Network World Dings Google a Decade Too Late
June 12, 2009
I think it is admirable that pundits, mavens, real journalists, and analysts are now focusing their attention on Google, whom I affectionately call Googzilla. My recollection is that Google emerged from BackRub about 11 years ago. The Google was on a role from the moment its initial public offering came out of the gates in 2004. That IPO took place after the Google settled a legal squabble with its neighbor Yahoo. The settlement cost more than most search companies generate in a lifetime of spreadsheet jockeying.
Now the Google is somehow different. I don’t think so. I think those who have been asleep at the switch have been hit over the head with Google’s earning power, its technology, and its ability to surround and seep into many business sectors. This did not happen overnight, gentle reader. Google has matured.
One interesting and well reasoned article appeared today (June 11, 2009) in Network World. You must read David Coursey’s “Google Antiturst Case Misses the Point” here. Network World, like some of the London newspapers, has been taking a somewhat sharp approach to its coverage of the Google in my opinion.
Mr. Coursey wrote:
Antitrust regulators will look at this merely as a business issue–is Google too big for the good of the marketplace. What they really should be asking is whether Google is gaining too much control of another marketplace–that of ideas.
His argument is that Google is the big dog in the idea business. Mr. Coursey dodges the “m” word but it drapes is polysyllabic fabric over the write up.
My thoughts:
- Too late, folks. The Google has momentum, and it disruptive force is amplifying as its various initiatives intersect. Remember how this happens from physics? If not, check it out here and its sister, the cross field amplifier. Cross field just like multiple business sectors being disrupted in my way of envisioning Google’s market methods.
- Competition must resort to the courts. Sad to say but legal eagles may spoil Google’s parade. The problem is that legal methods take time and the competition has to nail its case before the cash runs out.
- Google is morphing. If I hear the SEO crowd tell me that Google is an ad company one more time, I may have a minor stroke. The Google was an ad company. Its new initiatives open new revenue doors. Those new opportunities don’t preclude ads; they supplement ad revenue. If that revenue comes from its competitors’ best customers, then what? See item 2 above for the cash crunch that could derail the legal challenges.
Stay tuned. UFC 2010 is coming. The regulatory battles are the undercard in my opinion.
Stephen Arnold, June 11, 2009
Google and a Brace of Compliance-Related Methods
June 12, 2009
If you navigate to my Google patent collection in the Perfect Search demonstration, you can poke around for various digital fingerprinting methods, filtering, and content identification systems. The GOOG has been working hard to find bulletproof, speedy, and efficient ways to identify content that may get Googzilla in hot water with copyright owners.
I paid attention when I saw two patent documents come across the lily pad I use for a desk here in the goose pond. What’s notable about each is that the inventors overlap. Names that jumped out at me included Franck Chastagnol, Vijay Karunamurthy, and Chris Maxcy, among others. The other notable feature was that both documents were about doing “stuff” to understand and perform actions on video files.
The two patent documents of interest are:
- 20090144325, “Blocking of Unlicensed Audio Content in Video Files on a Video Hosting Website”
- 20090144326, “Site Directed Management of Audio Components of Uploaded Video Files”
You can get copies of these documents from the user-friendly, highly-intuitive USPTO Web site here. Please, read the syntax examples; otherwise, no go, folks.
These documents strike me as important for several reasons:
- Both were filed on the same day, a sign of importance to this addled goose
- Both pertain to copyright related functions performed by software, not humans
- Both move the GOOG’s capabilities forward with more clever and what appear to me efficient methods.
The Google is trying to be a good Googzilla in my opinion. Keep in mind that I am not an attorney, so check with your friendly patent attorney about the validity of the systems and methods disclosed in these two documents.
Stephen Arnold, June 12, 2009
Fujitsu Gets Bitten by the Search Bug
June 12, 2009
Juan Carlos Perez’s “Fujitsu Plug In Helps Refine Search Queries” here caught me by surprise. When I think of Japan and search, I think of Just Systems, not Fujitsu. I need to realign my goosely thinking. Mr. Perez wrote:
Fujitsu Laboratories of America has created a browser plug-in that pops-up a cloud of suggested query refinements around search engine boxes. Called Xurch, the tool works with Firefox and Internet Explorer, as well as with several major search engines and some big sites, the company said Thursday [June 11, 2009].
Fujitsu has created a Web site for Xurch here. You can download the free browser plug in here.
The idea is that the tag cloud shows a “cloud” or unordered list of related terms, concepts, and bound phrases appear. Each is a hot link which chops the longer list of results down. You see only those hits that are germane to your information need. To show the cloud, one moves the xurcher (oops, the cursor) into the search box. To make the cloud go away, move the xurcher (ooops, the cursor) out of the search box hot zone.
My hunch is that the Fujitsu Laboraotries of America here have more search goodness in the creative microwaves. NEC Research near the old Bell Labs building in New Jersey did some interesting search related work. Maybe Fujitsu will reignite Japanese-funded rexurch into information retrieval? A search for “information retrieval” on the Fujitsu Labs’s Web site return a link to a tie up with Open Text but not too much other exicting stuff among the four hits.
Stephen Arnold, June 12, 2009
ITPints: Real Time Search Engine
June 12, 2009
A happy quack to the reader who told me about ITPints.com, “the new real time Web search engine”. You can try out the beta version here. The developer of the system is Javier Arias, and you can find information about the system here. I liked Javier Arias’ style. He said:
itpints you can know what is people publishing on internet about anything of your interest, at the same time you’re searching for it. The relevancy of any result is given by when it was posted on internet. The possibilities are infinite, you can use it to follow what is happening on a concert of your favorite band, or search for news that are not even in the newspapers yet!
He also points to other services offering somewhat similar functions. Again: upfront and clear. The new system will soon feature an API. The ITPints.com site is compatible with the Firefox Ubiquity extension.
I ran several test queries on the system and found some useful links. For example, the query for “Beyond Search” returned Twitter references to my somewhat negative write up about a search engine optimization course that provided paying attendees with a “certification”. Definitely fresh results in my opinion.
My query for “text mining” returned several interesting links related to the use of text mining to “identify quality issues.” I was surprised that there was current activity around what is a niche technology. Text mining without analytics and behavior tracking is not the the main event. I found the flurry of posts about a PubMed text mining project quite useful and to me new information. I followed the ITPints.com hit to 7th Space and bookmarked the site.
The addled goose awards a happy quack.
Stephen Arnold, June 12, 2009
Bing’s Got Some Useful Search Features
June 11, 2009
The goslings have been fumbling around because web feet don’t equate with Web searching. Nevertheless, we have gathered together six tips that we found particularly useful when running “bings” on the Microsoft search site. Tell your friends to “bing it.” Remember: in the examples below omit the initial and trailing quotation marks.
Tip 1: to see what’s hot in feeds. Enter this string in front of your query: “feed:”. The resulting query looks like this: “feed:Cleveland +”business information”.
Tip 2: this is a direct match for the “other guy’s” syntax. To locate only Adobe PDF documents you use this string in front of your query: “filetype:” The resulting query looks like this: “filetype:ppt +sharepoint”.
Tip 3: this is another direct match for the “other guy’s” syntax. To locate only documents within a particular Web site you use this string in front of your query: “site:” The resulting query looks like this: “site:search +arnoldit.com
Tip 4: this tip is essential if you are looking for hits from a little known or unpopular site like the National Railway Retirement Board. To determine if a Web site is in the Bing index, enter this string in front of your query: “url:”. The resulting query looks like this: “url:marad.gov”
Tip 5: this tip is popular with the goslings who enjoy online music. To locate hits on sites that have links to specific filetypes, precede the query with the string “contains:” The resulting query looks like this: “contains:mp3”
Tip 6: Boolean operators are available. Use “+” for AND and “-“ for NOT.
Remember to put bound phrases such as “White House” in quotes to minimize false drops.
We think the system has some useful features. You can get other tips for running bings on the new Microsoft system at these locations:
- Help for the system is in tiny gray type at the foot of the Bing splash page. You can go directly to the online information pages by clicking here.
- MalekTips has some useful tips here.
- Digital Inspiration has some interesting tips here. I quite liked tip 1 so the full Bing is available to users where access may be limited in some way.
Remember don’t say the “other guy’s” name when you mean Web search. Say, “Bing it.” I am working on making this word an active part of my vocabulary.
Stephen Arnold, June 11, 2009
Amazon and the Unexpected
June 11, 2009
I opened my new Kindle Two after my Kindle One disappeared from my briefcase during a talk at the Gilbane Conference on June 4, 2009. I was disappointed that the display wasn’t much of an improvement. The addled goose’s eyes are not what they used to be. I wondered in the God of Geese would come to my aid. When I read Rich Miller’s “Lightning Strike Triggers Amazon EC2 Outage” here, I quacked, “Whoops.” Maybe the God of Geese was paying attention to my Kindle Two injunction. Mr. Miller wrote:
Some customers of Amazon’s EC2 cloud computing service were offline for more than four hours Wednesday night after an electrical storm damaged power equipment at one of the company’s data centers.
Mr. Miller did not raise these questions:
- What is the reliability of cloud computing in general if lightning, hardly an unexpected weather event, can kill a major data center?
- Who pays for the loss of revenue to customers when a vendor’s engineering is not able to handle something than Ben Franklin was able to manage?
- What steps will cloud vendors take to prevent their “enterprise ready” systems from running to the cellar when a storm passes through?
If a cloud system is delivering search and text analysis for a mission critical application, won’t the customers start thinking about the benefits of on premises installations. Losing a service for a photo archive is one thing. Losing a system related to more significant business operations seems to be different to me.
Stephen Arnold, June 11, 2009
Teaching IBM OmniFind to Index IBM’s Portal Document Manager Content
June 11, 2009
I know you have been hungering for a fix to this thorny problem. My first brush with OmniFind and IBM’s Portal Document Manager triggered surprise. I assumed that a connector would allow one IBM product to connect to another IBM product. Well, it’s not that simple. You can work through eight pages of instructions starting here. It is not possible for me to summarize the steps in this Web log post. I can give you a preview of what you will learn, however. Step 15 in the procedure to install the HTTP Access Servlet in the Portal Server suggested:
You must also add a reference to the vbr.jar file as a shared library under the vbr_httpaccess.war file that you just installed. If you do not already have a shared library defined, go to Environment -> Shared Libraries in the WebSphere Application Server V6.0 administration console (Figure 14) and add a new library named VBR_JAR_SHARED_LIB.
Wait, there’s more. Explore the tutorial, screenshots, and sample code at your leisure. Intuitive stuff.
Stephen Arnold, June 11, 2009
Clearpace RainStor Supports Queries
June 11, 2009
A happy quack to the reader in Australia who alerted me to an outfit called Clearpace Software. According the the company’s Web site, Clearpace is
a software company that provides data archive store solutions for the long-term retention of structured data within the enterprise. Clearpace has become a pioneer in the database archiving market by providing archive stores that are the optimal destination for inactive data that has been removed from production systems. The Clearpace NParchive software enables organizations with large and growing data estates to massively reduce the cost and complexity of storing historical information while making archived data easily accessible for regulatory, legal and business purposes. Using NParchive, companies are able to store as much as 60x more historical information on commodity hardware.
The angle that interested me was that Clearpace includes a query tool with its system. The idea is that a Clearpace client can search the data in the Clearpace RainStor archive. Here’s what the company says about the Rainstor cloud storage service:
RainStor is a cloud-based archiving service for simply, securely and cost-effectively preserving historical structured data. The RainStor archive service enables companies to send an unlimited amount of inactive data from databases or event logs to a hosted storage platform where it can be retained and searched on demand. RainStor compresses data by 40x before transferring encrypted data files to the cloud, providing rapid load times and reduced storage cost, while also supporting full SQL access to the archived data files using industry standard reporting tools and interfaces. RainStor is delivered on a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) basis, leveraging cloud infrastructure. The RainStor cloud archive service requires no upfront investment offering a pay-as-you-use model based on the volume of raw data that is sent to the cloud. Rainstor is provided as a service by Clearpace Software.
You can read the company’s news release here.
I don’t have too much information about the search function. My questions will focus on latency and the user interface.
Stay tuned.
Stephen Arnold, June 11, 2009
Autonomy Gets Social
June 11, 2009
Autonomy has embraced the social search scene. Two announcements make this clear. The first is that Autonomy has an iPhone application. You can read about the Jobs love here. Second, Autonomy has a Facebook app as well. You can read about that here. Both of these software components are intended to allow adults do real work. The iPhone app permits document management from the Apple device. Facebook users can tap into such functions as a visual report about what’s hot in the organization’s Intranet. More information about the newly social Autonomy may be found on the Cambridge UK company’s Web site.
Stephen Arnold, June 11, 2009
Yahoo Hadoop
June 11, 2009
Short honk: The Yahoo Developer Blog Network published “Announcing the Yahoo Distribution of Hadoop” here. IBM and Yahoo teamed on a version of OmniFind that is free. When I installed the system, I found it had a document limit. Bummer. Will the Hadoop distribution have a limit of some type that’s not in the Apache version? With all of the commercial pressures on Yahoo, what business is the company pursuing: online ads, banner ads, open source software, for fee email, or any of the other services available from the splash page? I’m puzzled. Anyone care to direct my thinking?
Stephen Arnold, June 11, 2009