Protected: Ontolica Preview Software Highlights
February 3, 2011
Bing and Google: Search Short Cuts
February 3, 2011
Take a deep breath. Exhale slowly. Wizards of search, journalists, and corporate types discover that major Web search vendors “copy” results. The story broke in a popular blog by a search engine optimization ”expert”. The former journalist’s story was “picked up”—a nice way to say “inspired”—the Wall Street Journal. Is this type of emulation taking place? You bet. Search vendors do everything possible to make sure that certain queries return comparable, if not identical results. The reason is that advertisers want to know an ad will appear in a similar, if not identical, context. How many ways are there to pull off this trick? Many. Tuning is one. Copying in a manner similar to a metasearch? Hit boosting is a third. If still online, check out the WSJ’s revelation. If the link is bad, snag a hard copy of Mr. Murdoch’s emulation of the New York Times and check out the story. Yikes, another similarity? Nah, coincidence.
We find three points about this “new” discovery interesting.
First, it took a long time for the Google to realize that its increasingly frustrating results lists were appearing on Bing. Oh, the opposite has surfaced in our own queries.
Second, Google and Bing are not concerned about returning result sets that focus on the user. Both outfits have other concerns, not the least of which is doing a killer demo of ad insertion, showing off the “user experience”, and making clear to anyone who compares result lists over time, many vendors in a one-two race will become more alike with each passing month. Anyone remember ABI/INFORM and Management Contents? How about Ovid medical information and Thomson’s medical information.
Third, as casual searchers get a clue, then the issue of similarity becomes easier to notice.
Our question: What’s taken the really smart guys to figure out a basic fact of online competition? That tells me that the so called “real” experts are still running queries with training wheels. Honk.
Stephen E Arnold, February 3, 2011
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Xoogler, Management Vision, and AOL
February 3, 2011
I don’t know much about America Online or AOL. The service never hooked me. When the company bought Relegence, a mash up outfit, I was interested again. Then Relegence became Love.com and now I have lost track of what was a quite promising technology.
I read “LEAKED: AOL’s Master Plan” because it promised insight into the alleged turnaround. AOL generated a profit but its revenues were down. At some point the revenues have to go up. Keeping the profit would be a plus for stakeholders.
The write up ran down some basic facts about AOL and its goals. What I liked was the phrase “the AOL way.” I recall the CD-ROMs and the birth of “carpet bombing marketing.” I recall the sale of AOL to Time Warner and the consequent business circus that ensued. Now, I get to learn about the AOL way. I am game.
If the write up is accurate, the AOL way seeems to be focused on content. The idea is that AOL will become 2011’s William Randolph Hearst empire. I recall that Mr. Hearst was dubbed “the wizard of ooze.” Instead of print, AOL will emerge as a media giant built of bits and bytes. Three points from the article caught my attention:
- The game plan for Jan Feb Mar 2011 at this link.
- Staff writers have to do 10 stories per day
- Pick stories that generate traffic, revenue, “edit quality” (I don’t know what this means), and turn around time (maybe stories a person can write quickly and without fact checking or research).
Several observations:
- What happened to search? AOL once embraced PLS, Fast Search & Transfer, and probably other systems unknown to me. I did not see much about search in the AOL way. If you know about search and the AOL way, please, post a comment in the form at foot of this story.
- What will set AOL apart? More shallow content is likely to get filtered by Blekko and then, hopefully, Google?
- Where is that old Google zing? The AOL way sounds like an old line publishing operation to me.
Stephen E Arnold, February 3, 2011
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Brainware and Its Work Flow Repositioning
February 3, 2011
I remember a couple of years back. I had a briefing in which Brainware emphasized its search and retrieval system based on trigrams. Content and source document language was mostly irrelevant for this method which broke an object into three letter strings or trigrams. The demonstration I recall was the use of the trigram method on patent claims. I was impressed, loaded the system on our test machine, and ran queries against my Google patent corpus. Pretty darned good I thought.
Now I read “Ovum Publishes Technology Audit on Brainware’s Data Capture Platform.” Ovum is one of those mid-tier consulting firms (what I call an azure chip consultant in opposition to an outfit like Bain, Booz, or McKinsey). What does the mid tier firm state? Brainware is now in a data capture platform mode. The passage that caught my attention was:
“Ovum (News – Alert) recognizes that enterprises work with critical data from a multitude of document types in order to keep their business processes intact,” said Mike Davis, senior analyst at Ovum, in a press release. “Thus there is an associated need to capture, search and retrieve data from the plethora of structured, semi-structured and unstructured documents received. Given the increasing volumes of these document types, and the content contained, intelligent tools such as Brainware’s Distiller, which provide integration with a wide range of enterprise applications, are essential to undertake the automatic processing of documents across the enterprise and generate the value from the information contained.” “Intelligent data capture technology offers users unparalleled capability for boosting productivity across the enterprise,” said Charles Kaplan, vice president of marketing at Brainware, in a statement. “Brainware’s Distiller platform provides increased efficiency and visibility for the world’s largest enterprises, enabling them to expand their output considerably without adding headcount, or even shift their existing manual data entry staff to other value-added activities within the organization.”
Fair enough, but the repositioning of the trigram technology is notable for its absence. Second, the focus on work flow is very clear, almost like a marketing presentation, and the use of the term “platform” is interesting. A number of search vendors are looking for a hook. Platform, it seems, is the worm of choice for 2011. The emphasis on paper and conversion reminded us of the presentations that Fujitsu and Kofax gave us a decade ago. Paper appears to be a problem even in 2011.
You can get more information directly from Brainware at www.brainware.com.
Stephen E Arnold, February 3, 2011
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NLP from Southampton
February 3, 2011
IBM’s Jeopardy marketing play has sparked other companies to say, “We do that too.”
The Engineer announced that “Intelligent Machine Brain Understands Natural Language.” This machine brain is called the Sysbrain and Prof. Sandor Veres of Southampton University headed its creation. The Sysbrain has huge marketability and can used in a wide range of fields.
‘Essentially we’ve developed a system to give some intelligence to machines, not as human intelligence but specific to particular tasks such as spatiotemporal awareness and avoiding dangerous situations,’ he said. ‘Think about what a spacecraft would need in a mission through the asteroid belt.’ ”
The natural language programming (NRL) is the Sysbrain’s most remarkable feature. It can understand everyday English and technical documents and is geared towards professionals not fluent in programming language. I’m sure everyone is thinking about HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey after reading this. All I can say is, “Daisy, Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer true!” and “Take a stress pill, Dave.” That big red glowing light was impressive but it did dim, didn’t it?
Whitney Grace, February 3, 2011
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Autonomy Reports Q4 2010-2011 Results
February 3, 2011
We noted on the UK Yahoo Finance site the story “Update 1. Autonomy Quarterly Organic Growth Rises Slightly.” The link for this type of story goes dead quickly. You can get additional information on the Autonomy Web site. According the story, “Q4 core IDOL sales up 12 percent organically to $169 million.” The lingo is tough to unwrap, so we will leave it you, gentle reader, to figure out the implications. Other points in the story were:
- Organic growth has also slowed at the company — down to 10 percent in the third quarter from 19 percent in the second — increasing investor pressure for a deal.
- The British company also said an unidentified major acquisition it was planning had been delayed because of changes to the targeted asset, but it said the target had not been bought by another party. It had no further update.
- Says Q3 volatility seems to have reduced.
We will report other Autonomy news as it flows to us via our Overflight system.
Stephen E Arnold, February 3, 2011
Freebie but hope springs eternal…
Info Serfs Are Camera Shy
February 2, 2011
ReadWriteEnterprise’s “Video in the Enterprise is Not What Most Workers Want” takes a look at two Forrester reports. Apparently, most information workers don’t want desktop videoconferencing. We suspect this will change as younger employees continue to enter the workforce. Bosses, however, seem more enthused:
“Forrester’s workforce employee survey found that 72% of the 5,519 respondents don’t want desktop videoconferencing at work. The research finds that upper management is driving videoconferencing adoption in the workplace.”
The article consolidates the findings of two reports and presents a picture of the current state of video technology adoption. Not just videoconferencing, but other innovations such as enterprise and online video platforms and digital asset management are considered. We are much more interested in searching video from such systems. Interesting stuff does surface especially when we can use next generation tools.
Cynthia Murrell, February 2, 2011
New Boss, Slow MSFT Loss?
February 2, 2011
Microsoft is losing money in some market segments. See Business Insider’s “Chart of the Day: Microsoft Incinerates Another $543 Million Online” Here you’ll find a striking chart which shows that Microsoft’s online ventures (search, pretty much) have been bombing financially since the summer of ’06. That kind of dough would buy a lot of pals here in Harrod’s Creek.
Computer World’s “Microsoft’s Windows revenues plunge 30%.” illustrates that the company can’t rest on it’s Windows sales, either; Windows revenues in the last quarter of 2010 were disappointing. Depending on how you look at the numbers, receipts are either down 30% or up 3%. Either way, we’re sure Microsoft was hoping for better.
Will a change in executives save the online branch? “Microsoft to go inside for its new head of Online Services” at ZDNet reports the selection of Lee Nackman to replace retiring Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Online Services, Dave Thompson. Nackman will be shedding his current title of Corporate Vice President, Directory, Access, and Information Protection. About the company’s plans, ZDNet’s Mary-Jo Foley writes:
“Microsoft is creating a common platform across its individual and packaged Online services. The goal is to make Office 365 and its component parts . . . as well as new Microsoft Online services . . . based on a common billing, provisioning and commerce platform. A common dashboard will allow users to manage any/all of the Microsoft Online services.”
Sounds good. We’ll see whether Mr. Nackman is up to the task. We hope he pays attention to the SharePoint search situation too.
Cynthia Murrell February 2, 2011
Freebie
Libraries and Business Intelligence
February 2, 2011
Years ago—maybe 1984—Carol Galvin and I started a dead tree newsletter called “Marketing Library Services” or MLS. Clever, eh? I don’t recall our covering the subject of libraries and business intelligence. Imagine my delighted when I saw Mary Hayes Weier’s “New York Library Looks To BI Software For Help.” Please, read the story here. The main idea was:
…knowing at what times people are using computers helps make decisions about the best hours for staffing personnel with computer skills. “It’s allowing us to view the different relationships between print and non-print materials, and to ask the right questions,” Gillinson [NY library executive] said.
Will business intelligence become a key component in libraries’ cost control and patron services? I think it will become more important. In my experience, complexity can undermine the utility of some important tools. Libraries face financial headwinds. I am not sure business intelligence can streamline some library systems because what’s needed is money.
Stephen Arnold, February 2, 2011
This post went up in March 2009 but an incorrect tag prevented it from displaying. The goslings and I honk, “Sorry.”
AOL, Intellectual Rigor, and the Classics
February 2, 2011
I am an old fuddy duddy. I have goslings who call me much worse. I reshelve books out of alphabetical order at the local book store. I tell the people at the local supermarket to alphabetize the list of foods in an aisle. I expect students to read the full text of their text books. How out of touch am I? A lot.
I read “AOL and Mark Burnett Teaming to Offer Cliffs Notes Web Series” and realized that the Xoogler running AOL is not only smarter than I but he is also more in touch with the need of high school and college students. Why read a lousy novel like Barchester Towers. Archdeacon who? Skip the crap in King Lear. Why read a tragedy and discuss the possible parallels with the problems Steve Jobs may face. Get smart about the last Depression easily. Why read? Just click to AOL.com and suck down the summary. Forget reading. Waste of time, right?
Here’s a passage that annoyed me and made me happy that I am too old to care about the under 20 crowd’s understanding of a highly regarded fiction or non fiction book. Carlyle, anyone? I can hear the “Dude, you are wacky?” now. Ah, the passage:
In addition to summing up the plots, Burnett and Coalition will work with Wiley to develop videos that offer analysis, interpretation, and literary criticism.
There you go.
Video.
Is this the Wiley that publishes chemistry texts and accounting information? Nah, has to be an Angry Birds type of outfit. How does one search these new materials? Key words so one gets lots of ads. Pass the popcorn. Lots of time for some folks because I am not sure there will be jobs in the Brave New World. Read the abstract. Short enough to read as one waits for entitlement application forms.
Stephen E Arnold, February 2, 2011
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