Google Latitude: Search without Entering Keywords
February 8, 2009
I have been fascinated by the media and public reaction to Google’s Lattitude service. For a representative example, check out the Scientific American’s story here. The idea is that a Google user can activate a tracking feature for friends. The Lattitude service is positioned as a option for users. The GOOG’s intent is to allow friends and maybe people like parents to see where a person is on a Google Map. Wow, I received several telephone calls and agree to participate in two live radio talk show interviews. The two hosts were concerned that their location could be tracked by anyone at any time. Well, that’s sort of correct but Google Lattitude is not the outfit doing that type of tracking as far as I know.
A couple of points I noted that caught the attention of the media personalities who spoke with me:
- There was zero awareness that triangulation is a well-known method. GPS equipped devices that transmit happily even when the owner thinks a device is “off” is a standard in certain law enforcement sectors. One anecdote that made the rounds in 2001 was that a certain person of interest loaned his personal mobile phone to a courier who was fetching videos from a city in a far off land. The homing device in the nose of the missile destroyed the courier’s four wheel drive vehicle. The person of interest switched to a pay as you go phone, having learned an important lesson.
- The details of the Google Lattitude service, which is flakey and crashes even in Chrome, did not sink into the media personalities’ knowledgebase. Google makes clear what the service is and does. The words don’t resonate. Fear does. Little wonder that there is a thriving business is discussing this immature Google service which works only with certain software on the user’s mobile device. Gory details are here.
- The chipper Googler who does the video about he service sounds to me as if the speaker was a cheerleader at a private school where each student had a horse and a chauffeur. There was what I think one wacky college professor called “cognitive dissonance”. Tracking my husband is, like, well, so coool. Maybe it is my age, but this eager beaver approach to friend tracking troubled me more than the unstable, crash prone service. The video is here.
Next week you will be able to navigate to a Web page and run a query across Google’s USPTO documents and have one click access to a PDF of the patent document. The service is up now and one vendor’s search system is available at this time, but I hope to add additional search systems so you can explore the disclosure corpus yourself. These “innovations” are several years old if you have been reading Google’s technical papers and its patent documents. The baloney that a patent document does not become a product does not hold for Googzilla. If you have been reading my analyses of these documents in The Google Legacy (2005) and Google Version 2.0 (2007) you already know that what is now making its way to alpha and beta testing is three, maybe four years old.
My take on this is that Google watchers are getting blindsided and overly excited too late in the game. When the GOOG rolls out a service or allows a Google wizard to appear in public, the deal is done. Concern about tracking is like fretting over the barn fire three years after the fact. Silly waste of time. The GOOG does a lousy job of hiding its technical direction but few take the time to dig out the information.
Radio hosts should start reading Google technical papers. Would that raise the level of discourse? The tracking service has significant implications for medical device vendors, shipping companies, and law enforcement. So far few pundits are tackling these applications in a substantive way. I touch upon these issues in my forthcoming Google: The Digital Gutenberg here.
Stephen Arnold, February 8, 2009
Metadata Extraction
February 8, 2009
A happy quack to the reader who sent me a link to “Automate Metadata Extraction for Corporate Search and Mashups” by Dan McCreary here. The write up focuses on the UIMA framework and the increasing interest in semantics, not just key word indexing. I found the inclusion of code snippets useful. The goslings here at Beyond Search are urged to copy, cut and paste before writing original scripts. Why reinvent the wheel? The snippets may not be the exact solution one needs, but a quick web footed waddle through them revealed some useful items. Mr. McCreary has added a section about classification and he used the phrase “faceted search” which may agitate the boffins at Endeca and other firms where facets are as valuable as a double eagle silver dollar. I was less enthusiastic about the discussion of Eclipse, but you may find it just what you need to chop down some software costs.
The write up in in several parts. Here are the links to each section: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. I marked this article for future reference. Quite useful if a bit pro-IBM.
Stephen Arnold, February 6, 2009
Google: Human Editing or Technical Scrubbing
February 7, 2009
Carlo Longino, writing in TechDirt here, reported a story that caught my attention. I don’t know if the story is on the money, but it raised some interesting questions for me. The article was "Google Accused of Invisibly Deleting Blog Posts on the RIAA’s Say So". The assertion is that some Web log posts about an RIAA action have been deleted. For me the most interesting comment was:
Google says that it notifies bloggers after their posts have been taken down, in accordance with the DMCA. But it should hardly be surprising that many of those affected say they’ve gotten no such notice, nor that the offending material was either legally posted and/or supplied by the labels themselves.
What ran through my mind this morning as I bundled debris from the fallen trees that block my path from nest to goose pond were:
- What’s so surprising? Google is no longer a wonky start up. The outfit is now disrupting business sectors from telecommunications to online payments, from content distribution to video production. In order to keep potential partners and advertisers happy, why not tweak the corpus? I do it when I delete from the comments to this Web log plugs for financial services.
- Could the disappearing content be another of Google’s technical glitches? I can see a script containing errant instructions. The Googleplex crunches forward, hacking down certain references to forbidden Web sites and other subjects on the stop list. In the last couple of weeks, the GOOG has marked every Web site as malware and roached some ad statistics. No big surprise that as Google gets larger, the superior beings of the early Googlers are now diluted with less prescient coders. Ergo, mistakes in run-of-the-mill filtering.
- Hasn’t Google been hand fiddling with results for a long time? I recall reading that there was a human touch in some of the Google News displays. Algorithms weren’t, as I thought I heard, sufficiently sensitive to the needs of the dead tree newspaper crowd. Most "search systems" provide tools to permit editing, hit boosting, tuning, and other bits of magic that the search pundits remain blissfully ignorant.
You may have a different view of this situation, but I think it is par for this particular golf course. What do you think? Maybe I’m jaded, but results shaping is not an oddity; it is part of the search and retrieval game.
Stephen Arnold, February 7, 2009
PC World Discovers Google Site Search
February 7, 2009
I was surprised to see this title in my newsreader, “Use Google to Search within One Site” here in the ecoustics.com site. The story struck me as old news, really old news. The use of the PC World logo on an audio Web site was puzzling. If you want to use site search, you may want to make sure that you use Google operators to narrow the result set; for example, site:www.gsa.gov +”Request for Information”. Keep in mind that the GOOG does not necessarily index every word on every page nor does the GOOG necessarily index every page in a Web site. Run the same query across other vendors’ indexes for maximum information happiness. Using a single search service is an invitation to miss potentially useful information.
Stephen Arnold, February 6, 2009
Quite a Headline
February 7, 2009
The headline is not about search, but I want to highlight the dangers of headlines in my newsreader. I look at the words and think about them. Some headline writers don’t. I was scanning Newsnow.co.uk and spotted this sequence of words:
Windows 7 Version Strategy Simplifies, Confuses Gartner Group 23:01 5-Feb-09
Azure chip consultants are often confused in my experience. Simplification is one way to avoid knowing much about what’s under the hood. To see the assertion in Newsnow.co.uk was enervating for this addled goose.
Stephen Arnold, February 6, 2009
Search without Search, Sort of, Maybe
February 7, 2009
Ina Fried’s “Microsoft Offers to Just Fix It” here describes an interesting twist on getting online answers without some of the messiness of traditional search and retrieval. The idea is that one of my dwindling number of Windows PCs has a problem. (What? A problem!) The user locates a Microsoft knowledgebase “help” document. The document has a logo featuring what looks like a young version of Mr. Rogers, my plumber here in Harrods Creek, Kentucky. Click the icon and Microsoft automatically (perhaps auto magically) fixes the glitch. I am ready for a fix to Word’s autonumbering features. I am ready for a fix for PowerPoint’s replacing black text with light blue text when copying a file from one presentation to another. I am ready for Excel charts to eliminate surprises when trying (note that I said trying) to customize an Excel chart. I am ready for Outlook not to corrupt its PST files. I am ready for Visio’s export filters to work without creating graphics excitement. And so on. I am ready for a search function that doesn’t motivate me to download an alternative from Exalead, ISYS Search Software, or another vendor including the IBM Yahoo clunker that runs on Lucene. The idea is that the user clicks a button and gets a useful “answer” is refreshing. I am eager to try this service. With more than my share of Word gotchas under my mouse cursor, I have to be convinced.
Stephen Arnold, February 7, 2009
Oh, Oh, SEO Debunked
February 7, 2009
If you are skeptical of the carnival barkers who pitch SEO or search engine optimization, you will want to read TechCrunch’s “SEO at the Enterprise Level-A Major Flop” here by Jeff Widman. SEO refers to tricks and methods to cause a particular Web document to appear at the top of a results list. Instead of finding one’s Web page on the first page of a Google or Yahoo result list, one finds one’s Web page deep in the results list. With Google’s choke hold on Web search, SEO often becomes a digital duel between the SEO crowd and Google’s Knights of the Golden Keyboard. Google tries to identify “relevant” Web pages via numerical recipes. SEO heathens try to figure out what the GOOG is doing and find a spoof. Mr. Widman’s write up covers this topic in a more thorough manner, so you may want to take heed.
In my opinion, the SEO tweaks identified by trial and error are becoming increasingly onerous. SEO, like autumn, may be “the year’s last, loveliest smile.” The GOOG wants not to be tricked. It’s not nice to fool Mother Google. The TechCrunch write up explained in its interview with an SEO boffin:
Enterprise and SEO is like cognitive dissonance–SEO is nimble, experimental, dynamic, continuously iterating, never-ending process. A complete anathema to enterprise IT which is project focused, do it and forget it. There’s also an internal disconnect because SEO crosses IT and marketing. Example: changing from horrible URL’s–super long, no keywords in the URL–to cleaner, shorter URLs is a marketing driven initiative but entirely reliant on IT execution. Part of the problem lies in that the Fortune 500 enterprises rely on their ad agencies for the “interactive” stuff but the agencies don’t know how to integrate SEO requirements with branding. Lastly, Web sites are seldom built with SEO in mind; developers/programmers didn’t know what they didn’t know. It’s much like a house where the electrical wasn’t thought about until years later–a major multi-year project to redo it.
That’s clear to me. Before you spend up to $10,000 per month or more, consider the effort required to trick Googzilla. In my opinion, original content may be a less onerous burden.
Stephen Arnold, February 7, 2009
Dead Sequoia Tree Sheds Staff
February 7, 2009
The Wall Street Journal reporters I knew had to buy their own lunch. I think the idea was that if a WSJ reporter and I were having pizza at a joint on Lexington Avenue, the WSJ person had to pay for his slice. No economy on the old expense account required. The story “The Wall Street Journal Lays Off 14; Dow Jones Newswire Untouched” here signals that reporters may let another person buy that slice of pizza. I have no further comment on the failure of traditional media to recognize that a digital Gutenberg has disrupted much loved business models.
Stephen Arnold, February 7, 2009
blinkx Has a New Home Page — Stop the Presses
February 6, 2009
Blinkx, http://www.blinkx.com, self-touted as the world’s largest video search engine, released a news alert that it has “re-launched” its home page with a couple “new” options: an inform me button that sends you news (this concept isn’t new) and an entertain me button that sends entertaining videos (that’s not a new idea either). They’re also promoting searching for videos visually (what a concept) and using speech tags in video (it’s been done). If companies like blinkx want to be in the spotlight, somewhat more steroid charged news might calm the Beyond Search goslings.
Jessica W. Bratcher, February 6, 2009
Googzilla versus the Bambies
February 6, 2009
Charles Cooper wrote “Google Killers? I Don’t Think So” here. I must admit that I would never have thought to identify Google’s Web search competitors as also rans. But after reading his Coop’s Corner post on February 5, 2009, I concede that he has a point. The hook for the article is a study by an advertising oriented trade magazine. And if anyone knows about Web search, it will definitely be an advertising oriented trade magazine. The sharp pencil crowd at AdWeek, according to Mr. Cooper, published “There’s Still Room for Google Killers”, a study. For me the most interesting comment in Mr. Cooper’s article was:
Consumers are still not loyal to a single engine. But Google still enjoys the most exclusivity–20 percent of all searchers use only Google on a weekly basis.
If a company enjoys a market share north of 60 percent, I would assert that some people are happy with the GOOG. When the competitors are not making much headway, I would suggest that those competitors are not pushing the right buttons. Mr. Cooper, like me, urges his readers to draw their own conclusions.
I think that the ad crowd is waking up too late to the reality of Googzilla. The good news is that most companies still want a pr or ad relationship at least some of the time. The bad news is that Google can disintermediate this service sector with a flick of its Googzilla tail. My suggestion to ad agencies: check out Google’s partner programs today.
Stephen Arnold, February 6, 2009
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