Online Video Ads May Not Work
February 26, 2010
“Are TV Ads Obsolete in the Online World?” summarized some comments made by online video experts at Beet.TV’s online video roundtable held earlier this week. After reading the article, I concluded that ads in online video are not working. One panelist from Revision3 said:
Louderback said Revision3’s viewers respond most positively to endorsements from a show host. He said that model is so effective that half of his viewers have bought products from some a company sponsor. (Other panelists pointed out that star endorsements represent, if anything, an even more old-fashioned model than the 30-second video ad — as Louderback acknowledged, it’s “very Ed Sullivan.”)
Google has invested significant efforts in inventions for video advertising. If my take away from reading this article is accurate, Google’s plans for a repeat of the revenues success of AdWords in YouTube.com may go off the rails. The many players in online video may have to find new monetization methods because the costs of playing the online video game can be high, very high.
Stephen E Arnold, February 26, 2010
No one paid me to write this. Because I mention video, I believe I have to report non-payment for an arts related story to the Library of Congress. Remember? American Memory.
UK Government Web Archive Progress
February 26, 2010
Short honk: I found “UK Web Archive Will Offer Just 1% of Web Sites by 2011” interesting for two reasons. First, the notion of taking a year to build a Web archive struck me as somewhat slow progress. My recollection is that at that rate, it may be difficult to build a sufficient repository to make its usefulness to me evident. New pages and changes are important in my work. Second, I found this comment interesting:
Its UK Web Archive, which was officially launched today, contains just 6,000 of around 8 million UK websites. According to the British Library, on average UK websites have a lifespan of between 44 and 75 days. It also said that at least 10 percent of all UK websites were either lost or replaced by new material every six months. However, under the 2003 Legal Deposit Library Act the group needs to gain permission from the website owner before it can archive the site, which is slowing down the process dramatically.
When I read this, I can understand the frustration that some commercial companies must feel when government agencies decide to create certain collections of information. On the other hand, I see only opportunity. With the UK approach, the job seems to be behind the eight ball before it begins.
Why not chat with Internet Archive and just NOT (filter) out the non-UK content. Not perfect but somewhat more robust than 6,000 sites if I understand the write up.
Stephen E Arnold, February 26, 2010
No one paid me to point out that there is a disconnect between government time and Internet time. I think I have to report geophysical issues to the timekeepers in the US, NIST.
SSN Minute about Facebook Available
February 25, 2010
The SSN Minute, which runs two minutes and four seconds this week is available on the Strategy Social Networking Web log. Just click on the SSN Minute logo. The topic is “Will Facebook Be Able to Stand the Legal Heat?’” SSN believes that Facebook may be the next big, successful company to come under increased legal scrutiny. The headlines are going to Google’s current legal troubles, but Facebook may find itself next in line. Can Facebook deal with this new business challenge. Tune in to find out the SSN team’s view. SSN provides readers with bite-sized information nuggets about the use of social networks to father one’s business, brand, or career. The information service features original stories and summaries of important contributions from other organizations. ArnoldIT.com owns the SSN Blog.
Donald Anderson, February 25, 2010
Mr. Anderson is paid to work on the SSN Minute.
Open Source: Magic or Dirty Carpet?
February 25, 2010
I have to give the Guardian a pat on the back. I try to ignore open source, and my feedreaders keeps routing me open source articles. I ignore most of them. The Google-spider food headline, “When Using Open Source Makes You an Enemy of the State”, arrested me (no pun intended). The main idea is that copyright and intellectual property has another mini-storm front brewing. The key passage pivots on a person named Andres Guadamuz, a law professor in Scotland. The Guardian reported:
Guadamuz has done some digging and discovered that an influential lobby group is asking the US government to basically consider open source as the equivalent of piracy – or even worse.
You can read the original article to get the scoop. In a nutshell, legal eagles in the US (home of the sticky tort with spaghetti noodles) wants to make life tough for open source. The addled goose has not figured out the “secret” ACTA treaty and now he is nervous about open source.
I am using Windows to write this post, and I think I will watch this issue. My thought is that life must have been simpler in the 4th century.
Stephen E Arnold, February 25, 2010
No one paid me to write this. Since I reference the era cheerfully tagged “Dark Ages,” I will report non payment for my work to the National Archives. Whoops. The US only goes back a couple of centuries. Well, shucks.
Google, Microsoft, Antitrust Excitement
February 25, 2010
Google is finding its Maserati’s Quattroporte braks malfunctioning. Friction is good when you need to stop, not so good if you want to drive as fast as you want. Who stepped on the brakes?
TechCrunch’s write up “EU Opens Antitrust Investigation into Google. Microsoft’s Finderprints Are Everywhere” suggests that Redmond has opened the Quattroporte’s bonnet and fiddled the brakes. The UK’s newspaper Telegraph’s “Google Under Investigation for Alleged Breach of EU Competition Rules” also mentioned Microsoft. The passage was:
The Commission’s action marks the latest round in the increasingly acrimonious battle between Google and Microsoft which senior Google sources accuse of waging a “lobbying campaign” against the Californian firm.
Interesting. The firm’s are now tossing legal snowballs at one another.
One consequence of a Hele-Shaw configuration and boundary condidtions. Translation: cracks, gentle reader, cracks. Source: http://www.spaceflight.esa.int/users/fluids/cimex3.jpg
My view:
- If you cannot defeat another firm with marketing or technology, why not give the legal eagles a chance? Google, as I pointed out in my The Google Legacy (Infonortics 2005) is vulnerable to legal action. My question, “Why did Microsoft, if the allegation in the comment is accurate, wait until Google’s lead is the digital equivalent of the Grand Canyon?”
- Will the EU be able to reverse the Google seepage into the EU’s member nations? It is one thing to tell a government worker not to use Google, and it is quite another to get people to break a habit. In some countries, Google’s shae of the search market is at 90 percent; for example, Denmark and Germany.
- Can Google’s management handle another distraction? I pointed to a write up that used the word “screwup” to describe Google’s first nine weeks of 2010. I have been tracking the Google since 2002 when a big outfit paid me to figure out if the Google technology was any good. In that eight year span, I believe the PCWorld article’s use of the word “screwup” in a headline referring to Google was a first. If the write up is correct, Google’s zonky management style may be at a boundary condition.
In short, boundary conditions are exciting places, and Google may be entering one. Another attribute of the boundary is that it is unstable. Instablity often creates opportunity. Instatiliby can also lead to a sudden phase change; for instance, a break up.
So, excitement.
Stephen E Arnold, February 25, 2010
No one paid me to write this. Since I mentioned a math concept (boundary condition), I will report non-payment to NASA. This outfit understands boundary conditions upon shuttle re-entry.
Is Content Management a Digital Titanic?
February 25, 2010
Content management is a moving target. Unlike search, CMS is supposed to generate a Web page or some other type of content product. The “leaders” in content management systems or CMS seem to disappearing into larger organizations. Surprising. If CMS were healthy, why aren’t these technology outfits growing like crazy and spinning off tons of cash?
I am no expert in CMS. In fact, I am not an expert in anything unlike the azure chip consultants, poobahs, and pundits who profess deep knowing at the press of a mouse button. In my experience, CMS emerged from people not having an easy way to produce HTML pages that could be displayed in a browser.
If HTML was too tough for some people, imagine the pickle barrel in which these folks find themselves today. In order to create a Web site, more than HTML is required. The crowd who relied on Microsoft’s Front Page find themselves struggling with the need to make Web pages work as applications or bundles of applications with some static brochureware thrown in for good measure.
To make a Web site today, technical know how is an absolute must. Even the very good point-and-click services from SquareSpace.com and Weebly.com can baffle some people.
The azure chip consultants, the mavens, and the poobahs want to be in the lifeboats. Women and children to the rear. Source: http://www.ronnestam.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/lifeboat_change_advertising_sinking.jpg
Move the need for a dynamic Web site into a big organization that is not good at technology, and you have a recipe for disaster. In fact, the wreckage created by some content management vendors, pundits, and integrators is of significant magnitude. There’s the big hassle in Australia over a blue chip CMS implementation that does not work. The US Senate went after the bluest of the blue chip integrators because a CMS could not generate a single Web page. Sigh.
EasyAsk: NLP, SQL, and MDX
February 25, 2010
A reader sent me a link to DataPrix’s write up about EasyAsk as a business intelligence tool. Now owned by Progress Software, EasyAsk has dropped off my radar. My recollection is that the system supported search, facets, and eCommerce. I did wonder why Endeca did not crack down on EasyAsk’s use of the phrase “guided navigation”, but I may have mixed up which marketer cooked up which phrase. I had pegged as a system for searching structured data. DataPrix’s article positions EasyAsk as a business intelligence tool. The screen shots show the system generating the type of output that I associate with companies such as Megaputer, based on math magic from Moscow-based wizards.
Source: http://www.dataprix.com/node/1068
EasyAsk supports reporting, analysis, and scorecards (dashboards). The user formulates a query and the EasyAsk system retrieves the data and generates an answer. The query can be expressed in natural language, so the EasyAsk approach obviates the need for a goose like me to create a well formed query against a properly formed cube.
The DataPrix write up suggests that EasyAsk can be used to perform search and retrieval plus the more sophisticated queries against large structured data sets. EasyAsk added support for mainstream databases years ago. EasyAsk can also generate a user’s query in MDX (multi dimensional expressions), a favorite of end users who majored in business and then jumped into sales.
DataPrix provided a link to a demonstration of the system with which I was not familiar. You can check it out at http://www.easyask.com/demo.html.
How does EasyAsk stack up against SAS and Megaputer? I don’t know the answer to that question. I quite like Megaputer. Those Russian math dudes are in the flow in my opinion.
Stephen E Arnold, February 25, 2010
Nope, nope. Not paid. I will report a failure to receive money for this article and its frisky reference to undergrads with degrees in business and extensive sales training. The agency to which I am reporting is the Census Bureau. No explanation needed.
More Converas Ahead due to Weak IT Management?
February 25, 2010
A happy quack to the reader who sent me a link to a story that I thought was off topic. The title of the write up is “Global CIO: There’s No Money Left.” Gee, I thought I heard that the economy was rebounding. My own experience is that the economy is doing lots of things, but rebounding is not one of them. The write up is an interview between an Information Week person and a fellow named Stu Laura, a CIO, whom Information Week has interviewed before. I poked around for “Stu Laura” on Cluuz.com but found little to illuminate his tie ups. I wonder if he is “real”, but why would a “real” news outfit resort to a fictional trope? Anyway, Information Week pegs him as a poobah’s maven, so let’s see what the angle is.
The first point that jumps out is that Mr. Laura’s budget has been “frozen for two years.” Okay, I buy that. No extra money for the IT crowd.
The second point is that vendors are boosting their licensing and other service fees. Okay, I buy that. This is the SAP model or the approach to tuition taken by some flashy universities in Boston.
The third point is that Mr. Laura is running out of options. He said:
Don’t think I haven’t tried [to consolidate applications]! It used to be that, excluding internal programming and people costs, hardware was 50% of our budget and software 50%. Now it’s 20% hardware and 80% software … and maintenance expenses on that software are 80% to 90% of that budget. In short, there’s nothing left.
Information Week suggests that Mr. Laura is not such a hot shot manager. Mr. Laura responds:
You still don’t understand. Imagine that you’re still paying rent on every house you ever lived in. Imagine your relatives are now living in those houses: How could you throw them out? That’s what we are faced with. Our divisions are still using that software, so we have to keep up our maintenance expenses — what might seem “tactical” to us is “strategic” to them. Sometimes there even may be a better software solution, but then it’s a Big Number to buy … and that division may not want to pay for it. They would rather keep what we have.
Okay, Information Week does not understand. I really buy that.
But the capstone point is this exchange which is a golden moment in “real” journalism about the challenges of finance, information technology, and technical options.
Information Week: So get a bigger budget!
Laura: You really do have your head up your rear, don’t you. This is NOT the year for bigger budgets. I have to show that we are “team players,” and team players suck it up. You see, the other line officers have this thing called “depreciation,” which means they can take a factory, assume a certain useful life, depreciate it, and then show an asset that has almost zero value. Then they can go build a new one. We do not depreciate our software, but maybe we should — then we could show that we’re paying 18% maintenance on something that has next to no value — and move on.
Manager giving guidance to his minions prior to the Charge of the Light Brigade. I wonder if this is the unit’s technology officer? Source: http://blog.kievukraine.info/uploaded_images/5893-766931.jpg
I think I understand that managers have to work with what is available. With less available, managers have to solve problems. That is, I believe, what managers are supposed to do—manage effectively which means finding workable solutions that keeps companies in business.
When I transpose this interview to enterprise search and content processing, I have some different questions:
- Are we sure the vendors are at fault? Is it possible that the management of information technology is a larger problem? Advising is one thing; doing is another. A bit like a university professor?
- With scarce resources, will organizations be able to avoid the “free” software that comes with certain types of vendor bundles? When “free” does not deliver, what happens? Maybe more Convera, Delphes, and Entopia-type situations. (I quite like the alphabetical line up of search systems that were.)
- Why not provide more detail about Mr. Laura? He is a frisky lad, but I am not sure how to judge his comments without context.
Mr. Anderson, of course, is the founder of the Yankee Group and a professor at MIT. But who is Mr. Laura? Anyone know? Mr. Anderson’s secret source, alter ego, Dickensian character? Help!
Stephen E Arnold, February 25, 2010
The tin cup is empty. No one paid me to point out that Information Week assumes I know a lot more about its poobahs than I do. I believe that when assumptions are made I must report that I wrote this piece and looked up a picture for free to the War College.
Search Vendors! FAST-en Your Seatbelts
February 25, 2010
The Microsoft Fast ESP road show is going to come to a US city near you. The road show has entertained thousands in Frankfurt, Melbourne, London, and Paris. Next up is the US. The topics in Europe ranged from collaboration to social search to enterprise content management to SharePoint Web sites. Well, you get the idea. After flipping through the presentations available online if you register, the main idea is that Fast ESP “becomes the foundation” for “all enterprise search products”.
I love those categorical affirmatives. I also like to find black swans, even though I am an old goose. The description of the new system is chock full of superlatives such as “best”. With 300 companies offering search and content processing, I am hard pressed to identify one system as the “best”. Most vendors have some core competencies because “best” is one of the missteps that created the unhappy circumstances for Fast Search & Transfer prior to its sale to Microsoft. Anyone remember the October 2008 police action at the Fast Search offices in Oslo? No, I did not think so.
The idea is to focus on user experience and “go beyond the search box.” I quite like the “beyond” word as in “beyond search”. Here’s an example of the interface:
Copyright Microsoft 2010. Source is the Microsoft Web site reachable from this page http://www.fastsearch.com/l3a.aspx?m=1166&amid=15582
I don’t have many nitty-gritty technical details, but instead of burying the Fast ESP pitch in a SharePoint conference, there are these marketing-oriented traveling programs. The first US event is in Chicago on March 9; the second, in the Big Apple on March 11; and the third, San Francisco on March 16. Microsoft has invited certified partners, resellers, and those with Bill Gates tattoos to attend. What is on tap? You will learn about the new and improved Fast ESP system for SharePoint mostly. You will hear from happy, happy Fast ESP customers. You will get briefed by Microsoft’s own engineers and some invited guests.
As you know, Microsoft purchased Fast Search & Transfer in April 2008 for about $1.2 billion and change. In the 22 month interval, Fast ESP has been trimmed and slimmed to do battle with open source solutions such as Lucene, Lemur Consulting’s FLAX, and Solr. The new Microsoft Fast ESP will do battle with vendors who have moved “beyond search”, so I anticipate some references to the weaknesses of Exalead, MarkLogic, and other companies who have industrial strength solutions. There will be some happiness for Autonomy and Fabasoft Mindbreeze, two firms with solutions that carry the Microsoft seal of approval. My hunch is that those with Windows certification, a paycheck hooked to keeping Microsoft systems alive and well, and partners will be joined by the systems folks who want to get a first hand look at a $1.2 billion search system.
The addled goose is in San Francisco the week of the event, but he returns to the goose pond before the road show pitches the left coast faithful. He will have to report on the event via second hand reports. In the meantime, he will be using his bill to root for information on these topics:
- How has set up, optimization, and customization been simplified?
- How can the system keep metadata synchronized?
- What is the time required to update the index on a 10 minute basis in an organization with 10,000 active users out of an employee pool of 150,000 and a document flow of 1,000 new or changed documents every 24 hours (excluding emails and attachments)?
- What is the method for scaling Microsoft Fast?
- What is the method for restoring / rebuilding indexes in the event of a system fault? What is the time required in a typical organizational setting with 10,000 active users and the document flow of 1,000 new or changed documents every 24 hours (excluding email and attachments)?
- What is the total cost for a system for 10,000 active users?
I think I know the license fee, based on the rumors floating in the aether. I can’t reveal the deal, but the price tag will make life tough for vendors up and down the line. If Microsoft hits a home run, my question is, “What tricks does Google have ready to roll?”
You can get the full scoop at http://www.fastsearch.com/l3a.aspx?m=1166&amid=15582.
Stephen E Arnold, February 25, 2010
No one paid me to write this. I will report writing about Microsoft to the Department of Defense. Not only was I doing work for free, the DoD people understand, love, and appreciate the Microsoft technology. Free is good I think.
Internet Metrics
February 24, 2010
One of my goslings submitted a write up about Internet Metrics. Here’s his item to me:
*The data came from Defensetech.org, a military.com site about “how technology is shaping how wars are fought, borders are protected, crooks are caught and individual rights are defined.”
In 2009, there were 90 trillion e-mails sent over the Internet with an estimated 81 percent being spam. There were over one trillion unique URLs in Google’s index. YouTube served over one billion videos per day, on average. There were over 47 million new Web sites added.
By the end of 2010, there will be over 1.9 billion Internet users worldwide. The volume of daily email will be greater than 100 billion messages per day. There will be over 3.3 billion cell phones users with Internet access. We sites will jump to more than 265 million. The number of blogs will hit 130 million.
Ignore that, if you can.
The challenges of the internet, its social networking implications and our fast-evolving digital world are more than shared by today’s marketers. They are also a first line of defense concern, as you can imagine. And like a run-away train, it will not be stopped.
That, my friends, is the world we live in. A little scary, isn’t it? But (and I have been waiting so very many years to use this poem that I was forced to memorize as a high school freshman), “If we buckle right in, with a bit of a grin… without any doubting or ‘quit-it. If we tackle this thing that can not be done… we’ll soon be able to say, ‘We did it!’“
So if you need impetus to ‘buckle right in,’ consider yourself pushed.
Jerry Constantino, February 24, 2010
ArnoldIT.com paid Mr. Constantino for his write up.
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