In 1984, when IBM introduced the 80286 microprocessor chip, the MS-DOS operating system was unable to take advantage of the improved speed and address capacity of the new chip.  A popular urban legend has Bill Gates asking,  “Why would anyone need more than 640KB?”  Fast forward a few years and Gates was requiring his engineers to develop on hardware that was two years old – ancient by software developer standards,…

First, I’d like to thank everyone who read my last post and contacted me with their suggestions for a new name for Fielded Search.  One thing was unanimous:  Fielded Search is not the best name.  But I repeat myself. One characteristic that unites the community of information professionals is their outspokenness.  One of our users, Kristen Whitman from The Intellogist, wrote, “I feel like I’ve encountered many other search engines…

I’m back in New York after a stimulating 3 days at Special Libraries Association (SLA), where the traffic was steady and customer feedback was generally positive.  Overall, users are enthusiastic about our product direction, notably the new content collections and the addition of Knovel Lab. In a couple of weeks, we’ll be showcasing a redesign of Fielded Search in Knovel Lab. As it stands today, it’s too hard to use…

This month, I celebrate my first year in Knovel product management. So far, I’ve been impressed with the level of interest our user community takes in contributing suggestions for delivering engineering information – fast[er]  and [more] reliably.  Recently, I’ve been involved in a rolling out our Design Partner Program, to engage users actively in our product design and development process.  I’ve done this quite successfully in past lives, and know…