Seeing Crime the Professional Way
June 25, 2009
Most visualization is gratuitous. Where graphic representations are useful is in law enforcement. Crimes are committed by people. People have to be someplace. Putting the data, the people, and the events together makes it possible to “see” patterns. Visualization of crime related information is often a short cut to resource deployment, anticipatory planning, and budget management. You can see some open source, no cost examples in the article “20 Visualizations to Understand Crime”.
Flowing Data did a good job on this write up. Recommended for those who wonder about the value of monitoring. Adding real time data to these visualizations is a very useful innovation that some organizations are now exploring.
Stephen Arnold, June 25, 2009
IBM Challenges Google by Reacting, Not Leading
June 25, 2009
Internet News ran a very interesting article called “IBM Takes on Google with Social Cloud Apps”. I revealed that IBM rebuffed a certain government group with a statement along the lines that IBM knew in early 2008 what Google was doing. You can read my short write up in which this confidence is discussed. Alex Goldman wrote:
Scoring an upset over Google Apps was IBM’s LotusLive Connections, which is so new it’s not available until June 30, 2009, but the IBM product won the Enterprise 2.0 Cloud Computing Buyers’ Choice Award. LotusLive Connections offers profiles that list employees’ expertise so that others can find them, blogs so that experts can share knowledge and learn from each other, add a dogear to bookmarks and share information, Activities for project collaboration, and brings it all together in one unified home page. IBM’s social cloud software is fully integrated. Other LotusLive cloud services include LotusLive Engage for collaboration, LotusLive Meeting for voice and video conferencing, LotusLive Events for registration and ticketing of large meetings, LotusLive Notes Web mail, and LotusLive iNotes file sharing.
The issue in my opinion is that IBM is reacting to Google. If you know what a partner / competitor is doing, you get ahead of that competitor. Reacting suggests that control has been ceded. Google is search. IBM is vulnerable in a core function.
Stephen Arnold, June 25, 2009
Netbooks Are Losers
June 25, 2009
NPD has a direct connection to New York mainstream media. The company reports on data on which one get no purchase. The report that netbooks are not what consumers want is a good example. I went to a Best Buy on Sunday to look at the netbooks advertised in the Sunday newspaper supplement. No joy. The sales person told me that the netbooks sold out. I could order one. I asked if this was a weird graduation spike. He said people have been buying them because they were cheap and worked pretty well.
Now NPD reports that netbooks annoy buyers. You can read the news release that plopped into my RSS reader today. It’s headline is one that will make Microsoft weep with joy: “NPD Finds Consumer Confusion about Netbooks Continues.” Microsoft makes less money on the low end operating systems that are “good enough” for the small form factor computers. Microsoft wants full boat machines running the high end operating systems and software.
What makes no sense to me is that these small machines which Tess, my expert in small Web surfing devices (see picture on this blog’s splash page), tells me are just the ticket for those who want to avoid the hassle of the giant luggables.
When it comes to search, the netbooks work well for me. I suppose addled geese and experts like Tess are not included in the NPD sample. Come to think of it – I did not see too much data about sample selection, margin of error, and demographics of those 600 adults. I wonder who funded the research as well. I suppose NPD did the work in the interests of consumers. I wonder if a large software company provided some oomph.
I do know that Dell has changed its line up of netbooks in order to force buyers to pricier machines. I ordered a Dell net book for Tyson and returned it when I found the memory module was not upgradeable. I am deeply suspicious of these research results, but I am an addled goose with a rescue boxer who surfs the Web with a Dell Mini 9. I recall reading that net book users opting for the low end version of Windows 7 won’t be able to change their wallpaper either. Hmmm.
Stephen Arnold, June 24,, 2009
Vivisimo Management Changes
June 24, 2009
I learned yesterday that Vivisimo has made some top management changes. John M. Kealey is the new CEO and Kevin E. Calderwood is the new president. Raul Valdes-Perez remains with the company and on the board. Phil Carrai was named to the company’s board. These executives have significant business experience but less in the search and content processing sector. The company, according to founder Raul Valdes-Perez, is on solid ground. In my opinion, Vivisimo will be making some changes in its business strategy. My hunch is that reseller expansion, OEM deals, and stepped up sales will be among the changes the company will make. Earlier this year, the company made a shift in its marketing and I think more changes will be coming.Vivisimo has a key government contract but that deal could be up for a recompete under a new administration. Can Vivisimo’s new management kick the company into turbo mode? The enterprise search sector is a highly competitive space. Vivisimo’s partner Microsoft has been increasingly aggressive of late. Interesting development and one that I will watch from my goose pond in rural Kentucky.
Google Marks Line in Digital Sand
June 24, 2009
Google is focused on engineering. Engineers like the emphasis. Great engineers love the approach. Most competitors do not give Google engineering enough respect. Google signaled its interest in putting its engineering front and center. You can read its announcement in the article “Let’s Make the Web Faster.” Google provides a link to a video that makes it easier than ever to get insight into what Google means when it talks about performance. In my research, Google’s ability to do certain things quickly differentiates the company. This issue is important because Google is an “as is” outfit. Microsoft’s hiring of Yahoo engineers to work in its data center engineering vineyards makes clear the “to be” nature of that company’s infrastructure. Performance is a very big deal, and in my opinion Google has put a mark in the digital sand. The company may be challenging others to cross that performance line. Will they take that step?
Stephen Arnold, June 24, 2009
YAGG: Blogger.com Bug
June 24, 2009
Juan Carlos Perez’ “Bug in Google’s Blogger Costing Sites Traffic” reported:
Publishers with custom domains hosted on Google’s Blogger blog-publishing service have been losing traffic for the past week due to a bug affecting how visitors get redirected from the Blogger domain to the publishers’ own domains.
YAGG is an acronym for “yet another Google glitch.” The addled goose notes these to remind himself that addled geese and some Google engineers have big, ungainly Web feet and trip.
Stephen Arnold, June 23, 2009
No Wonder Search Is Easy for American Trained Engineers
June 24, 2009
Information Week’s Rob Preston wrote “Most American Grads Are Unemployable”. While not that surprising, it is easy to understand why azure chip consultants, newly minted search and CMS experts, and SharePoint cheerleaders insist that today’s systems are easy. If you don’t understand, the best way to cover up is to assert that technical challenges are “no problem”. Mr. Preston reported:
Many American grads looking to enter the tech field are preoccupied with getting rich, Vineet said. They’re far less inclined than students from developing countries like India, China, Brazil, South Africa, and Ireland to spend their time learning the “boring” details of tech process, methodology, and tools–ITIL, Six Sigma, and the like. As a result, Vineet said, most Americans are just too expensive to train–despite the Indian IT industry’s reputation for having the most exhaustive boot camps in the world. To some extent, he said, students from other highly developed countries fall into the same rut.
Might be some truth in Vineet Nayar’s pointed comment. He is “the highly respected CEO of HCL Technologies, one of India’s hottest IT services vendors.” For some well reasoned and temperate responses, check out these comments at Reddit. Eloquent for sure.
Stephen Arnold, June 23, 2009
Not HAL, Google Dumb
June 24, 2009
Short honk: From my polluted pond in rural Kentucky, I marvel at the big city analyses. One of the most interesting tech outfits is Forbes Magazine. The company’s Web site is swell, and I like the tech write ups too. A prime example is “Dumb Like Google” by Lee Gomes. In an essay about advanced search and content processing, Mr. Gomes asserted:
We re no closer to HAL than we were 40 years ago.
My research suggests that the Google has been beavering away on smart software. After reading, Mr. Gomes’s write up, I asked myself, “What if Mr. Gomes’s premises are incorrect?” I wonder is smart software works in some different ways.
Stephen Arnold, June 24, 2009
Yahoo in a Pickle
June 24, 2009
27/7 Wall Street published an eye opener called “Why Yahoo! Will Never Recover”. Categorical negatives are absolute and I think “may” might make an equally compelling headline. That’s small potatoes. The meat of this write up was:
Yahoo!’s most important strategic blunder is likely to be the refusal of CEO Bartz to form a search partnership with Microsoft quickly after taking the top job. The industry has known for months that Microsoft was about to launch the next generation of its search product. Bartz and many experts believed that Microsoft did not have the product development and engineering expertise to build a highly competitive search engine. This turned out to be an underestimation of Microsoft’s resolve, its willingness to invest great sums of money on risky ventures, and the prowess of its developers.
You must read the rest of the analysis to assess the impact of this review of Yahoo. The one point that I think warranted more beef was Yahoo’s fragmented technical infrastructure. Yahoo has many problems, and the odds of revitalization of the company are long, long indeed.
Stephen Arnold, June 24, 2009
Rhode Island and Rooster Pricing
June 24, 2009
When a lad in Illinois, I recall visiting one of my relative’s farm. I learned how to kill a chicken. Learned what tough bird meant. Rooster pricing one of the farming Arnolds told me was that a good bird would fetch a pretty penny. The problem was that once a farm had a rooster, two roosters would be a problem. So roosters had a chance of not being worth too much.
I thought about my early rooster pricing lesson when I read “Why A New (And Unusual) Pricing Strategy By A Rhode Island Paper Will Fail.” This quite interesting article explains that a newspaper reader in Rhode Island (lots of roosters at one time) would charge a premium to get the newspaper in electronic form. Paper only was cheapest. Paper and online slightly more expensive. The online newspaper costs about $350 per year.
PaidContent.org’s write up said the idea will fail.
My view is that it might work when someone really needs only that digital version of the Newport (R.I.) Daily News. I don’t agree. The problem is rooster pricing. I think a few people who want only the digital edition will pay. In my opinion, the number of buyers will be as rare as hen’s teeth. A couple of sales won’t pay the bills. In my opinion, bad idea that rooster pricing. This article inspired me to collect my nine mysteries of online essays in one PDF and make the set available without charge. I will announce the download link in this Web log. No strings attached. No registration silliness. Some of that information will offer alternative pricing ideas. Sorry, no rooster option included.
Stephen Arnold, July 24, 2009
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