Redshift: With Google It Depends From Where You Observe
September 10, 2008
My research suggests that opportunities, money, and customers are rushing toward Google. Competitors–like publishers–are trying to rush away, but the “gravitational pull” is too great. Traditional publishers don’t have the escape velocity to break away. What is this a redshift or a blueshift?
Dr. Greg Papadopoulos, Sun Microsystems wizard, gave a talk at the 2007 Analyst Summit (summit is an over used word in the conference universe in my opinion) called “Redshift: The Explosion of Massive Scale Systems.” I think much of the analysis is right on, but the notion of a “redshift” (not a misspelling) applies to rushing away from something, not rushing toward something. You can download a copy of this interesting presentation here. (Verified on September 9, 2008).
Dr. Papadopoulos referenced Google in this lecture in 2007. For the purposes of this post, I will think of his remarks as concerning Google. I’m a captive of my own narrow research. I think that’s why this presentation nagged at my mind for a year. Today, reading about hadron colliders and string theory, I realized that it depends on where one stands when observing Doppler effects. From my vantage point, I don’t think Google was a redshift. You can brush up on this notion by scanning the Wikipedia entry, which seems okay to me, but I am no theoretical physicist. I did work at a nuclear engineering firm, but I worked on goose feathers, not gluons and colors. From what I recall, when the object speeds away from the observer, you get the “red shift”. When the object rushes towards the observer, you get the blue shift. Redshift means the universe is expanding when one observes certain phenomena from earth. Blueshift means something is coming at you. Google is pretty darn blue to my eyes.
The Papadopoulos presentation contains a wealth of interesting and useful data. I am fighting the urge to cut, paste, borrow, and recycle. But there are three points that warrant a comment.
Google Chrome: What’s It Mean
September 10, 2008
Author’s Note: this post is speculation about the “meaning” of chrome.
Over the weekend, I spoke with a colleague who was interested in the metaphor behind Google’s choice of the word chrome as the name for the beta of the Google browser. There’s a firestorm of controversy raging over what that Google browser is. I want to steer clear of that discussion. I have written about Google’s technology elsewhere and concluded in 2005 that Google is now building applications for its infrastructure. The browser is just an application, which means that it is not “just” a browser.
Back to our conversation: chrome is an interesting choice. I argued that the meaning of “chrome” was a bright, shiny surface, tougher than the lower grade compound to which it is applied. I was thinking of the bumpers on my restored 1973 Grandville convertible, which gets an awesome five miles to the gallon.
The first metaphor, then, is a shiny, hard surface. Could Google Chrome make the innards of Google more attractive? If so, then, it follows that the surface would protect the underlying parts. Makes send to me. I think this “meaning” works quite well.
Chrome also is an alternative name for the Oxygene programming language. Based on Object Pascal, Chrome is adept at lambda expressions. Could the meaning of chrome be a reference to the functions of this specialized programming language. I think this is an outlier. More information about this language is at here.
Chrome carries the connotation of bright colors and hyper reality. The source for this interpretation is Kodak Kodachrome transparency film. John Evans, a professional photographer based in Pittsburgh, told me, “Kodachrome makes nuclear power plants look good.” Maybe? I do like the suggestion of heightening reality. Could Google Chrome heighten the reality of a browser experience.
Chrome is a fictional mutant character in Marvel Comics’ Universe. I often refer to Google as Googzilla. I must admit I have a predisposition to this “meaning” of chrome.
Chrome refers to music. There’s an XM Radio channel by that name, an album by Trace Adkins, who is popular in rural Kentucky, and a track Debbie Harry’s album Koo Koo.
What does this tell us? Not much I fear.
Stephen Arnold, September 14, 2008
Autonomy Marries the New Ma Bell
September 9, 2008
North American media outlets were choked with information about Google’s scanning newspapers. The news that AT&T inked a deal with Autonomy received modest coverage. What made it to my newsreader was AT&T’s decision to license Yahoo for mobile search.
What’s the Autonomy deal?
Based on the sketchy information I have, Autonomy licensed its search and content processing technology to AT&T. The deal is worth several million dollars and follows on another mega-deal with Home Box Office (HBO). As other search and content vendors thrash for sales, Autonomy continues its “mega deal” method. I expect that Autonomy’s share price will perk up a tad. Maybe Oracle or some other super platform should bite the bullet and buy Autonomy. Autonomy can close deals in a dismal economy; some vendors cannot.
Stephen Arnold, September 9, 2008
GooNews: Google Dooms Some Commercial Database Publishers
September 9, 2008
I have been mired in family business about 90 miles south of Chicago. I was unfortunately unable to add my two cents to the Web wave of comments about Google’s scanning newspapers. Anyone remember University Microfilms, the outfit that put newspapers on–yuck–microfilm? Techmeme and Megite have dozens of posts about Google scanning newspapers, and I doubt that my telling you that Google is supplementing its book scanning activities will add much to your day.
My angle on this announcement by Google here is rotated about six degrees off the Web buzz.
First, you can kiss most commercial database publishers’ as great investments good bye. Customers are tired of paying through the nose for “real” databases. The idea is that Google makes “toy” databases. Wrong. Google is collecting information and making it available with a business model that allows searching for free. Google’s business model is a big earth mover grinding down traditional media. Most traditional media mavens hear crunching but have not connected the noise with the footfalls of the GOOG.
Second, you can ignore those Monday Night Football ads from Thomson Reuters. There were more buzz words about intelligent information and professionals than I could process. Advertising is not going to sell search queries that cost anywhere from $5 to $500 per query. Yes, $500. Fire up Derwent. Hunt for Google patents. Poke around for prior art and let me know how much you pay to search and save your results. Google Patents may not be perfect, but access is free. Ads kon Monday Night Football won’t sell searches on WestLaw–ever.
Third, the yip yap of competitors, advertisers, and Google critics won’t make a single iota of difference to what Google is doing. I have been documenting for clients and for readers of my monographs that Google is a supra national enterprise. So tell me, “Who is going to regulate Google?” One wealthy wizard screamed at me when I hinted that Google could fold its tent and move to another country without much downtime. When I suggested Russia and mentioned Mr. Brin’s interest in going into space, the wealthy wizard foamed at the mouth. I think he threw a pencil at me. If GooNews wipes out companies in the archived news business, to whom does one complain.
In short, GooNews is the start of a new era at Google. I dubbed the company Googzilla in 2005. No one paid much attention. Bet those folks at ProQuest and Newsbank are perking up now. Agree? Disagree? Help me learn. Just bring facts.
Stephen Arnold, September 9, 2008
First Search Mini-Profile: Stratify
September 9, 2008
Beyond Search has started its search and content processing mini-profile series.
The first profile is about Stratify, and you can read it here.
The goal is to publish each week a brief snapshot of selected search and content processing vendors. The format of each profile will be a short essay that covers the background of the system, its principal features, strengths, weaknesses, and an observation. The idea inspiring each profile is to create a basic summary. Each vendor is invited to post additional information, links, and updates. On a schedule yet to be determined, each mini-profile will be updated and the comments providing new information deleted. The system allows a reasonable trade off between editorial control and vendor supplements. We will try to adhere to the weekly schedule. Our “Search Wizards Speak” series has been well received, and we will add interviews, but the interest in profiles has been good. Remember. You don’t need to write me “off the record” or even worse call me to provide insights, updates, and emendations. Please, use the comments section for each profile. I have other work to do. I enjoy meeting new people via email and the phone, the volume of messages to me is rising rapidly. Enjoy the Stratify post. You will find the profiles under the “Profile” tab on the splash page for the Web log. I will post a short news item when a new profile becomes available. Each profile will be indexed with the key word “profile”.
Stephen Arnold, September
Stratify: Discovery System 3.x
September 9, 2008
by Nicholas E. Stover for Beyond Search
Basics
Stratify—formerly Purple Yogi—provides eDiscovery services intended to help attorneys minimize the resources needed to analyze and manage documents. The company is owned by Iron Mountain, a diversified records management company. More specifically, technology provided by Stratify aids in the search, retrieval, and management of information required for a legal matter. Founded in 1999, the company has offices in Mountain View, California, Boston, Massachusetts, and Bangalore, India. Stratify can found on the Web at www.stratify.com.
Product
Stratify Discovery System 3.x employs statistical and other methods to identify named people, places, and proper nouns from any collection of documents, including content from network file servers, content management systems, Web sites, and data fields. The indexed information and metadata are categorized into the system’s taxonomy, which can be modified by a licensee. Stratify provides a key word search and retrieval system to allow attorneys and paralegals to locate information processed by the system.
Stratify includes several interesting features; for example, the ability processing documents in multiple languages; inclusion of text mining functions; automatically creating dynamic taxonomies; providing discovery interfaces for reporting and analysis; and function to identify relationships between and among people, locations, organizations and topics.
Customers
The firm’s customers include law firms, corporate legal departments, and US intelligence agencies. Thomson Reuters uses the system. Stratify helps reduce the need for human indexers. Other customers include NASA, the Department of Education, and Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs.
Strengths
The major advantage of Stratify is that the company’s system has been optimized for eDiscovery and manipulation of information generated in legal matters. The company was an early entrant in the text mining sector. The firm’s product now includes visualization tools. The utility of these ways of viewing query results will vary from licensee to licensee. Now included are “heat maps” (to show the user hot spots, neighbor maps (showing topics or entities that have a direct, non-mediated relationship to each other), and network graphs (sometimes called social graphs) to help identify direct and indirect relationships between entities.
Weaknesses
Stratify systems begin in the $100,000 range. This license fee does not include customization or additional engineering services required by the licensee. Over the years, the system benefits from the involvement of a subject matter expert. An organization with little or no experience with enterprise search is not likely to understand or benefit from the software.
Price
Current pricing for the Stratify 3.x system begins at about $100,000. A custom price quote is required.
Summary
The Stratify software search-and-retrieval system lacks some of the case management functions that certain competitors are now bundling with their eDiscovery systems. Performance can be an issue if the system is not properly resourced.
Web site: www.stratify.com
Chrome: What It Isn’t
September 8, 2008
The writing is a bit salty, but I found Ted Dziuba’s post at http://teddziuba.com/2008/09/a-web-os-are-you-dense.html quite interesting. Mr. Dziuba asserts that Chrome is not a Web operating system. I agree. The most interesting comment in his article “A Web OS. Are You Dense?” was:
The “Web Operating System” just highlights how much journalists don’t know about computers.
I must admit that I enjoyed this post. A happy quack to Mr. Dziuba. More, please. You have an invitation to contribute to my wimpy Web log as well.
Stephen Arnold, September 8, 2008
Traditional Media Figures Out that Sci-Tech Publishing Is Threatened
September 8, 2008
But do the sci-tech publishers know what’s happening? Navigate to http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26512717/ and read “Era of Scientific Secrecy Ends.” The article, written by Robin Lloyd, provides a round up of information changes that will roil the world of sci-tech publishing. Ms. Lloyd does not focus on publishing, but her analysis makes clear that “open science” will bring further changes of sci-tech information access. What’s amazing is that this article comes from two companies struggling to keep pace with similar changes. When I read this good article, I thought of the captain and his officers on the Titanic when the ship was sinking. Insight came too late.
Stephen Arnold, September 8, 2008
Intel: LTU Talks Up Next Generation Processors
September 8, 2008
Update: September 8, 2008, 8 12 am Eastern
More about the Intel quad push is at http://www.yourdesktopinnovation.com/
Original Post
Another item about Intel and search. LTU offers an image processing system that law enforcement professionals find useful in certain matters. But LTU’s technology needs processing horsepower. The company had a deal to embed its image classification technology in a consumer video device, but that was slow out of the gates. The reason, according to my sources, was performance.
At the Intel Developer Forum, LTU showed its image processing system running on Intel’s zippy i7 processor. I can’t keep the names straight anymore, but this processor features more cores on die and more cache plus speed ups for computational intensive applications such as image and content processing.
The crowd loved the demonstration, which should make Intel happy. Search vendors need a way to crank up the performance of their systems. Throwing hardware at search bottlenecks may not be the really smart way to solve problems, but it is one that does not require the search vendors to tackle harder problems such as input output and clunky code in their search systems.
I think Endeca will follow in LTU’s foot steps. Intel is poking around the periphery of search, and the company is going to have to take positive action if it wants to do more than sell chips. My hunch is that smart devices with search and content processing functions on board might be an avenue Intel might investigate.
LTU, in case you are not familiar with the company, is French. The company was Founded in 1999 by software and engineering wizards. LTU Technologies provides multimedia content control solutions. Its patented technology is use by the French Gendarmerie Nationale, and the Italian state police; agencies investigating traffic in cultural goods and stolen objects (OCBC of the French National Police); as well as commercial media organizations such as Corbis and Meredith Corporation. You can get more information about the company at http://www.ltutech.com.
Stephen Arnold, September 8, 2008
Oracle Teams with ekiwi
September 8, 2008
ekiwi, based in Provo, Utah, has formed a relationship with Oracle. The company was founded in 2002. It focuses on Web based data extraction. The firm’s Screen-Scraper technology is, the news release asserts, “platform-independent and designed to integrate with virtually any existing information technology system.”
The company describes Screen Scraper this way here:
It consists of a proxy server that allows the contents of HTTP and HTTPS requests to be viewed, and an engine that can be configured to extract information from Web sites using special patterns and regular expressions. It handles authentication, redirects, and cookies, and contains an embedded scripting engine that allows extracted data to be manipulated, written out to a file, or inserted into a database. It can be used with PHP, .NET, ColdFusion, Java, or any COM-friendly language such as Visual Basic or Active Server Pages.
Oracle’s revenues are in the $18 to 20 billion range. ekiwi’s revenues may be more modest. Oracle, however, has turned to ekiwi for screen scraping technology to enhance the content acquisition capabilities of Oracle’s flagship enterprise search system, Secure Enterprise Search 10g or SES10g. In May 2008, one of Oracle’s senior executives told me that SES10g was key player in the enterprise search arena and SES10g sold because it was secure. Security, I recall being told, was the key differentiation.
This deal suggests that SES10g has to turn to up-and-coming screen scraping vendors to expand the capabilities of SES10g. I’m still puzzling over this deal, but that’s clearly my inability to understand the sophisticated management thinking that fuels SES10g to its lofty position among the search and content processing vendors.
The news release makes it clear that e-kiwi can access content from the “deep Web”. This buzzword means to me dynamic, database-driven sites. Google has its “deep Web” technologies which may be in part described in its five Programmable Search Engine patents, published by the USPTO as patent applications, in February 2007.
e-kiwi, which offers a very useful Web log here, is:
…a member of the Oracle PartnerNetwork, has worked with Oracle to develop an adaptor that integrates ekiwi’s Screen Scraper with Oracle Secure Enterprise Search to help significantly expand the amount of enterprise content that can be searched while maintaining existing information access and authorization policies. The Oracle Secure Enterprise Search product provides a secure, easy-to-use enterprise search platform that connects to a broad range of enterprise applications and data sources.
The release continues:
The two technologies have already been coupled in a number of cases that demonstrate their ability to work together. In one instance cell phones from many of the major providers were crawled by Screen-Scraper and indexed by Oracle Secure Enterprise Search. A user shopping for cell phones is then able to search, filter, and browse from a single location the various cell phone models by attributes such as price, form factor, and manufacturer. In yet another case, Screen-Scraper was used to extract forum postings from various photography aficionado web sites. This information was then made available through Oracle Secure Enterprise Search, which made it easy to conduct internal marketing analysis on recently released cameras.
I did some poking around and came up short after a quick look at my files and running a couple of Web searches. Information is located, according to the news story about the deal, here. The url is http//:www.screen-scraper.com/ss4ses/. The link redirected for me to http://www.w3.org/Protocols/. The company’s Web site is at http://www.screen-scraper.com, and it looks like this on September 7, 2008, at 8 pm Eastern:
I am delighted that SES10g can acquire Web-based content in dynamic systems. I remain confused about the functions included with SES10g. My understanding was that SES10g was easily extensible, compatible with Oracle Applications, Fusion, and other Oracle technologies. If this were true, SES10g’s ability to pull content from databased services should be trivial for the firm’s engineering team. I was hoping for an upgrade to SES10g, but that seems not to be in the cards at this time. Scraping Web pages seems to be a higher priority that getting a new release out the door. What’s your understanding of Oracle’s enterprise search strategy? I’m confused. Help me out, please.
Stephen Arnold, September 8, 2008
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