Cuil.com Gets Better
March 30, 2009
I did a fly over of the Cuil.com Web site. What triggered an overflight was a Google patent; specifically, US20090070312, “Integrating External Related Phrase Information into a Phrase-Based Indexing Information Retrieval System”. Filed in September 2007, the USPTO spit it out on March 12, 2009. I discussed a chain of Dr. Patterson’s inventions in my 2007 study Google Version 2.0 here. Dr. Patterson is no longer a full-time Googler, the tendrils of her research from Xift to Cuil pass through the GOOG. When I looked at Cuil.com today (March 29, 2007), I ran my suite of test queries. Most of them returned more useful and accurate results than my first look at the system in July 2008 here.
Several points I noticed:
- The mismatching of images to hits has mostly been connected. The use of my logo for another company, which was in the search engine optimization business was annoying. No more. That part of the algorithm soup has been filtered.
- The gratuitous pornography did not pester me again. I ran my favorites such as pr0n and similar code words. There were some slips which some of my more young at heart readers will eagerly attempt to locate.
- The suggested queries feature has become more useful.
- My old chestnut “enterprise search” flopped. The hits were to sources that are not particularly useful in my experience. The Fast Forward conference is no more, but there’s a link to the now absorbed user group. The link to the enterprise search summit surprised me. The conference has been promoting like crazy despite the somewhat shocking turn out last year in San Jose, so it’s obvious that flooding information into sites fools the Cuil.com relevancy engine.
- The Explore by Category is now quite useful. One can argue if it is better than the “improved” Endeca. I think Cuil.com’s automated and high-speed method may be more economical to operate. Dr. Patterson and her team deserve a happy quack.
I am delighted to see that the improvements in Cuil.com are coming along nicely. Is the system better than Google’s or Microsoft’s Web search system? Without more testing, I don’t think I can make a definitive statement. I am certain that there will be PhD candidates or ASIS members who will rise to fill this gap in my understanding.
I have, however, added the Cuil.com system to my list of services to ping when I am looking for information.
Stephen Arnold, March 30, 2009
Journalists Struggle with Web Logs
March 30, 2009
Gina M. Chen asked, “What do you think?” at the foot of her essay “Is Blogging Journalism”. You can read her write up here. My answer is, “Nope. Web logs are a variant of plain old communications.” Before I defend my assertion, let’s look at the guts of her essay is that “fear of change” creates the challenge. She asserted that blogging is a medium.
Web logs are not causing traditional media companies to collapse. Other, more substantive factors are eroding their foundations. Forget fear. Think data termites.
Okay, I can’t push back too much on these points, which strike me as tame and somewhat obvious. I also understand the fear part mostly because my brushes with traditional publishers continue to leave them puzzled and me clueless.
The issue to me is mostly fueled by money. Here’s why:
Storage a Problem for Most Organizations
March 30, 2009
Most people don’t know too much about Kroll, a unit of a diversified financial services firm. I was surprised, therefore, to see a public story about a survey conducted by this ultra low profile outfit. The article was “Storage Practices Don’t Match Policies” in IDM.Net, a Australian Web log here. The point of the write up was that in the Kroll survey storage policies were not particularly well conceived. The most important comment in the write up was:
The survey found that 40 percent of individuals stated that their company has a policy regarding where data should be stored. However, the survey results also revealed that 61 percent of respondents “usually” save to a local drive instead of a company network.
Makers of automated back up systems will rejoice. Attorneys suing an organization with lousy back up practices are probably dancing in the streets. Where there are informal collections of data, there is gold for the eDiscovery prospector.
If you want to know more about Kroll, click here and read the Search Wizards Speak with David Chaplin, one of the developers of Engenium, an interesting software for extracting nuggets from these data gold mines.
Stephen Arnold, March 30, 2009
Google in Knowledge Grab
March 30, 2009
Google keeps getting on the wrong side of the UK newspapers. The Times of London’s “Google Makes a Grab for E-Books” here gives the company some of that put down jabber for which Oxford-style debaters are noted. (I debated a team from Oxford when in university. My partner and I won, but we had some mud sticking to our suits.) The Times said:
This move [Google’s deal with Sony] is merely the tip of an iceberg. Late last year Google settled a class-action lawsuit with the two most powerful authors’ and publishers’ associations in America. In exchange for a $125m (£86m) payment, the groups agreed that Google would set up and administer a publishing-rights register designed to match up new and existing electronic books to their copyright owners, and manage payments for anyone who wanted to download them. Unlike ePub, this would be a closed — and profit-generating — system owned and managed by Google. The system would effectively make Google the sole distributor — and seller — of many electronic books.
Googzilla needs to get its public relations program on track in the UK. The traditional book publishing industry may be in a death spiral, but it has the incentive to make life miserable for the laddies and lassies in Google offices.
Stephen Arnold, March 29, 2009
Desktop Operating Systems: A Partial Romp through the Graveyard
March 30, 2009
I was enticed by the title of this ComputerWorld article here: “Gone But Not Forgotten: 10 Operating Systems the World Left Behind” by Matt Lake. I am an old and addled goose, so the amount of detail provided for each of the 10 operating systems varies quite a bit. Mr. Lake does a good job with the highest profiles systems, less well with the older, smaller OSes. What struck me when I read the article was that none of the operating systems differed significantly under the kimono. I grant the coding was different and features available to developers varied. The significant difference was the interface. What I noticed from the screen shots was that the look and feel of the operating systems converged. Over time, the interfaces moved from the inscrutable to the explicit. My take away from the article was that the operating system has become mostly irrelevant to the user. The interface is shifting from the explicit to the anticipative. The implications of this in my opinion translate to significant market upheavals. Who will suffer? Most of the enterprise software vendors will find themselves on the wrong side of shift. Interoperability will eventually become a smart software problem. Products like Chrome, therefore, which look like a browser but are in effect software versions of space ports that connect the world of the user’s data craft with the larger universe, are important.
Stephen Arnold, March 29, 2009
Online Revenue Options
March 29, 2009
A happy quack to the reader who sent me a link to Long Tail’s round up of online revenue models. You can find “Terrific Survey of Free Business Models Online” here. I walked through the examples, and the number and variety remarkable. Some of the lingo baffled me, but my reaction was similar to my trying to decide which flavor of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream to get. The milk and other ingredients are the same, but a seemingly wide range of unique flavors baffles me. I suggest you print out the tables and study them. Buy a cone and combine the tasks. Thr graphic may require another single dip to figure out.
Stephen Arnold, March 29, 2009
Hitwise Says Search Frustrate Users
March 29, 2009
Hitwise is a Web consultancy. Web consultancies with analytics get a double boost. Hitwise has big ideas and data to make most assertions have the ring of truth. These were the thoughts that went through my goosely brain when I read Australian IT’s “Searches Frustrate Surfers” here.
The main point of this article was:
According to Mr Tancer {Hitwise executive], people were using more and more words in their search queries because they were dissatisfied with the results. He said one of the problems facing search engines was the amount of content that did not have a link pointing to it — the method Google and others use to find and rank sites.
I agree. Search is difficult, complicated, and deeply dissatisfying. The issue is, “What’s the fix?” The GOOG is on the search without search track. Microsoft is investing in a down economy. Yahoo is a beached whale. We know the problem. Any suggestions from the consulting or data side of the Hitwise house?
I don’t have too many problems with search, so the addled goose is not a good judge of such matters derived from statistical estimates of traffic. On system accounts for about two thirds or more of search traffic, so it must be doing something semi-right in my opinion.
Stephen Arnold, March 29, 2009
Google in the US Government
March 29, 2009
A happy quack to the reader who alerted me to the Google Blogoscoped article “Google Code Enters WhiteHouse.gov” here. No surprise, however. A view source shows that the Google Moderator app is humming away. The question is, “How quickly will Google displace other vendors’ systems?” In my opinion, this is not an “if” question. It is a “when” question.
Stephen Arnold, March 31, 2009
More Online Advertising Deep, Deep Thinking
March 29, 2009
TechCrunch has a “steel cage match” underway. A Wharton professor found himself in the spotlight with some amazingly naive assertions about making money online. Today I read “Steel Cage Debate on the Future of Online Advertising: Danny Sullivan Vs. Eric Clemons” here. In my opinion, the steel cage metaphor is in itself a good way to generate traffic in order to add some steroids to the TechCrunch advertising biceps brachii.
Advertising thrives on traffic in the way muscle tissue responds to steroids.
I want to do my part in fanning the flames of this intellectual Bessemer furnace. If you are not familiar with the Bessemer method, you will want to refresh your memory about the function of draughts of air blown through coal here. The Bessemer process was abandoned in the 1950s, which provides some color for my comparison.
The spectacular but remarkably wasteful Bessemer process produced some productivity gains, but by the 1950s better methods were found. Online advertising cage matches share some similarities in their inefficient production of heat and sparks.
Here’s this week’s cage match synopsis:
Search engine marketing wizard Sullivan: Advertising will be big on the Internet.
Ivory tower behemoth Clemons: I agree but trust is a big deal. Internet advertising will account for about 20 percent of online revenues in five years.
Let’s step back.
What’s going on is a shift in proportionate spending. The revenue revolution was the Idea Lab notion that people with Web sites would pay for traffic. The big idea here is that a person would spend money to get clicks. The model is not revolutionary. Paying for traffic was a consequence of a property of electronic information; namely, magnetic centers exist which attract the majority of users. Internet traffic is not distributed evenly or randomly. To get in the flow costs money.
Yidio Update
March 29, 2009
Quite a few readers have shown interest in Yidio, the video search system I wrote about here. A reader sent me a link to this interesting post on Quantcast. The site has shown strong traffic growth in the first two months of 2009. You can view the data here. What’s interesting is that the viewers of Yidio don’t favor YouTube.com, if the Quantcast data are accurate. Frankly I had not heard of most of the sites in the “Audience Also Visits” listing; for example, tvduck.com, although the name appeals greatly to this addled goose. TVDuck seemed to be quite YouTube.com centric which begged the question, “How dependent on YouTube.com are these services.
A happy quack to the reader who pointed out that I did not mention that a videographer can make money by posting the content to Yidio. The procedure requires that the videographer provide his / her AdSense identification code. Click here for details.
Stephen Arnold, March 29, 2009
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