Maggwire: A Remarkable Reinvention of a 1980s Database
December 7, 2009
I saw a reference to the “iTunes of magazines.” I took a few minutes to track down this reference. I located what may be the ur-reference, an interview with Ryan Klenovich and Steve DeWald, two former investment bankers with Deutsche Bank. You can find the full text of the interview in which this phrase appears in Mr. Magazine’s Web log article “Magazine Innovation in Practice: Maggwire, the iTunes for magazines?” Several points in the interview made it into my paper notebook via a goose quill pen. For more insights about this “iTunes for magazines”, read the article and watch the video.
- “We’re trying to become an online destination for reading magazines, similar to YouTube where users associate YouTube as the online destination for viewing videos.”
- “Initially, the excitement is going to come from the added traffic.”
- “You can call us the Google of magazines, where we crawl the web for these great magazine articles, the users go on there to read and rate the articles, and the idea is that the best ones will come to the top.”
- “The ideality is to create this marketplace using one ID.”
- “Like I said, we’re not going to replace print, what we’re trying to do is compliment the print magazine.”
- “Another thing that we have thought about is, after we do reach a certain critical mass, we believe people will be willing to pay a nominal subscription for our service especially as the publishers continue to expand their offerings and partner up with us and our site will just get better and better and better.”
- “I think now we’re really in an interesting phase where you have these e-ink devices and iTablets coming out so the hardware will be there, so you need some kind of central destination to back that up.”
Interesting premise.
Stephen Arnold, December 7, 2009
Oyez, oyez. A freebie. I wonder to whom I report this fact. Perhaps to the iTunes of the US government, the National Archives, maybe?
AOL Finds Role Model: Apple
December 7, 2009
Short honk: This International Business Times’s article “AOL CEO Looks to Apple for Turnaround” is not about search. It struck me as somewhat unusual. I have been out of the country for a week and I am trying to readapt to the American business scene. Apple is a hardware company that has used software to lock in customers. AOL is an online company which seems to have been the inspiration for Yahoo. The phrase that caught my attention was:
Armstrong, a former Google Inc executive, has used Apple’s experience to create his own plan for a turnaround which he sums up in the report as: “New Products and services that people find necessary.” AOL Inc., which dominated the online experience for many computer users in the mid to late 1990s, suffered as customers migrated from its dial-up online service to Internet service providers.
Yikes! Will AOL try to get into the hardware business like Barnes & Noble and TechCrunch? Must have information services are those that make money for greed crazed MBAs on Wall Street, doctors trying to save a child’s life, and lawyers who want to win the big one so a larger yacht can be purchased. AOL is a precursor of Yahoo.
The Associated Press reported in “AOL Ends Ties with Time Warner” that AOL is an “independent company.” Sink or swim time.
I think the former Googler may want to hunt for another role model. A good place to start is with the search experience for AOL users. Then go from there to monetization. I am not sure Love.com will do it for me. Just my opinion.
Stephen Arnold, December 7, 2009
Oyez, oyez, Securities & Exchange Commission. I know you are ever vigilant, tireless in your scrutiny of publicly traded companies, and working on nights and weekends to get the economy righted. Please, take time to accept my admission that I wrote this news item without compensation, inducements, kick backs, promises for future considerations, free travel in corporate aircraft, paid vacations, meals at the Willard Hotel, or any other type of compensatory action. Just like you guys because you are my role models.
The Google Gong Rings for ProQuest and Dissertation Content
December 7, 2009
A MOVIE CAMERA BUSINESS TRIES TO ADAPT
In June 1986, I was sold along with the electronic publishing assets of the Courier Journal & Louisville Times Co. to Bell+Howell. B+H owned a new media company, which in the late 1980s did business as University Microfilms with the acronym UMI. At that time, the company’s product line up spanned a number of media. At one end of the spectrum was the original business based on creating microfilm replicas of documents. These microfilms were sold to libraries. Generations of students used technology perfected during World War II for their access to information not in a library’s collection. At the other end were the electronic products from the Courier Journal: ABI/INFORM, Pharmaceutical News Index, and Business Dateline (the first full text local business news database with corrections made when the source updated the story’s facts).
Now this is an efficient research tool for today’s student. Source: http://www.archivalsuppliers.com/images/Picture%20284.jpg
When I was a student, I did research with microfilm. It was okay but it took a long time to get the reels, get them set up, and reviewed. Getting a hard copy of a document was a hassle. Some of the prints turned black and became unreadable quickly. I once dropped a reel and watched in horror as it unspooled, picked up dirt, and was unusable. I had to pay the library for a replacement. I think in the 1960s, a single reel cost me about $45 which was more than I made in my part time job. I loathed the stuff.
At the recent Online Information 2009 event in London, my colleague Ulla de Stricker was the keynoter for the “Publishers Delivering Value” track on December 3., 2009. In her talk – which she mentioned the Google move into dissertations. Her reference inspired me to write this opinion piece. You can get iinformation about her at DeStricker.com. One of her example was the fact that Stanford University students may now submit their dissertations to Google while it is optional to submit them to ProQuest.
So I wandered over to the exhibit hall to visit with ProQuest, all the while reminiscing about my past experience with that company – known as UMI at the time.
MICROFILM: HARD TO USE, EASY TO DAMAGE AND MISFILE
When I was working on my PhD, I remember my fellow students talking about the costs of getting their dissertations “published” and then included in the Dissertation Abstracts index. I never had this problem because I took a job with the nuclear unit of Halliburton, never bothering to submit my dissertation once I got a real job.
A microfilm readers. Source: http://www.ucar.edu/library/collections/archive/media/photographs/481_1976_microfilm_lg.jpg
The whole system was a money making machine. When a library burned down, backfiles could be acquired when physical copies were not available. When a university got a grant for a new field of study, a collection of journals could be purchased from UMI on microfilm. Bang. Instant academic reference material. I don’t recall how much content the “old” UMI moved to microfilm. My recollection is that there were books, journals, newspaper, and, of course, dissertations. With all this film, I understood why B+H had paid tens of millions for the Courier Journal’s electronic publishing expertise. Buying expertise and using it are two different things, in my opinion.
MECHANICAL PRODUCTION WRONG FOR DIGITAL PRODUCTS
The production process for creating a microfilm was quite complicated and involved specialized cameras, film, and chemicals. The image I have of the UMI facility in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the first time I visited was a modern day castle surrounded by a moat. The castle was a large, one-story building surrounded by a settling pond. The chemicals from the film processing were pumped into the moat in order to separate certain high value residue from other chemicals. UMI processed so much film that the residue silver from the photographic process warranted this recycling effort.
Dinosaurs struggle with the concept of an apocalypse. Adapt or get grilled I suppose.
UMI had a silver mine in its monopoly on certain types of content. My recollection of UMI was that its core product was getting universities to require or maybe strongly recommend that doctoral dissertations had to be “published” by UMI. The microfilm copies of the dissertations were sold back to the doctoral students and to libraries interested in having a compact, relatively easy way to store volumes on a mind boggling range of topics. I did a project that required me to use a microfilm copy of something called the Elisaeis by a wild and crazy religious poet named William Alabaster, and several dissertations written about that nearly forgotten literary work. I also did a project for the Vatican and worked through microfilms of sermons from the middle ages in Latin. Now that was fun! Pretty sporty content to. Nothing like a hot omelie.
Surprises in Search: Holiday Gifts for Pundits
December 6, 2009
The first week of December 2009 delivered a rich feast to mavens, pundits, poobahs, and azure chip consultants. Kwanza and Chanukah arrived early.
What’s transpired in the last week or so?
First, Google jumped into eCommerce search, hired Endeca’s chief technology officer, and made it clear that it wanted to suck in some cash from this lucrative sector of the information retrieval market. I know that most of this eCommerce excitement happened over a period of weeks, but the significance of this tactical move is significant. Endeca which has been working through its cash injections from Intel and SAP now has a real fight on its hands. The company has an RV full of bright MBAs, and it will need these folks to convert a Google thrust into new revenue. Fun holiday and New Year’s Day ahead for the Endeca folks. My “cutting Endeca from the herd” story evoked a gust of push back when I voiced my opinion. I stand by my argument in “Google Cuts Endeca from the Search Herd”.
Second, Microsoft and Yahoo finally got married. Well, maybe the right word is decided to implement their version of the Bernard Slade play “Same Time, Next Year.” The two outfits are going to team up to challenge Google. If you are not on top of this unusual sales / search deal, you may find the Macworld write up a useful summary. Read “Microsoft, Yahoo Finalize Search Deal.”
Third, Oracle, a notoriously aggressive outfit, attacked Mark Logic in a white paper filled with interesting assertions. I wrote about this on December 3, 2009. If direct attacks escalate, 2010 will be a contentious year. The notion that a multi billion dollar database company is threatened by a next generation XML data management system says more about the fear that traditional companies have for smaller firms with better technology.
Finally, the odd yet interesting machinations of traditional publishing companies have signaled a perceived urgency in adapting to the digital information environment. There’s the dust up between Google and News Corp. over indexing. I noted the San Francisco Chronicle’s take on one facet of this battle in “Google’s Schmidt Strikes Back at Murdoch.” More interesting is the push by traditional print publishers to create an online newsstand, sort of a modern day version of the old “Magazine Rack” idea from 15 years ago. You can read about this “old wine in new bottles” approach in “Publishers Alliance to Create iTunes for Print Media as Tablet Rumours Continue to Build”. The problem with this idea is that it is aimed at a generation of readers. The demographics argue that readers will be a small percentage of the consumer population which may not bode well for dreams of new revenue for traditional publishers.
I am looking forward to the discussion of these holiday season topics.
Stephen Arnold, December 6, 2009
Oyez, oyez, I wish to disclose to Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency for the District of Columbia that I was not paid to write this round up of holiday delights.
IBM Asserts that DB2 Is Better, Faster, and Cheaper
December 6, 2009
I thought that in the old joke about “better, faster, and cheaper”, I could only pick two attributes. The idea, of course, is that the three attributes don’t live in the same Venn diagram like lovers in a trailer court in rural Kentucky.
Take a look at “IBM DB2 Gains New Enthusiasts in Search of Better Performance at Lower Cost” on the IBM.com Web site. Note this subhead: “More than 100 SAP Clients Have Switched their Database Software to DB2 in Last Six Months”.
The idea is that SAP customers whom I assume * were * using Microsoft SQL Server jumped to IBM’s DB2. Now SAP has its hands full with grousing customers, revenue decreases, and competitive pressure. The guts of the news release is that when the “old dog” is replaced with a “new IBM DB2 breed”, staff costs go down by 35 percent and “efficiency” (whatever that word means) shoots up by 65 percent.
The key paragraph for me was this one:
Since 2003, IBM DB2 on POWER Systems has demonstrated consistent performance leadership. DB2 uniquely holds the number one position in the online transaction processing (OLTP) (1), warehouse (2), and SAP standard application benchmarks. Recent results on the two-tier SAP Sales and Distribution (SD) Standard Application Benchmark showed that IBM DB2 running on a POWER 550 System delivered high performance of 3,752 SAP SD Benchmark users (3).
My hunch is that a price war among major RDBMS vendors is brewing. I don’t think the performance differences among these long-in-the-tooth RDBMS systems is achievable without some serious hardware. The next generation data management systems are likely to become more attractive. Big Blue and its ilk cannot afford long term price wars. Billing for services to make up the license losses won’t do the trick either. In short, spin before the storm.
Stephen Arnold, December 6, 2009
Okay, I confess. I was not paid to write this opinion. I bet the person who Twitter the link to me, a certain IBMDB2, was paid, however. I wonder if he will report to the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces as I have? Probably not. I seem to be one of a small percentage of Web log authors who report who pays me and who does not to anyone. A lone goose again!
London Online: The Missing Trends
December 6, 2009
The endnote at the International Online Conference succeeded in getting insightful comments from the panelists and eliciting probing questions from the audience. The downside was that the 90 minute session covered four of the 10 trends advertised in the program. The four trends discussed in the endnote were rising Google pressure, more use of XML, a surge in rich media for core information exchange, and more security safety nets with increased user surveillance likely.
In response to several emails from attendees, here are the missing six trends:
Trend 5: Libraries will be under increasing budget pressure. As a result, interest in lower-cost, cloud-based solutions will rise sharply in 2010. One consequence will more financial woes for library vendors, including commercial database producers.
Trend 6: More demands for timely data. Although not real-time indexing and content delivery, the newer services will strive to reduce latency (staleness) of information available to users in an organization.
Trend 7: Mobile search will become more important. The impact on the length of certain types of textual information will be significant. Those without fast network connections will be unable to access the rich media that will become a larger percentage of the information on offer.
Trend 8: Even if the economic climate improves in 2010, there will be increasing financial pressure on information, search, and content processing companies. Content management and enterprise search vendors will be particularly vulnerable. Neither CMS nor search can “explain” precisely their benefits so marketing, not technical excellence will mean the difference between survival and a buy out or extinction.
Trend 9: Open source will gain traction. Traditional vendors will have to deal with the financial and technical payoffs open source offers. In some organizations, open source will become an acceptable alternative to certain software systems. At the same time, open source vendors will monetize their services. Confusion and contention will increase.
Trend 10: Regulation will become more oppressive. In 2010, the Wild West of the Internet will be brought under the control of the authorities.
Have a trend to add? Use the comments feature of this Web log.
Stephen Arnold, December 6, 2009
Yep, I was paid to be at the Incisive show by Incisive. Nope, I was not paid to write my view of the trends in 2010. Deal with it.
Google Programming Preferences, the Python Ultimatum
December 6, 2009
A thread on Google Groups’ Unladen-Swallow tackled the question of what programming languages are encouraged or discouraged at Google. At the conference in London on December 2, 2009, I heard that Microsoft wanted developers to use Visual Studio.net, yet Windows 7 and other Windows products were anchored in Assembly language and C, often undocumented Assembly language and C. Whether true or not, the resulting conversation triggered on person to mention the Unladen Swallow thread.
I hunted down the group and noticed several interesting points.
First, one group participant asserted that Python is not as zippy as Java or C++.
Second, Unladen Swallow included this passage:
Unladen Swallow aims to shift the balancing points in that tradeoff to make it possible to use Python in more places where it would currently be unsuitable, but it’s not going to be a panacea. Python will still be slower than C and Java, use more memory and have inferior threading until someone decides to invest resources into Python comparable to what, say, Sun has invested in their JVM. I hope a focus on Python performance by the developers will start a snowballing effect: more companies are interested, more resources can be devoted, more grad students will work on Python (and actually commit their work), etc.
Third, on the issue of JavaScript, there were some comments. Among them was this one:
I don’t think it’s possible to make an implementation like CPython as fast as an engine like V8 or SquirrelFish Extreme that was designed to be fast above all else.
Fourth, on the subject of Jython:
Another one of unladen-swallow’s major goals is to maintain source-level compatibility with C extension modules, which Google uses a lot of. Using Jython would require moving that infrastructure from SWIG to JNI, which would be a huge pain in the butt.
To which, this comment was added:
Jython has a similarly-small number of paid full-time developers (and Frank W just left Sun, as you may have seen). To date, IronPython and Jython have had to dedicate a significant portion of their engineering resources to achieving compatibility with CPython, with relatively little time left over for performance optimization. It remains to be seen how these factors will be balanced as Jython, IronPython, PyPy, etc move to support Python 3.
Finally the comment I found most interesting:
One area where I believe Python (and other dynamic languages) do particularly well is projects with lots of developers working on lots of little subsystems, all contributing to the same codebase or the same released binary. In a language like C or C++, the more developers you add, the more fragile your binary becomes: it only takes one segfault to kill a running binary (and hence lose those pending requests), and the probability of introducing that segfault goes up with the number of developers/subsystems/integration points/etc. Dynamic languages, on the other hand, are much easier to sandbox in this regard. If you want to isolate failures in one particular component in your Python system, you can just throw a try/except around it and you’re basically good to go. That kind of agility and flexibility is an important advantage, and it’s one of the “other merits” I was alluding to above. Python may not be a good fit for millisecond-critical systems, but it
does have advantages; we wouldn’t use it if it didn’t.
What is clear to the addled goose is that this discussion of performance at a fine-grain level is part of Google’s now public effort to make the Web speedier. The addled goose wants to point out that with each “make the Web better”, Google takes a baby step closer to becoming the Web.
This is a big idea but it grows from fine grained engineering emphasis on performance details. Now about that Office 10 beta load time?
For criticism of some Google practices, navigate to Google Releases its JavaScript Closure Tools. For a critical discussion of the Google Go language, check The Most Intriguing Concept In Google’s Go Language. More information about Google programming appears in my Google trilogy.
Stephen Arnold, November 2009
Again I must report to the General Services Administration that I was not paid to write about a performance discussion of Python variants at the Googzilla facilities. Speedy “services” remain the exclusive domain of the General Survives Administration, so Google has a long way to go to achieve GSA velocity.
News Corp and Its MySpace Case
December 5, 2009
I have not recovered from my wonderful Delta flights from Louisville to London. In fact, the goose’s wings are tired. I was not in the mood for commenting about stories and issues that caught my attention. Then I noticed a headline from a newspaper under the control of the outfit that used to run Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum. (No joke.) The headline was “The Rise and Fall of MySpace.” The idea is that News Corp bought MySpace.com when its perceived value was high: money, promise, and users. Now, under the firm hand of the hegemons at News Corp. the perceived value of MySpace.com is less money, little promise, and fewer users. Yep, these traditional media companies have figured out how to manage digital properties. There was one statement in the write up that merited the goose’s attention; to wit:
Murdoch himself was responsible for dealing the company the first in a series of blows. On a 2007 News Corp earnings call, a punchy Murdoch told analysts that Fox Interactive Media would generate $1bn in revenues for the 2008 fiscal year (up from about $550m in 2007). With MySpace representing almost all of Fox Interactive’s revenues, the implication was clear: Murdoch thought MySpace’s meteoric rise would continue. There was only one problem: the MySpace management team had no idea Murdoch had set them a new target until he opened his mouth. “It came out of thin air,” says a former MySpace executive. At a stroke, the site’s free-wheeling, entrepreneurial days were over: it had to perform exactly as expected – or else.
Read the FT’s article for more of this quasi-“we know what News Corp did wrong” view of a fellow traditional media company’s handling of a digital property.
Several observations:
- The write up makes clear that at one point in time, folks perceived News Corp’s heavyweight champion of business as “punchy”. Wow. Punchy as in punch drunk or as in too much fruit juice and vodka? Ambiguous but metaphorically rich.
- News Corp’s ability to manage programmers is interesting. Hopefully there will be a non fiction book from one of the “Sergey and Larry eat pizza” type writers. I want more of this insightful business writing.
- Any plan to save traditional media hatched by News Corp may have some MySpace.com DNA. Genes of greatness perhaps?
I thoroughly enjoy old media reporting on the foibles and follies of other old media company.
Stephen Arnold, December 5, 2009
Hark ye heralds of ethical blogging, this is a freebie. I think I will report this fact to the National Capital Planning Commission.
The Digital Gutenberg Cranks Out a Dictionary
December 5, 2009
I find it interesting that the Google is moving more quickly into content publishing. A recent example appears in “Google Quietly Rolls Out Dictionary”. Now Google has had a dictionary for years, but it was limited to defining nerdy words and phrases. The most recent incarnation of the automated service includes some interesting features:
…looking up a word on the Dictionary website provides a list of definitions pulled from a variety of academically authoritative sources (oh, and Wikipedia). It has a few cool features. You can mark words with the star button and come back to them later, see a list of recent searches and switch to translator resources or dictionaries for other languages.
The part of the write up that surprised me was this statement: “Dictionary companies have expected Google would saunter into their realm any day.” No kidding. I think it is encouraging that dictionary publishers have anticipated Google’s move. Google works dictionary magic with software. Some traditional dictionary companies use humans. Which approach has the financial advantage? I wonder what traditional dictionary publishers are doing to challenge the Google.
Stephen Arnold, December 5, 2009
I wish to disclose that I was not paid to point out that Google is a digital Gutenberg, powered by tireless, smart software. I think I have to report this to the Government Printing Office. Yep, for sure.
Thomson Reuters Girds for a Tough 2010
December 5, 2009
The news in the Wall Street Journal today (December 3, 2009) reminded me of the headlines from mid 2008. More than a year ago the headlines were like this one “Thomson Reuters Confirms Hundreds of Job Cuts”. Today’s headline was “Thomson Reuters to Cut Law Unit Jobs.” My hunch is that the addition of legal content to Google Scholar will put significant pressure on Westlaw and other for-fee legal publishers. Job cuts may help… temporarily. The longer term may require more severe actions; for example, shifting from the legacy approach to legal information to a more software centric approach. In a footrace, will Google win or will Thomson Reuters? Place your bets with your retirement fund.
Stephen Arnold, December 5, 2009
I must disclose to the Department of Justice that I was not paid to point out that free legal information may be a big problem for a for fee legal information service.
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