Lucid Imagination Appoints Prominent Search Innovator Brian Pinkerton as Chief Architect

SAN MATEO, CA--(Marketwire - October 26, 2009) - Lucid Imagination, the first commercial company dedicated to Apache Lucene and Solr, today announced that Brian Pinkerton has joined the company as the Chief Architect.

Pinkerton is most noted for creating WebCrawler, the first Web search engine to provide full-text search, which was acquired by AOL in 1995. Brian comes to Lucid Imagination from Scout Labs, where he was Vice President of Engineering. Pinkerton joined Scout Labs following its acquisition of Minimal Loop, a company he founded and served as President. Past positions also include Director of Search at Technorati, Principal Architect at A9, Vice President of Engineering and Chief Scientist at Excite and Technical Architect at American Online.

Based upon his experience, Pinkerton is an innovator in both internet and enterprise search technology. While at Technorati, he led the effort to replace the search engine's relational database-based technology with the full-text search-based technology used today. At Minimal Loop, Pinkerton created a real-time feed crawler; the company was later acquired by Scout Labs, whose search technology offers real-time monitoring of social media content used by major brands. Pinkerton brings this experience to Lucid Imagination to help companies using Apache Lucene and Solr solve the hardest enterprise search problems.

Today, companies of all sizes across sectors are discovering that social technology innovations can provide competitive advantage, from engaging customers in support forums to unlocking employee productivity with advances in collaboration -- all of which depend on accurate search to ensure that the right content is found by the right people in timely fashion. One of the biggest search problems today is handling real-time data produced by social technologies, inside and outside the enterprise. Enterprise search technologies such as Lucene and Solr have long placed a premium on accuracy, and given the volume and pace of real-time data, search accuracy and relevancy are at a far greater premium than with conventional Internet search.

"As fast as companies, communities and consumers are producing data about each other and everything else, they need faster, more versatile search capabilities to find the information they want," said Pinkerton. "They want search technology that can match pace with the transparency, flexibility, speed and scale of social media and the data that drives it. Apache Lucene and Solr offer some of the most advanced technology available, and are already powering many real-time social networks, making it a great fit for companies tackling the same kind of data. This is a tremendous opportunity for me to continue advancing the modern Web and work with the best companies in the world to solve advanced search problems."

"Brian's background and experience, from WebCrawler to today, along with the knowledge he's gained over the last two decades, is already proving to be a real asset to the Lucene/Solr community and to Lucid Imagination," said Eric Gries, President and CEO. "The emergence of real-time search as a critical market need puts ever greater emphasis on accuracy and relevancy, long a focus of enterprise search applications from government to e-commerce and many domains in between. And, there is tremendous need in the enterprise marketplace for search technology that can harness the rapid growth of data for competitive advantage, and we're excited that Brian can be a part of it."

Pinkerton will share his knowledge of search innovation and social media on during the webinar, Search Strategies that Put Social Technology to Work, which will take place Tuesday, October 27, 2009 at 2:00 ET/11:00 PT. Pinkerton will be joined by Ty Ahmad-Taylor, CEO of Fanfeedr.com, and David Hendi, Director of Engineering and Search at MySpace.com. The group will be discussing the need for search technology that can match pace with the real-time capabilities of social media, achieving the accuracy for which enterprise is known in tandem with scalability and speed. To register, please visit the Lucid Imagination web site at http://www.lucidimagination.com/Webinar-Search-Strategies-Put-Social-Technology-to-Work.

About Lucid Imagination

Lucid Imagination is a commercial company dedicated to Apache Lucene technology. The company provides free certified distributions, commercial-grade support, training, high-level consulting and value-added software for Lucene and Solr. Lucid Imagination's goal is to serve as a central resource for the entire Lucene community and make them more productive. Lucid Imagination is a privately held venture-funded company. The investors include Granite Ventures and Walden International and its customers include AOL, Apple, Comcast, and Zappos.

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