case studies and sucesses

• SaaS Success

Strategic Hosting Partner NEW WORLD APPS helps TD Group deliver applications in a highly secure and scalable environment.  The model provides great flexibility for delivering rapidly developed, highly secure, content analysis solutions for USG entities.  The Microsoft platform for delivering Software-plus-Services adds significant credibility, functionality, and scalability to the TD Group’s solutions for Public Sector clients.  Read published case study on the Microsoft link below

http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Case_Study_Detail.aspx?casestudyid=4000006241

• Semantic Search

A USG customer needed an overhaul of their course catalog and registration system.  They needed a way to reduce the duplicate entries as well as provide users with a broader course selection set.  The improved search capability would hopefully give users more relevant results and allow them to filter and cluster their results.  We implemented new search algorithms that included spelling correction, root-word stemming and synonym inclusion to improve search results.  The data model was redesigned with metadata fields to represent categories, classes and associations that could be exploited by semantic algorithms.  Both a database schema and an XML schema were created to represent the new data model.

• Translation Workflow System

The Translation Workflow System grew out of the operational needs of a USG customer.  This customer needed a way to manage the daily workflow of translations that would allow translators to work in a distributed manner. The goal of the project was to quickly design and develop a web application that translators, managers, and customers requesting translations could use to receive, Process, and manage tasks in a virtual workflow. This system had to be easy to use while simultaneously preventing unauthorized users from accessing materials.  The cost needed to be minimized without jeopardizing rapid deployment.  The project was completed in 3 months, an end to end Translation Management system that addressed the customers full requirements.

• Bilingual Aligned Text

There is an increasing need to have access to a foreign language corpus of original source data and the corresponding translated data that represents what the USG collects, processes, and analyzes on a daily basis.  Computer-based language technologies have made great strides in the past several years, especially in the ability to save data in its original form and/or convert it into Unicode based text. Such databases are expensive to create and document.  Moreover, they are most valuable when they represent the actual data that is processed by the USG and when they are paired with a human translation, machine translation, and/or metadata.

Having a centralized repository for USG data is highly desirable because sharing the resources across agencies provides benefits that go beyond just having access to the data.  Centralization enriches the systematically documented repository and offers savings for all participants.

The first phase of this project was to provide the USG with a basic system to manage parallel texts that could be extended to handle more diverse requests and media.  Initially, the user would be able to search through the entire document for word occurrences as well as certain types of conceptual searching.

• Language Learning Portal

The language portal project was developed and is maintained as a community information system to expose foreign language applications and resources in a single web-based environment, to a broad set of USG users on mulitple networks. Foreign language application and resources exist in the USG today, but are scattered across various networks and domains, causing considerable user confusion and inefficiency. Many foreign language capabilities reside on agency intranets and are not accessible to the larger community.  Users spend too much time looking for and gaining access to foreign language tools rather than using the tools. The productivity of foreign language professionals and/or personnel involved in the manipulation or analysis of foreign language content can be improved by focusing applications and resources to be consumed from a single environment.

The language portal was designed to promote information sharing amongst language professionals in the IC and the DoD.  It’s purpose was to increase collaboration to push boundaries in language science while simultaneously speeding access to critical resources for the manipulation and comprehension of foreign language content.

• Language Learning Broker

The Language Learning Broker (LLB) is a terminology management and language brokerage system based on our semantic skills capability and provides a compilation of lexicographical, terminological and usage information for existing dictionaries, domain-specific term lists, and frequently used expressions to allow Department of Defense linguists, analysts, and war fighters to quickly access essential words, sentences, sentences, and linguistic data. The LLB has three major uses. To enable translators to access all existing dictionary systems available to the government using a federated search. To help government personnel learning languages narrow the gap between basic fluency and an advanced understanding of the language with rich definitions. To provide the U.S. Armed Forces with a tool to use in real-life situations.

The TD Group designed and developed this unique system that is capable of advanced federated searches and provides an easy to use interface allowing users to filter through the results to find what they are looking for. The users can now communicate with coworkers in real-time or quickly create a new terminology unit and share their new understanding with the rest of the community.

• Enhanced Language Survival Kits

The TD Group responded to an urgent need for language assistance to support the U.S. Marine Corps by creating enhanced language survival kits. These web-based tools provided the Marines on the ground with the key terminology, pronunciation and audio files needed for relief efforts. Support from the National Virtual Translation Center, U.S.. Department of State and the Defense Language Institute made this quick turn around a possibility by providing the needed human language resources and existing language kits. The website was the most expedient mode of dissemination to the Marine Corps enabling an easier coordination of effort between the deployed forces and supporting government agencies. In addition, the materials were downloaded, printed, and provided on laminated cards to the Marines deployed to relief sites.

• Audio/Video Asset Management

The TD Group engineered, deployed and maintains “live” and “on-demand” solutions that leverage advanced video, speech recognition, machine translation and storage capabilities developed by BBN, Virage, IBM, Microsoft, Identix, SRI, Autonomy and Language Weaver. These customized solutions demonstrate the ability to process, create and store video, keyframes, face recognition, speaker information, audio transcripts and machine translation from broadcast feeds in English, Chinese and Arabic.