Tag Archives: X1

November 18, 2013 · 9:21 AM

Dr. Michael Levitt: World Famous Scientist, Nobel Laureate, and X1 Power User

Michael Levitt Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2013

Michael Levitt
Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2013

Recently I had the distinct honor of speaking with Dr. Michael Levitt, a 2013 Nobel Prize winner for Chemistry, and highly regarded Professor of Structural Biology at Stanford University. The Nobel Committee awarded Dr. Levitt a Nobel in recognition of his research in computational biology, “for the development of multiscale models for complex chemical systems.” He is also a “huge fan” of X1. When Dr. Levitt and I spoke, he discussed his daily use of X1 Search and how it is essential to his research and professional productivity. “X1 saves me many hours per week,” per his unsolicited email to us at X1 that initiated our dialogue, “I cannot survive without it.”

A computer-savvy scientist, Dr. Levitt relies on a Macintosh laptop with VMWare virtualization running a Windows OS, where he stores 200 gigabytes of data, including 40 gigabytes of over 300,000 emails, and of course relies on X1 to make sense of it all. “Next to my computer itself, X1 is the one tool I can’t do without,” explained Dr. Levitt.  “People use the term ‘big data’ a lot these days, but the most important ‘big data’ for me is the 200 gigabytes on my laptop that consists of decades of research, important communications with fellow academics, and other key resources.  X1 enables me to find what I am looking for instantaneously. It is a very effective interface to all of my information.”

Dr. Levitt credits X1’s lightning-fast, iterative and faceted search capability, along with X1’s reliability and stability, as enabling him to quickly and tactically sift through 200 gigabytes of emails and academic research. “X1 is an intimate part of my workflow — it is essentially an extension of my mind when I engage in information retrieval, which is many times an hour during my workday.”

In addition to locating his research and other critical data, X1 proved very handy to Dr. Levitt in managing an important email response project. “When I was awarded the Nobel, I received over two thousand congratulatory emails. I used X1 to cross reference my sent folder to make sure I replied to them all. That X1 shortcut saved me several hours alone!”

Dr. Levitt’s testimonial echoes similar sentiments expressed by many high-powered business professionals at top financial institutions, major law firms, consulting companies and science and engineering firms. They all rely on X1 to dramatically enhance their productivity by quickly locating their information amongst an ever-increasing avalanche of emails and other data.

We here at X1 extend our congratulations to Dr. Levitt for his 2013 Nobel prize in Chemistry, as well as our sincere thanks to him for reaching out to us and sharing his enthusiastic feedback on X1 search, which, incidentally, is completely gratis. “Just keep developing great software” is all he asked for in return.

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For more information about X1 Search 8, including a free 14 day trial, please visit here >

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September 19, 2013 · 10:43 AM

Discovery Templates for Social Media Evidence

Book coverAs a follow-up to the highly popular Q&A last week featuring DLA attorneys Joshua Briones and Ana Tagvoryan, they both have graciously allowed us to distribute a few of their social media discovery templates found in the appendix of their book:  Social Media as Evidence: Cases, Practice Pointers and Techniques, published by the American Bar Association, available for purchase online from the ABA here.

The first template is deposition questions relating to social media evidence. The second is a sample of special interrogatories. They can be accessed at this link. Thanks again to Joshua and Ana for their insightful interview, and for providing these resources.  Their book contains many more such templates and practice tips, including sample document requests, proposed jury instructions, client litigation hold memorandums with a detailed preservation checklist, preservation demand letters, and much more.

In other social discovery news, the ABA Journal this month published an insightful piece on social media discovery, featuring attorney Ralph Losey, with a nice mention of X1 Social Discovery. In a key excerpt, the ABA Journal acknowledges that “there is a pressing need for a tool that can monitor and archive everything a law firm’s client says and does on social media.”  The article also noted that more than 41% of firms surveyed in Fulbright’s 2013 annual Litigation Trends report, acknowledged they preserved and collected such data to satisfy litigation and investigation needs, which was an increase from 32% the prior year.

Another important publication, Compliance Week, also highlighted social media discovery, where Grant Thornton emphasizes their use of X1 Social Discovery as part of the firms anti-fraud and data leakage toolset. Incidentally,  when determining whether a given eDiscovery tool is in fact a leading solution in its class, in our view it is important to look at how many consulting firms are actually utilizing the technology, as consulting firms tend to be sophisticated buyers, who actually use the tools in “the front lines.” By our count we have over 400 paid install sites of X1 Social Discovery and over half of those – 223 to be exact – are eDiscovery and other digital investigation consulting firms. We believe this is a key testament to the strength of our solution, given the use by these early adopters.

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July 31, 2013 · 12:46 PM

Judge Grimm’s Important Guidance on Social Media Evidence Authentication

Judge Grimm2.jpg

District Judge Paul W. Grimm

Recently, Federal District Court Judge Paul Grimm and two of his law clerks published an excellent and comprehensive legal article: “Authentication of Social Media Evidence,” American Journal of Trial Advocacy, 36 Am. J. Trial Advoc. 433 (2013). Judge Grimm is widely seen as the one of the most influential judges concerning electronic discovery issues. He is known for several ground breaking decisions in the field including Lorraine v. Markel (2007), and Victor Stanley, Inc. v. Creative Pipe Inc. (2008). Earlier this week, The American Lawyer profiled him as one of the top 5 judges at the forefront of eDiscovery.

Given his prominence and celebrity status in the eDiscovery community, Judge Grimm’s thorough analysis and guidance on social media evidentiary authentication is an important development for social media evidence discovery. Judge Grimm succinctly summarizes his article as follows:

“Given the ubiquitous use of digital devices to communicate on social media sites, there is little chance that such evidence will cease to be highly relevant in either criminal or civil cases…Hopefully, this Article can shed some light on the nature of the confusion and offer useful suggestions on how to approach the authentication of social media evidence. It is a near certainty that the public appetite for use of social media sites is unlikely to abate, and it is essential for courts and lawyers to do a better job in offering and admitting this evidence. We hope that reading this Article will be their first step toward this goal.”

More than just a first step as a resource for courts and lawyers, I would expect judges to consider this material solid persuasive authority in deciding cases involving social media and other Internet evidence. The 29-page article is available to subscribers to LexisNexis and Westlaw, but non-subscribers can purchase the article here for $15.

Highlights of Judge Grimm’s piece include a “checklist for authentication” and a thorough discussion of the perils of relying on mere screen printouts of social media and other Internet evidence, documenting the many cases where such printouts were disallowed or otherwise subject to serious challenges by the courts. Additionally, Judge Grimm highlights Federal Rule of Evidence 901(b)(4), (authenticating evidence through internal patterns and other “distinctive characteristics”) noting that it is “one of the most successful methods used to authenticate all evidence, including social media evidence.” Judge Grimm advises the collection of “all of the circumstances and characteristics that apply to the social media exhibit that add up to a showing that, more likely than not, it was authored by the person that you contend authored it.”

We published a whitepaper on this important topic (download it here) of authenticating social media evidence, with an emphasis on Rule 901(b)(4). The bottom line is that absent uncontroverted and cooperative witness testimony, lawyers must turn to circumstantial evidence to help establish an evidentiary foundation for social media evidence. Metadata is particularly important as a “distinctive characteristic” under Rule 901(b)(4), as social media items contain a wealth of key metadata that represent or can establish “internal patterns or other distinctive characteristics” of the social media items in question.

This is where utilizing best practices technology that 1) establishes an effective chain of custody of the collected social media; and 2) captures all available metadata without alteration is essential.

In addition to Judge Grimm’s excellent piece, the New York Law Journal, a publication of the NY State Bar, published a very useful practice guide article earlier this year: “Made for Each Other: Social Media and Litigation.” 85-FEB N.Y. St. B.J. 10 (Feb 2013). Here is a key quote: “For the litigator, social media provides a wealth of information– available at one’s fingertips that just a few years ago required hiring a personal investigator to obtain.” The article includes mentions of X1 Discovery at footnotes 38, 40 and 53. A full copy of this article is available on the New York State Bar website here.

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Filed under Authentication, Best Practices, Case Law, Preservation & Collection, Social Media Investigations, Social Media Metadata

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June 17, 2013 · 12:02 PM

Amazon to Host Cloud Webinar on eDiscovery and Enterprise Search

Amazon Web Services2On June 27, Amazon Web Services (AWS) will be hosting a first of its kind webinar by a major cloud provider addressing the topics of eDiscovery and enterprise search.  Per AWS, the webinar will explore solutions that allow organizations to quickly search, identify and act upon distributed data, whether it resides within the enterprise or within the AWS cloud. Vikram Garlapati, an Amazon Web Service Solutions Architect, will lead off the discussion. This is the first time, to our knowledge, that Amazon will be publically addressing eDiscovery in the cloud and featuring a solution like X1 and also the first time they will be featuring a third party enterprise search solution to enable search within the IaaS cloud.

While SaaS hosting of eDiscovery services and some limited enterprise search capabilities by a vendor from their own servers is not new, this webinar will effectively be addressing a very different topic: deploying search solutions for eDiscovery and business productivity into an organizations’ public cloud instance where their data resides. This allows instant and lightning fast indexing, searching, and review of that data in place without having to first export that data out of its native cloud environment.

Also presenting will be LTech CIO Eric Klotzko.  LTech is a cloud systems integrator and AWS partner who is a major proponent of next-generation enterprise search and eDiscovery solutions that install and operate in virtual environments.  Eric will underscore the limitations of traditional enterprise search solutions that are hardware appliance-based or require an extensive manual on-site install process, thereby rendering such solutions as non-starters for deploying into and operating within virtualized cloud deployments.

This is a compelling, very timely topic that impacts the overall enablement and adoption of the cloud. As I blogged about previously, Federal Court Magistrate Judge Andrew Peck of the New York Southern District recently weighed in on public comments on eDiscovery in the cloud. Judge Peck noted that data stored in the cloud is considered accessible data under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (see, FRCP Rule 26(b)(2)(B)) and thus treated no differently by the courts in terms of eDiscovery preservation and production requirements as data stored within a traditional network. This brought the following cautionary tale about the costs associated with not having a systematic process for eDiscovery:

Judge Peck told the story of a Chief Information Security Officer who had authority over e-discovery within his multi-billion dollar company who, when told that the company could enjoy significant savings by moving to “the cloud”, questioned whether the cloud provider could accommodate their needs to adapt cloud storage with the organization’s e-discovery preservation requirements. The cloud provider  said it could but at such an increased cost that the company would enjoy no savings at all if it migrated to the cloud.

Having just visited Amazon Web Services headquarters office and meeting with several key senior managers, it is clear this issue is a priority for AWS. This is precisely the reason why we developed X1 Rapid Discovery, version 4. X1RD is a proven and now truly cloud-deployable eDiscovery and enterprise search solution enabling our customers to quickly identify, search, and collect distributed data wherever it resides in the Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud or within the enterprise.

As far as the major cloud providers, the ones who choose to solve this eDiscovery challenge (along with effective enterprise search) with best practices technology will not only drive significant managed services revenue but will enable a far more rapid adoption of cloud computing.

Please stay tuned for more exciting developments in this next frontier of eDiscovery and enterprise search.

A recording of the webinar is available here >

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May 29, 2013 · 9:13 AM

X1 Rises Again

Computerworld logo

Earlier this month Robert Mitchell at Computerworld proclaimed that X1 had reemerged in the world of search with X1 Search 8, the new release of our flagship and industry-leading X1 desktop search. (See: X1 Rises Again with Desktop Search 8, Virtual Edition). I think Computerworld is spot on and aptly describes the response and success of X1 Search 8. X1S8 (or “8”) is major advancement of X1 Search.  As mentioned on our recent webinar showcasing X1S8, I wanted to thank our hundreds of thousands of loyal and longtime X1 customers, plus many of the new customers joining us in recent weeks since our highly successful launch of 8.

Overall the response has been tremendous! Since the May 7 release, we have seen shattered sales records coupled with very exciting feedback from our customers, new and old. Based upon the feedback, three improvements to X1S8 are particularly resonating. One is the new and streamlined interface that, combined with a faster and more responsive product, provides an enhanced and highly intuitive user experience. Second, our business users from enterprises large and small are very happy with the built-in and integrated SharePoint support (see video here). And finally, the unique support of virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) demonstrates that X1 is once again a cutting edge technology that supports our customers’ current as well as future requirements.

X1 has always been a great solution. In July 2010, Network World declared the previous version of X1 to be the leader in its class, selecting X1 as its Clear Choice winner ahead of competitors such as the native Windows Outlook search and Google desktop search. Perhaps not coincidentally, after Network World anointed X1, Google shortly thereafter announced the end of life for its desktop search. Additionally, with Windows 8, Microsoft is apparently moving away from integrated desktop search as the latest Windows OS no longer features a federated search option.

What this means is that X1 not only has risen again, but has a clear lead in the field of search as 8 is a major upgrade to our award-winning previous version. This is particularly true given the virtualization capabilities of X1S8, which we will now be rolling out to many large enterprises that previously could not support any desktop search within their VDI environment. We believe that eventually desktops will be hosted in the cloud, which will require a cloud-based virtual desktop architecture, which X1 already and uniquely supports. So X1 is ready for the cloud when our customers are.

Recently X1 has enjoyed the support of a number of investors who have enabled us to double down on our support of current customers and the development of next generation search and eDiscovery solutions to support enterprises large and small. This includes our enterprise eDiscovery strategy, but it also means channeling additional resources into our core X1 desktop search technology. Look for more innovations to support our loyal customer base including new mobile support, and search of hybrid cloud. And if you haven’t yet seen X1 Search 8, please take it for a spin with a free trial available at this link.

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