Scripps Runs the Deckchairs on the Titanic Play
September 1, 2009
Short honk: BizJournals.com’s “Scripps Restructures Newspaper Division” reported a reorganization of the Scripps’s newspapers. I did not understand the distinction of regional and mid-sized newspapers. Now I get most of my information in electronic form. Upon reading the news item, I thought about the band playing as the Titanic’s passengers boarded life boats and the crew’s moving deck chairs around in the 1958 film “A Night to Remember.” Just my opinion.
Stephen Arnold, September 1, 2009
MySQL Tip… Finding Un Indexed Queries
September 1, 2009
Short honk: We have a big project in progress using MySQL. We located a useful tip at Xaprb.com article “How to Find Un-Indexed Queries in MySQL, without Using the Log.” The write up includes a useful script. A happy quack to the Percona wizard who shared this tip.
Stephen Arnold, September 1, 2009
Bing in Bid to Buy Traffic
September 1, 2009
Short honk: Chris Matyszczyk, an award-winning creative director who advises major corporations on content creation and marketing, wrote in “Microsoft’s Bing Decides on Bribery”:
Microsoft has launched its first-ever TV ad for Cashback, a nifty system that gives you a little money when you buy something vital–such as sneakers or a camera–through a Bing search.
I see this as a complement to Microsoft’s widely reported “get Google” campaign. In the meantime, the Google keeps on moving with baby steps into different business sectors triggering waves that disrupt.
Stephen Arnold, September 1, 2009
Cnet versus InfoWorld on Open Source
September 1, 2009
Now this is no Google versus Microsoft or IBM versus Oracle dust up. We have two media outfits going in different directions with regard to open source awards. A number of publications have shifted from high value editorial content to a consulting firm model to generate buzz and (one hopes) revenue. This is the list of top companies game or the best product game. The idea is to create a list of winners and then name a champion of champions. I have become a little disenchanted with this approach. I did find the Matt Asay write up “InfoWorld’s Two Minds on Open Source’s Value” for Cnet. The focus of the write up was InfoWorld’s story “Best of Open Source Software Awards 2009.” Most of the articles that I scan each day adopt a circumspect method when disagreeing with other publications’ notions. The addled goose, as you may know, makes an effort to point out some of the issues that the “professional journalists” and “enthusiastic bloggers” create with their golden prose.
Mr. Asay takes off his gloves and dons some brass knuckles.
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Here’s the blow to the InfoWorld liver that I noted:
Personally, I think awards should be given based on the merits that will most appeal to IT buyers, and such will have little to nothing to do with business model nuances and everything to do with solving business problems at a compelling price. If Zenoss is the better enterprise IT bet, shouldn’t it get the Bossie, regardless of OpenNMS’ licensing model? InfoWorld set out to name the “top open source products.” By deciding, instead, to name the top open-source products and business models, it has failed to serve its audience as well as it has in the past. The Bossies are still a good resource, but it’s best to read the reasons behind some votes carefully, as they may have nothing to do with the products at all.
Ouch. Will InfoWorld have the strength to fight back? Will the once proud print publication now reduced to a Web site be able to muster some moxie for the online punch?
In my opinion, there is more of this open source nastiness to come. I don’t think it is just the business model. The root cause may be the boundary between the idea of “free” and for fee and the means by which vendors get quickly to the fee part of the equation. Is open source that different from the traditional enterprise software model? The addled goose monitors search where the confusion is beginning to swell. Should be exciting.
Stephen Arnold, September 1, 2009
Google Social Media Agreements
September 1, 2009
I am not an attorney. One of my two or three readers sent me a link to “GSA Releases Agreements with Social Media Providers”. One of the documents referenced pertains to Google. If you are a Google watcher, you may want to dig into these items. The addled goose is confused by things involving attorneys and the US General Services Administration. A very amused quack to the reader who sent me the link, however.
Stephen Arnold, September 1, 2009
Ideal, Simple, and Good Enough
September 1, 2009
I just read this Web page headline: “SAP NetWeaver Enterprise Search: Simple and Secure Access to Information”. Wow, simple and search pushed together like peanut butter and jelly, ham and eggs, and hammer and nail. The problem is the word “simple”. Who does not want simplicity? Life today is too complicated. Make it simple.
The three meta issues swirling around simple search and content processing have their roots in the fecund soil of user annoyance. Most users have zero clue about the more sophisticated features in any desktop or Web application. The evidence is not far to seek. Look at these three questions. How many can you answer without recourse to Google, your friendly power user, or digging through books in the ever smaller computer section of Barnes & Noble or Borders.
- How do you limit Google results to only those for US government and state information?
- How do you create a single, presentation quality graphic from Excel 2007?
- How do you delete unwanted colors in Framemaker 7.2 when you import a graphic format other than jpg?
The answer to the Google question is to navigate to Google.com, click on Advanced, scroll to the bottom of the page, and click on the Uncle Sam option.
The answer to the second question is to use a third party application from an outfit in France called GlobFX.
The answer to the Framemaker question is to open a version of the document with the correct color information. Go to File Import and select the option for importing a template. Make sure only the color information option is selected. Make the source the file with the “correct” color information and the target the file with the unwanted color information.
An even better example can be found in the usage of the advanced search functions for Web search systems. In general, users enter 2.3 words on average per query and fewer than five percent of search users access the advanced search functions.
Who cares?
I care a little bit, but not enough to give a talk about the way in which those creating systems make life almost unbearable for users. I am sufficiently motivated to define three terms and offer some comments.
Ideal
I find meetings in which requirements emerge from a group discussion. The focus jumps between a micro problem (“I can’t find my most recent version of this document”) to science fiction (“I need to see information from many sources on one screen so I don’t have to hunt or scan for the information I need”). Unless there is a method for capturing these requirements and assigning some meaningful tag for difficulty or cost to each, the exercise is interesting but often not super productive.
In my experience, folks like to talk about ideal features and functions. The chatter is similar to that I recall from my freshman class in Philosophy in 1962.
The problem is that when a vendor or a developer charts a course for the idea, the journey may be more expensive and time consuming than Odysseus’s return home from Troy.
When my team encounters a cost overrun and a system that is never completed, I think, “Ideal”.
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