Formerly used primarily by the intelligence community and businesses that are strongly dependent upon research, text mining technologies are now beginning to find more general acceptance. The mounds of unstructured data that have been piling up in companies for decades are growing larger as a result of new regulatory requirements that are forcing companies to retain e-mail and other documents - and to be able to find specific information in them. The key to making text mining work for business -- not to mention the intelligence community -- is striking a balance between accuracy and speed, says Ronen Feldman, chief scientist at text mining software company ClearForest Corp. in New York. In a recent interview with Computerworld's Tommy Peterson, Feldman discussed how text mining technologies work and what promise they hold for business.
