Google Discovers Podcasts
October 19, 2008
This is for Cyrus, my intrepid Googler. He is a bright, eager “Ready, Fire, Aim” type. He’s eager to point out that I Photoshop Google patent documents. This one’s for you. Google has discovered podcasts. How do I know? Easy, on October 16, 2008, the USPTO US20080255686 published the patent “Delivering Podcast Content”. Now I know a patent application is not an indication of intent. I did find it interesting that this patent application appeared coterminous with other inventions by Mr. Irvin; specifically, US20080256109, “Dynamic Podcast Content Delivery”, US20080253307, “Multi-Station Media Controller”, and 20080254741, “Leader and Follower Broadcast Stations”. I find Google patent clusters useful, but not a coincidence. Clusters of patent documents by the same hand reflect intent, serious intent.
Let’s look at the abstract for US20080255686:
Systems and methods for delivering audio content to listeners. In general,one aspect can be a method that includes receiving a request to download a podcast, and determining a targeted advertisement to be inserted into the podcast. The method also includes inserting the targeted advertisement into the podcast dynamically at a predetermined time. Other implementations of this aspect include corresponding systems, apparatus, and computer program products.
Google’s Mr. Irwin included one of those high quality drawings to illustrate the content owner’s interface to the system:
No, Cyrus, I did not Photoshop this lousy image. Google created this fine, easy to read illustration. One other interesting point is that a number of Googlers were involved in this invention. My thought is that the GOOG has thoughts about distribution of audio and video podcasts with ads injected into the programs. Cyrus will assert that I am making up these patent documents. I’m not. Something is cooking in the podcast kettle at Mother Google.
Stephen Arnold, October 20, 2008
Gmail: A Cloudy Day
October 18, 2008
Earlier today I couldn’t access my Google email account. When I give lectures about Google, I like to create a stateful session, and Gmail delivers that. But no joy. I just checked my trusty newsreader and saw this InfoWorld article “Extended Gmail Outage Hits Apps Admins”. You can read the story here. Google announced on October 16, 2008, at 5 pm Eastern that Gmail was not Googley. I find it amusing that Googley super engineers have to admit that their Googley code is not Googley. Believe me, this is bad news for the GOOG. When its engineering goes walkabout, the edifice reminds me of a Roman wall that is crumbling a tiny chunk at a time. The original Roman craftspeople are long gone, and the repairs are made by craftspeople from a different era. Google operates on Internet time, so the chronological reference works out just about right in my opinion. Juan Carlos Perez’s article is a beefy devil, stuffed with details about earlier outages, Google’s response, and some well deserved skepticism about cloud based services. I wish Google had been monitoring my demos today. I wanted to show the recipe app, the air travel app, and the Google patent search not retrieving an important invention by Larry Page. Without Cyrus telling folks that I am inventing Google services and without my statement Gmail session, my talk wasn’t the fun it was supposed to be. Maybe next time?
Stephen Arnold, October 18, 2008
VideoSurf Looking for Wave of New Users
October 18, 2008
VideoSurf, a new online video search engine, is inviting people to try out its beta engine. No username or password is required.
The engine is built on “computer vision” – VideoSurf has designed it to search and “see” inside videos to index content rather than depending upon tags and descriptions that can produce spam. The goal is to return more relevant results on keyword searches.
VideoSurf’s competition is Google Video Search and blinkx. We wrote about blinkx back in May here.
VideoSurf boasts more than 10 billion videos indexed. Visit their site for more information.
As for this beta user? A test search on VS of “Simon Pegg Star Trek” listed the top result as the “Star Trek” teaser trailer, followed by an interview on “Friday Night with Jonathan Ross”, then several more trailers before other Pegg errata. Google’s top results returned only movie trailers, while blinkx listed a couple trailers followed by several interviews and media event clips.
Jessica Bratcher, October 18, 2008
Google: More Plumbing
October 18, 2008
Google makes no secret of its commitment to plumbing; that is, data centers and other infrastructure. Companies trying to compete with Google have to deal with one hard fact–scaling for online services is complicated. Google’s competitive advantage rests not with its advertising business model. Unless Google can service visitors and advertisers, there is no Google advantage. Iain Thomson’s “Google Investing Profits in Data Centres” here makes this point clearly. Mr. Thomson quoted Google founder Sergey Brin as saying, “We’re investing heavily in data centres and will continue to do so. “With the new equipment we can do a lot more today with less.” Google’s competitors, including Microsoft, are racing to deploy new software such as Monsoon and high performance, lower cost servers in an effort to match Google byte for byte. ArnoldIT.com’s research suggests that Google’s 10 year investment in plumbing creates a gap rapid, big spending cannot easily match. Google’s engineers have found clever ways to accelerate such mundane tasks as record locking and unlocking, hardly a glamorous operation in data management. But hundreds of incremental innovations give Google’s infrastructure performance gains that allow the company to deploy new services with only minimal downtime and latency. Translating Google’s advantage to money is not easy because Google provides limited data about its system. Anecdotal reports suggest that for every dollar Google spends, a competitor must spend more to match Google’s data throughput performance. Some data from late 2004 are reported in the 2005 Infonortics’ study The Google Legacy here.
Stephen Arnold, October 18, 2008
Autonomy by Fiat
October 17, 2008
Many readers express annoyance that I flag Autonomy’s “big deal” contracts. These are important because Autonomy wants to win the major search competitions. Also, the company knows that large companies often commit to projects that generate more money than license deals for such companies as dtSearch, for example. I learned today (October 15, 2008) that Italy’s Fiat has signed a deal to use Autonomy’s technology for its eTech portal. You can read “Fiat Group Taps Autonomy Solution for Its eTech Portal” in CallCenterInfo.com here. Information will also appear on the Autonomy Web site here in due course. eTech is the technical documentation research point of reference for Fiat Group Automobiles. This deal illustrates how search vendors are morphing into solution providers in narrower market segments. I think we will see more of this focusing as the financial pressures ripple through the business community.
Stephen Arnold, October 17, 2008
Two Dinosaurs: Two Behaviors
October 17, 2008
My newsreader is showing me some interesting material today. As a gloomy dark afternoon gives way to an evening Jack the Ripper would like, I noticed two information-centric articles. In one story, a dinosaur checked out the weather and found a way to get temporarily out of the storm. The other dinosaur found another dinosaur and together endured the hail, rain, and lightning strikes.
The first dinosaur is the Telegraph, a traditional newspaper operation. In a moment of stunning pragmatism, the Telegraph decided to invite a Googler to join the newspaper’s Board of Directors. This company may be a dinosaur, but management is definitely willing to seek shelter with someone who knows how to avoid the abuses of certain financial problems. You can read the story Google’s Lorraine Twohill Joins Telegraph Board here. The story suggests that the Telegraph board will seek some inputs from Ms. Twohill about multimedia. Google’s been around a decade. It’s good that a traditional newspaper is taking action. Ms. Twohill is a true Googler, but her inputs may be too late to keep the Telegraph from the fate that awaits most dead tree outfits.
The second dinosaur–the one that’s standing in the rain watching lightning strikes–is Wolters Kluwer. This traditional publishing company has signed a deal with Convera to create vertical search engines. These two outfits will, according to the story here, will build an index about nursing. Please, read the short item “Convera Enters Contract with Wolters Kluwer to Build Vertical Search Engines for NursingCenter.com here.” Next take a gander at the financial data about Convera here. Then read this information about Google’s custom search engine here. Our tests with Google’s customer search engine suggested that we could build a vertical search engine, monetize it, and dress up the results for free. Google may be charging some people, but the GOOG happily generated a Beyond Search vertical search engine.
What’s the difference between these two dinosaurs. The Telegraph seems to be making an effort to learn from Googzilla. The Wolters Kluwer group has embraced technology from Convera, a company that has several distinctions. One of them is that the firm created some dissonance with Intel and the NBA in the same year, sold its enterprise search business to its competitors, and has chosen to compete in a market segment where Google makes available a similar service at a very compelling cost.
I find these two strategies interesting. I hope both the Telegraph and Wolters Kluwer find success with their new tactical moves. From my hollow in Kentucky, these organizations needed to take action seven or eight years ago. The traditional publishing sector faces some tough times. As Steve Jobs suggested, “Kids don’t read anymore.” The online world has bubbled up around the hand made shoes worn by publishing executives. Now it’s tough to extricate oneself.
In my opinion, time is running out. I will give the Telegraph better odds than Wolters Kluwer. The Telegraph is investing in a Googzilla-trained executive. Wolters Kluwer seems to be wagering on a dark horse with a bit of a financial history and a financial present.
Agree? Disagree? I am excited to think that those familiar with dinosaurs might provide some facts to help me decide if my view of these dinosaur decisions is on the beam or without illumination.
Stephen Arnold, October 17, 2008
MuseGlobal Releases MuseConnect
October 17, 2008
MuseGlobal has released MuseConnect, a new connector for Oracle Secure Enterprise Search. The API lets users search for industry-specific and subscription-based content through the open web, the deep web (databases, file servers, etc.), even secondary wiki and social sources, all in one place. The first offering includes Oracle’s financial services, legal, health care, and more while utilizing in-place security. The plan is to achieve that elusive goal of optimizing enterprise search – a topic waxed rhapsodic in this blog.
MuseGlobal is touting MuseConnect as an out-of-the-box connector, but if you need tech support when putting this API in place, you can get it at Adhere Solutions. The company’s founders are experienced IT professionals who do good work at an affordable rate.
Jessica Bratcher, October 17, 2008
Podcast Interview with Stephen Arnold
October 17, 2008
Beyond Search’s own Stephen Arnold recently talked with Richard Wallis at the Panlibus blog in advance of Stephen’s delivery of the closing keynote address at the Online Information 2008 conference Dec. 2-4 at Olympia Hall in London. The podcast and summary write up are available here.
In the interview, Arnold said, “Organizations want solutions, not unkept promises about information access. Opportunities exist despite the tough economic climate for search and content processing companies.”
Also covered in the conversation are a review of Stephen’s career, notes about his presentation on emerging technologies and enterprise search, and a review of how technology components and the applications they power can be tailored to their users. Stephen is best known for his work on search and the Google phenomenon.
The conversation is also available at the conference web site or you can download the podcast directly.
Jessica Bratcher, October 17, 2008
Yahoo: Tightens Belt
October 17, 2008
Valleywag, one of my favorite Web logs, reports that Yahoo is going to fire 3,500 Yahooligans. You can read “Yahoo to Cut 3,500 Jobs–Party On” here. The article includes some interesting quotes. My favorite is the Yahooligan who, upon bailing out, described Yahoo as “an idea”. Wow. I thought a publicly traded company was a vehicle to enhance shareholder value. I suppose that hippy dippy view of a commercial enterprise has contributed to Yahoo’s sterling technical approach to multiple search systems, its brilliant Panama ad system, and its keen management acumen. No wonder I am an addled goose residing in the hills and hollows of Harrod’s Creek, Kentucky.
Stephen Arnold, October 17, 2008 from London, UK
Microsoft’s Fast Charged with Fraud
October 16, 2008
Update, October 17, 2008, at 1 12 am Eastern: The Washington Post reports here that “was struggling to stay afloat” and restructured in August 2007, five months before the $1.2 billion Microsoft deal was announced.
Original Post
Breaking news: Norwegian police have charged Microsoft Fast with accounting fraud and raided the offices in Oslo about 8 a.m. local time. Here’s the Reuters article.
The offices have been closed to “secure evidence” and sources say this is a hot story with TV news footage of boxes being carried out of the offices as part of the criminal investigation. One report says Fast was not informed of the raid ahead of time, and CEO John Markus Lervik has not issued a statement.
Reports of possible rules violations were filed in May to Norway’s economic crimes unit, and in June they said they would investigate Fast’s auditor, Deloitte & Touche.
The police and Norwegian Ministry of Justice are among Fast’s customers in Norway.
If you read Norwegian, the article “Razzia hos Fast” is here, and, with photos, here.
Jess Bratcher, October 16, 2008
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