Microsoft Office, Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Skype.
• Insight – Team Edition adds secure update capabilities for multiple data sources, including Microsoft Excel, XML and Google Docs spreadsheets.
• Insight – Enterprise Edition provides a semi-custom platform for linking live data sources in an organization. Supports enterprise-wide information sources like Microsoft SharePoint and Bing (search, news, translate). Supports up to a million entries.

Site licenses and volume discounts are available. Insight for Windows 7/Vista/XP systems will be available from www.loqu8.com later this month.