Exorbyte and Sell By Search
April 5, 2010
I read the German language article “Die Suche von Morgen: Exorbyte startet mit SellBySearch eine intelligente Suche für Online-Shops” on the Online Press Web site and learned about a new Exorbyte initiative, Sell By Search.
The idea is that the Exorbyte structured search system is available as a hosted solution. The buzzword fans will recognize this as a cloud-computing service. According to the write up, the solution is competitively priced and makes it easy for online merchants to provide site visitors with a powerful search solution. Response time is measured in milliseconds. The new service also includes detailed statistics on the search behavior of their customers, from the most frequently requested items to search trends.
If you are not familiar with Exorbyte, you can read an interview with one of the firm’s founders in the ArnoldIT.com Search Wizards Speak interviews. Click here to read the interview with Exorbyte’s founder, Benno Nieswand. You can get additional information about the company from its Web site at http://www.exorbyte.com/.
Stephen E Arnold, April 5, 2010
No one paid me to write this.
TextDigger and Open Web Service
April 5, 2010
The flurry of semantic activity reminded me that I had not updated my files on TextDigger, a semantic player based in San Jose, California. In February 2009, the company received an infusion of $4.3 million from “True Ventures (San Francisco, CA) with a follow on investment from Intel Capital (Santa Clara, CA), CBS Interactive, and some private investors. The company says:
TextDigger was founded by a group of former CNET employees and executives who developed patented linguistic technologies that, today, are used to auto-generate thousands of natural language texts posted on CNET’s award winning websites. Several members of TextDigger also founded SmartShop, which was acquired by CNET Networks in 2002. SmartShop developed a feature-rich comparison shopping engine distinguished by its ability to merge catalog data (product specs and features) from different sources, normalizing their divergent syntax and semantics, and presenting a unified catalog.
The has an interesting Open Web Service angle. In effect, the firm’s automated semantic tagging tool can be used by anyone who wants to tap the company’s technology to add to the Community Semantics term list. TextDigger’s technology is the top rated service in this project, which carries more weight for me than the comments from azure chip consultants, poobahs, and carpetbagger. TextDigger offers a version of its system for search engine optimization. You can sign up for a demo of the service on the TextDigger Web site here.
I read a paper by Tim Musgrove and Robin Walsh a couple of years ago. My recollection is that TextDigger’s technology had an interesting “more like this” function. My memory is hazy, but these types of functions can be computationally hungry. As Intel’s chips get more horsepower, semantic operations become less expensive. Intel has shown interest in other text-related investments, including Endeca. The commoditization of search and spare CPU cycles may open the door to some content related processes turning up in silicon. I am tracking the use of “open” as a differentiator, and like the word “search”, “open” has many shades of meaning.
Stephen E Arnold, April 5, 2010
A freebie.
Vivisimo Garners Life Sciences Award
April 5, 2010
Vivisimo received the Customer Choice Award at 2010 Life Sciences Technology Summit. According to the story “Vivisimo Wins Customer Choice Award at Life Sciences Technology Insight Summit”,
Vivisimo was recognized for helping its customers unlock and optimize the true business value of all their data, regardless of application or source to drive knowledge management, real-time decisions and actionable insight.
You can get more information about Vivisimo at www.vivisimo.com.
Stephen E Arnold, April 3, 2010
A freebie.
Search Function Added to SSNBlog.com
April 4, 2010
Short honk: Strategic Social Networking, the new ArnoldIT.com information service, has added a search feature. Navigate to http://ssnblog.com and look for the Go logo. You can locate stories by key word, tag, or phrase. SSN provides you with business-oriented news and information about social media. If you are looking for case studies for the use of social media, check out SSNBlog.com. The news service began operation in February 2010 and adds 12 to 20 stories each week.
Stephen E Arnold, April 4, 2010
This is a sponsored write up. I pay myself to write about my blogs.
Search Annoyance Becomes Big Deal
April 4, 2010
At lunch on Friday, April 2, 2010, a casual conversation surfaced a remarkable reaction to a search interface. I was surprised because none of the people with whom I was chatting is a computer or engineering professional. Here’s the situation. We were talking about buying cars. One of the people at lunch was watching an auto show on television, was surprised at the bidder interest in one automobile, and decided to look for a similar vehicle. The search system he used was Auto Trader, the online service of the publisher of printed listings of vehicles for sale in major cities.
The annoyance was that after clicking a make and the new automobile button, the user had to fill out a form. I looked at the form and this is what I saw:
The annoyance was the “price” field which looks like this up close.
My lunch companion’s point was that he wanted an “any” button. In order to get the system to deliver meaningful results he had to type in numbers like “$1,000 to $100,000”.
This is a pretty trivial function to make a 65 year old bluster and fume, but it underscores what happens when search is consumerized. What makes zero difference to me was a big deal for this fellow.
Is the search vendor Endeca responsible? Is it the Auto Trade project manager? Is it a Web design firm? I can imagine the finger pointing that could ensue as the company tries to make this minor change. But the larger question is, “What is needed to make sure that interfaces used by regular folks keep the frustration level to a minimum?” Maybe the iPad will succeed because it has focused on making some basic functions so easy “even a caveman can do it.” Does Auto Trader care about my lunch partner’s consternation? I don’t know. Hope the company does.
Stephen E Arnold, April 4, 2010
No one paid me to write this.
iPad, the Contrarian View
April 4, 2010
Short honk: This is a quote to note and a recommendation to read the full write up from the tech industry’s premier contrarian. The article, “Publishing’s Last Hope”, points out that some “real” journalists may not be presenting balanced reviews of the Apple iPad. I agree. Since Apple has a lousy search system for iTunes, I don’t have much to say about a device I don’t have in my possession from a company with a search system that gives me nosebleeds. Read the full write up.
For me, the article has a quote to note.
So if you drink the Kool-Aid, you’ll be reading Newsweek and Time and all the dying print magazines and newspapers on the iPad. No matter that you are not reading these journals now.
This is an important point. Information acquisition and consumption for certain segments of the population are very different from those my cohort uses. An expensive magazine, whether digital or in print, is not the ringing the chimes of some of the younger readers whom I know. We will know if the contrarian is right or if the companies with expensive content is right in a few months. Exciting stuff.
Stephen E Arnold, April 4, 2010
Nah, unpaid post.
Microsoft Sees Google as No Threat
April 4, 2010
I am not sure if the story “Microsoft Won’t Make Office for IPad, Says Google No Threat” is an April Fools’ joke or not. Google has a real threat in Facebook. And, April Fool or not, Microsoft has a real threat in Google. Companies that once looked unassailable are increasingly vulnerable, and that’s no joke. There is a big push for finding simple explanations for the complexities of information, organizational methods, and human motives. The reality is that if you look at a map of Venice in the 16th century, the trickiness of the street layout is evident. If you visit modern day Venice, you have the old passageways plus the wackiness of high speed boats taking you places that you have a tough time locating in your mental map. As hard as it is to believe, the complexity of the physical layout of Venice is greater today than it was in the 16th century. The old Venice looks positively streamlined compared to the modern day set up.
Source: http://historic-cities.huji.ac.il/italy/venice/maps/pinargenti_1573_venice_b.jpg
Just look at what the modern maps omit to make some type of orientation practical for the first time visitor.
And Venice is 159 square miles, which is about half the size of Chicago.
If we assume that the Bloomberg article is true, then Microsoft is engaging in the very popular sport of simplification. According to the news story, a Microsoft executive, Stephen Elop, allegedly said:
“We haven’t heard anything about Google making inroads against Office, because they’re not,” Elop said today in an interview. Office includes word-processing, spreadsheet and other business-productivity programs.
The article then points out that Microsoft will not make a version of its popular, feature rich program, Office, for the Apple iPad.
My take is that if the story is true, Microsoft is simplifying the action of two competitors who themselves are working quite hard to avoid marginalization. I know that the idea of Apple and Google finding themselves on the periphery of today’s booming markets is silly, but I think that the fragility makes these co9mpanies vulnerable.
Google has not mounted a response to Facebook and the shift from search to just asking members of a community a question. The other aspects of the social media boom that Facebook to some degree represents is foreign to the math club.
Apple has its own problems looming. First, the company has to find a way to maintain its proprietary ecosystem in the expanding open movement. At some point, the Apple value may run into mass market realities for commoditization. Commodities require low cost, and if a closed system costs more, the commoditizers may start slow but gain momentum. Elite is good, but it may not scale. And Apple may find that it triggers as much fear and loathing as Google in the rich content game. Apple has the upper hand right now, but a revolt is certainly possible. If Apple experiences a change in leadership, some real dislocation can take place and fast.
In the midst of this, Microsoft is keeping its message simple. Google is trying to put cats back in the bag, but I don’t think the steamed red herring with vegetables will do the job. Apple is the master of PR but a backlash is something about which one might want to think.
To sum up, simplify if you want. But the complexities within, among, and across these companies is a characteristic of human interaction. Human behavior has been simplified to self interest but, like the passageways in Venice, it is easy to get lost. Simple, right?
Stephen E Arnold, April 4, 2010
PR or a Brilliant Analysis? You Decide
April 3, 2010
I just read and then reread “In Search of Information Governance in the Enterprise.” The author works at the type of service firm that I describe as an “azure chip consulting firm.” The blue chip firms—which are pretty exciting outfits due to the arrogance of their employees—operate on really big thought horizons. I used to work at a blue chip outfit and I am somewhat familiar with the notion of defining the agenda, using a thought leader as a poster child, and herding often clueless CEOs into a pen. The clients are not branded, but they do get their own team of whiz kids to help the CEO achieve her objective: money and lots of it. Now there are lots of powder puff words to describe “money”; for example, value for stakeholders and treat employees like family, etc etc. The azure chip crowd is somewhat more pedestrian and their horizon is defined not by the 35,000 foot view but more often the perspective is a few feet above sea level in my opinion. The information governance write up aims higher, but does the Citation jet get off the runway. You will have to read the full ZDNet article and make up your own mind.
I noted a couple of interesting points. Let me highlight what caught my attention:
First, there is an anecdote about a flawed content management system. Get the old content into the current RSS news feed and you have a solid example of folks who don’t know how lousy content management systems are. The other take away is that most organization’s information technology shops are further underwater than dual income home owners’ McMansions. The problem is management, not information. Folks running organizations today have, in my opinion, have unmanageable organizations. Business books cannot solve systemic problems. Information systems exacerbate existing management problems. Information has been plentiful for a long time, and management methods have not kept pace. Ungovernable organizations with clunky enterprise systems are pretty crazy operations.
Second, the old chestnut, Moore’s Law, is referenced. The idea is that the notion works for storage. Cheaper storage begets more data hanging around. With more data, finding what’s needed gets harder. Rinse, repeat.
Third, some new ideas are floated. One is an information tax. Okay, I work for a company and I, as an employee, have to pay for information I need to do my job. Or, I am the CEO of a company and I have to pay someone to have data. What if I am a mobile phone company. I have lots of data, and I have to pay a tax to deliver my service. I just scratched my head.
Bottom-line. Read this article by the consultant. If it makes sense to you, hire the consulting firm. Make millions. Ride off into the sunset like the savvy Enron executive who got out before the bottom fell out. If you are like me, you will be deeply skeptical about any consultant’s advice, blue, azure, whatever. There is no substitute for knowing what you don’t know and finding people whom you can manage to provide the information you need to meet your goals. Shortcuts don’t work for most companies in my experience.
Keep in mind that I am a person who now sells his research and provides some knowledge product outputs. I don’t call myself much more than an addled goose. What have I learned? If it sounds too good to be true, the assertion is. Oh, I can’t figure out if the write up is a blog story, an advertorial, or an individual’s opinion,.
Stephen E Arnold, April 3, 2010
No one paid me to write this opinion.
Another Google Should, This Time for Android
April 3, 2010
Short honk: My feathers tingle when people write down what Google should do. I confine my self to questions and observations. The addled goose gets nervous around woulda coulda shoulda types. The write up “How Android Can Compete with Apple’s Third Party iPad Apps” asserted:
Another tip: Google should set up application design guidelines for each platform so things don’t look all wonky when jumping from one app to an other on a particular platform. I’m thinking… anything less than what I’ve described above would make Android a complete mess in terms of cross-device usability.
Great idea and I explain an even more challenging task for Google developers in my KMWorld column I submitted a day ago. It is quite difficult to locate information for Google’s code snippets for various device initiatives. I don’t use “should”. I just point out that Google’s approach is not mature, a synonym for very confusing. I think the column will run in May or June 2010, and it will be available on the KMWorld Web site.
Stephen E Arnold, April 3, 2010
Because I get money from Info Today, I suppose this is a sponsored article about myself.
Storage Report Predictions
April 3, 2010
Lots of “expects” and “estimates” in a report published by Coughlin Associates.I scanned a summary of some of the findings reported in “2010 Digital Storage for Media and Entertainment Report Released”. You can fill out a somewhat tedious form and get a copy of the full document by pointing your browser here. I found these three “factoids” interesting:
- Total revenue for storage media will increase about 4X from 2009 through 2015 ($415 M to $1,642 M)
- About 93% of the total storage capacity will be used for content archiving and preservation in 2009. (Good news for search I think.)
- Digital storage requirements are exploding due to use of higher resolution and stereoscopic content in the media and entertainment industry. (Maybe, maybe not).
Stephen E Arnold, April 3, 2010
No one paid me to write this.
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