Searchtrix: Quite Useful
June 8, 2010
The purpose of this system is to “tease out popular keywords and phrases in social media.” The system does that job quite well. However, the addled goose is on the look out for search and retrieval systems that make it easier to explore certain types of questions or problems. Searchtrix is a quite useful search system. Let me give you one example from my test queries, and then leave it to you to test drive this system.
Navigate to the Searchtrix splash page. Ignore the terms in the search box. You will be entering your own keywords. In the first box type “taxonomy, ontology” and in the second box, enter “system, method”. The Searchtrix system will create eight queries; specifically, “taxonomy” and “system”, “ontology” and “system” and so on. You can specify how many words should appear between the two words. This is a modern version of proximity searching. If you don’t know what that means, don’t worry about it for this demo. Now click the “search” button. Here’s what you will see:
When you click on one of the results, the system displays the hits for the query the system created and fired at some combination of Twitter, Facebook, and Topsy. You specify which of these indexes for which you want results. Here’s the result lit for the query “ontology” AND “system”.
Useful stuff. The hit was spot on and pointed to a project I had heard about but never paid much attention.
The system offers a number of features that seem to be aimed at the search engine optimization banditos. I think this is a very interesting system for making sense out of the message streams that flow through the real time systems Searchtrix taps.
A happy quack for this service.
Stephen E Arnold, June 8, 2010
Freebie
Business Intelligence Firm Sells for $1.13 Billion
June 8, 2010
Kroll is not a household name. If your house includes an intelligence or police professional, you may have a Kroll T shirt somewhere. The company was part of Marsh McLennan, an outfit that looks like an insurance company. I am not going to sort our what Marsh’s business interests are or explain the Kroll set up. You can get some information in this interview with a Kroll executive. No, don’t ask how I know him.
Kroll is now part of another outfit you probably never heard about either: Altegrity. Read “Kroll-Altegrity: A Reunion of Sorts.” Why’s this important? I think other outfits in this market sector hope to be acquired. In my addled goose view, I don’t think the Marsh executives were sad to see Kroll say adios. There was the money, and the management effort to be in the Kroll line of work is demanding.
Who else is in the Kroll business? Sorry. Not for free.
Stephen E Arnold, June 8, 2010
Freebie.
Mobile Search and Apple
June 8, 2010
Short honk: Fascination chart. Navigate to “iPad Web Usage Passes iPod.” The chart is tough to read by 65 year old geese. The message conveyed is that Android’s owners lag iPod and iPad Web surfing usage. Google may be selling 65,000 Android devices via its partners each day, but Apple’s two million iPads are sucking Web content. The startling factoid is that the iPad accounted for more Web content than Apple’s iPod. If the data are correct, Google needs to whip its pony.
Stephen E Arnold, June 8, 2010
Freebie
Stunning News: Unfindable Content Does Not Get Used
June 8, 2010
Thump. That was the sound of this plump goose body hitting the ground. I toppled over after reading “Full Text Search for Rich Media Content Improves Productivity.” The main idea of the Network World write up is:
…Much of the [online] training doesn’t get used. Why? Because the people it’s intended for can’t find precisely what they want, when they want it. With thousands of courses, students don’t want to wade through paragraph-long course descriptions and hope to find the training right materials. As a result, important knowledge stays locked up in videos and presentations, rarely to be shared.
Translation: If you can’t find information in electronic form, you can’t use it. If you know it is “there,” you can hunt for the missing video or article. But that takes time. Time is money as law firm partners eager to buy a third house in Belize often say.
Not surprisingly, the “cost” of not finding unfindable content is calculated with one of those quite popular “estimates”. Here’s the passage:
Ted Cocheu, CEO of Altus Learning Systems, says that people spend 20% of their time looking for information and they find what they are looking for less than half of the time. That’s equivalent to spending 10 weeks a year searching for information and remaining ignorant half of that time. Altus Learning increases productivity by helping companies to catalog and share verbal information. The materials are referenceable when someone is ready to consumer it.
My view is that the cost of unfindable content is not known. Guesses are interesting, even fun and certainly easy. The reality is that bone head mistakes can have significant financial implications. My hunch is that if I were to root around in email related to the oil spill, I would be able to pinpoint information that would cast light on the problem before the explosion. Other examples of the cost of unfindable information are easy to locate.
Let’s face it. Creating and information object is valueless unless another person can locate that information object. How many of these situations have you encountered:
- Your pet consultant scrambles to locate an email with an attachment you sent the little eager beaver with the azure pelt. The frantic search takes place in front of you, not in a place where your vision won’t reach.
- Your boss asks you for a document needed for that afternoon’s meeting. You have zero clue where the original is, so you make phone calls to people whom you hope have the information. Unlike the azure chip maven, you make the call from outside the boss’s office.
- You have your credit card in hand and the person at the automobile repair check out says, “When did you drop off that car? I can’t seem to locate your vehicle?”
You get the idea. Search is broken for much textual content. Search is downright crappy for rich media. Try to locate a specific video on Google with only a date and the name of the person in the video. Try Nicole Scherzinger the finals of Dancing with the Stars. Doesn’t work too well does it?
We know the unfindable is costly. Data, please. Not anecdotes.
Stephen E Arnold, June 8, 2010
British Government Reverses Data Support
June 7, 2010
After dog-earing 30 million pounds of financial support at the beginning of the year for a proposed Web Science Institute at Southampton University which was to be headed up by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the British government announced plans to cut 6.2 billion pounds from the public sector budget, which unfortunately included the Institute project.
V3.co.uk reports in “Government scraps plans for Web Science Institute“ that the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills claimed the government recognizes internet technologies as an important area of research, but that support would come through research councils and the Technology Strategy Board, in supporting the creation of the Institute. Apparently the research and data is valuable, but not enough to pledge public financing for it.
Melody K. Smith, June 7, 2010
Google May Tangle with a Red Bellied Black Snake
June 7, 2010
There are lots of dangerous creatures in Australia. Even the tiniest spider can kill you. Now Google may get a chance to become up close and personal with an Australian Red Bellied Black Snake. Point your browser to “Australia Orders Google ‘Privacy Breach’ Investigation.” The Australian authorities are not likely to kick back and relax over the issue of alleged Wi Fi intercepts. For me, the most interesting comment in the BBC write up was:
Attorney General Robert McClelland said there had been numerous complaints from the public and that police should investigate possible criminal breaches of the telecommunications privacy laws. Australian law prohibits people from accessing electronic communications for unauthorized purposes. Google has said it will co-operate with a police investigation.
Good idea, Google. A very, very good idea. My addled brain generated another observation, “The Math Club method of handling official inquiries from Australian authorities may play in Petaluma, but it may not work in Perth. Oh, here’s more about that Red Bellied Black snake. These creatures sometimes travel in pairs. That’s fun for the unwary.
Stephen E Arnold, June 7, 2010
A definite freebie
Google Spams the Goose
June 7, 2010
Short honk: I don’t write Google but Google writes me. Today I received a flock of messages enjoining me to use Picasa. No, thanks. I don’t do lots of pictures. I also am not interested in meeting new friends regardless of age, religion, race or sexual orientation. I am attracted to males who enjoy sitting quietly next to the goose pond coding and getting work done on time. This person whom Google wants me to know digitally does nothing for me:
If you are this person, please, let me know why Google thinks I need two sets of four pictures of you. Here in Harrod’s Creek, I thought I saw a person who looked a bit like you. You were in the local health club and I wondered if you were okay with my snapping your picture. It is not on Picasa, but here it is:
The Wall Street Journal was spamming me but Mr. Murdoch apparently grew weary of my publishing the conflicting prices he offered me to buy a second subscription. My real friends are not in Math Club. 🙂
Stephen E Arnold, June 7, 2010
Freebie. I like those tats, dude. Cool.
Data Plutonium Government Style
June 7, 2010
You have to admire European regulators. Read “MEPs Want Google to Keep Customer Data for Longer.” Keeping data can be pretty darned exciting. Data may not be the Plutonium that is good to go for 76 million years (Atomic Number 94. Atomic Mass Number 244). Digital data may be more like Plutonium that is exciting for about 86 years (Atomic Number 94, Atomic Mass Number 238). In my opinion, the most interesting comment in the write up was:
“In reality… the substance of the declaration is to call on the Commission to extend the data retention directive to search engines, so that all searches done on, for example, Google will be monitored.”
Treasure troves of data are wondrous. Many exciting factoids emerge from these collections. Just like a gram of that fun stuff Plutonium in your pants pocket.
Stephen E Arnold, June 7, 2010
Freebie
June 2010 Columns by Stephen E Arnold
June 7, 2010
Short honk: A reader asked about the for fee columns I do. I don’t put these on my Web site until their value to the publisher has dropped to zero. You can find these columns in the hard copy publications and / or the publisher’s Web sites. Here’s the line up of my June 2010 columns which will run sometime in the next four to 12 weeks. Hey, that’s the way traditional publishing works.
- Information Today, “Google Emulates Bing and Endeca”. The idea is that Google has become a me-too player in the user experience game. The Web site is http://www.infotoday.com
- Information World Review, “A Wandering Yahoo: More Knee Action, Modest Progress”. The point of this write up is that Yahoo has to do more than wave its arms. Real revenue generation is needed, or the company may be in big trouble. Does anyone else see the shadow of Demand Media falling across the purple Yahooligan T shirt? The Web site for the publication is http://www.iwr.co.uk/
- KMWorld, “Google, Rich Media, and the Enterprise”. The idea is that one can learn something about what Google may do with its television / rich media technology by looking at its partner, SnapStream. I know. You never heard of SnapStream. That’s the point of the column. The Web site for the publication is http://www.kmworld.com.
- Smart Business Network, “Dialing in Facebook Privacy”. The column advises a business with a Facebook page about some basic double checks to make on Facebook’s privacy controls. Moving targets are fun, don’t you think? There are 18 or 19 magazines in the SBN network running my column. The 2010 columns are on the company’s Web site at http://www.sbnonline.com. You can see the 2009 SBN columns here.
One person pointed out that my blog sucks compared to these for fee columns. Let me clue you in. The blog is a marketing vehicle, and we crank out stories on a daily basis. Most of the stories in the blog are items that we find potentially useful for our monographs, client reports, speeches, and the for fee columns. Don’t beat up on the people I pay to produce the stories in Beyond Search. We are trying to keep the content flowing in the midst of our begging outside the local Dunkin’ Donuts.
I will try to post the July columns next month. I am a forgetful goose, however.
Stephen E Arnold, June 7, 2010
Freebie. Buddy, can you spare a dime?
Open Text and an Interesting Assertion
June 7, 2010
Open Text is ramping up its PR blitz in the social media space. We were chatting about a new content client yesterday (June 5, 2010). In that meeting, a person said, “Look at this. Open Text is in the corporate social media business.” I noted the url and took a closer look this morning. The document carried a very MBA type of assertion. Not bad for a company located in Waterloo, Ontario, where search and mobile devices are quite the rage. The title: “Open Text: Open Text Expands Social Media Offerings to Help Businesses Drive Bottom Line Results”.
For me, the one key passage was:
Now, Open Text leads the way for social media to be successfully deployed across the enterprise in a more secure environment. We are focused on helping customers realize practical and measurable business benefits such as faster time to market, higher customer retention or greater team productivity, while helping to reduce compliance, security and privacy risks. To support its customers as they seek to take advantage of the early-days social media explosion, Open Text stepped up quickly by adding blogs, wikis and other native Web 2.0 capabilities to the Open Text ECM Suite in 2008. Open Text, leveraging its strength in information governance, also took the lead in allowing customers to apply regulatory and legal rules to user-generated content. Then, last year, Open Text announced a completely new solution that lets companies create social workplaces for internal use cases, followed by the social media capabilities for marketing and external audiences from the acquisition of Vignette. Now, Open Text is evolving this foundation with a range of enhancements and new social media capabilities as part of the Open Text ECM Suite, building on a core strategy to apply social media technologies to pressing business challenges. Open Text enables companies to apply social media capabilities to drive marketing effectiveness, as well as customer support, sales and consulting, and strategic client engagement, among many others.
Then this caught my attention:
Open Text helps companies drive productivity within the enterprise with social media solutions that let users create profiles, follow co-workers and generate news feeds, or collaborate on projects. This dramatically improves information sharing and captures corporate knowledge, while reducing dependence on email. With the new and enhanced capabilities announced today, careful attention was paid to ease of use for business users and application to real business challenges, along with continued full support for Open Texts core competence in information governance and control. Expanded and enhanced offerings include: Open Text Social Communities Formerly Vignette Community Applications and Services, Open Text Social Communities is an enterprise social media solution that empowers organizations to engage with their customers, employees, and partners. As part of a broader marketing and CRM strategy, social media can give companies greater market insight, improved market engagement and, more importantly, significant improvements in customer satisfaction and retention.
This is an excellent example of how a company with roots in SGML databases, command line searching, and enterprise collaboration has embraced social media. I find the inclusion of Vignette, a content management system which can be quite a challenge to get up and humming like my late, dear grandmother’s treadle Singer sewing machine fascinating.
If there is a faux enterprise software niche, I would be among the first to nominate vendors of content management systems. When the Web became the rage, some entrepreneurs built systems to allow non coders to create a Web page. Over the years, the mess that some of these systems generate became a breeding ground for azure chip consultants. Not since Microsoft’s COM and DCOM has so much consulting work flowered.
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