Protected: Extending SharePoint 2010 Via Rest
April 19, 2011
Greplin: The Next Google?
April 18, 2011
The idea of challenging Google or other giants in the search sector is an appealing one. “How This 19 Year Old Is Taking on Google” describes the search start up Greplin, “the search bar for your life.” The company’s idea is that social search is an area not well served. The method of implementation is a Chrome extension a hook to Evernote and other methods for integrating Greplin into your work flow.
The founder is an Israeli who moved the the San Francisco area to get his new company in the thick of the search battles. Daniel Gross told Inc.:
It never occurred to me to wish I could find things on social networking sites or in cloud storage the same way as on the non-password-protected Web, but now I wonder why I never thought of it before.
Not only did he receive help from Y Combinator before he even settled on a concept, once the scheme was finalized he secured an additional $4 million from Sequoia Capital last December. Since then, Gross and his co-founder Robby Walker have implemented their service.
Curious about that name? Gross explains,
This guy Adam Goldstein. . . just threw out this name. And using the word grep, which in CS programming is essentially a command for search. So a lot of nerds get that. Adam threw out the name, and people liked it. “It’s also a good one because people can pronounce it, spell it over the phone, and has a backwards inside joke that you’ll only get if you a technical person. Total win,
You can keep up with the new service at http://blog.greplin.com.
Cynthia Murrell April 18, 2011
Netezza CEO Speaks Big Data, Not Search
April 18, 2011
Xconomy Boston recently ran an interview with a former Endeca executive. In the piece titled “Netezza Chief Talks About “Formative” PTC Days, IBM Deal History, and the Future of Big Data“, James Baum has much to discuss. We found this interesting because Endeca has been a player in moving search into business intelligence, and IBM now owns Netezza. Making the mix more interesting, IBM used Endeca technology for one of its Web sites.
The IBM purchase of Netezza late last year was valued at about $2.0 billion. Netezza had flirted with search vendors Attivio and Coveo, but the Endeca hook may alter the Netezza search landscape once again.
The former Endeca professional has, according to the article, played a role in building revenues in a number of companies. Now the Endeca executive is tackling a commercial business with some open source challenges. Mr. Baum asserted:
There’s some really interesting stuff going on with open-source analytics that has the opportunity to offset some of the dominance of the big analytics vendors. We’re seeing many customers beginning to use open-source tools like R [language for statistical computing]. There are startups around it, sort of following the Red Hat [Linux] model. There’s really interesting stuff going on in solid state—SSD [solid state drive] storage is becoming important to big data. It’s still expensive and hard to maintain, and hard to build around. But it’s a really important technology and one that you’ll see us taking advantage of. The other area in core technology that we’re seeing evolve is the use of GPUs [graphics chips] for some of the specific computational processing activities going on. There is opportunity there. Those are interesting spaces to watch.
While he is certainly knowledgeable and successful, whether or not he is a prophet as well remains to be seen. Trends, like polls and reviews of just about anything, tend to be a touch subjective. With IBM and its resources anything is possible.
Sarah Rogers, April 18, 2011
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Is Catch Up the Google Method?
April 18, 2011
I read an interesting article called “The Real Reason Mike McCue Needs $50 Million: Google Is Building a Flipboard Killer.” In the 2004 to 2007 period, I was doing quite a bit of work for clients interested in Google’s technical systems and methods. The parts of my work that were not locked up by my clients provided much of the information in my Google monographs: The Google Legacy, Google Version 2.0, and the Digital Gutenberg. I have the manuscript of a fourth Google monograph, but I set it aside because Google was shifting from a company leveraging its platform in the years after its initial public offering to mid 2007. But by 2008, it became clear to me that Google had become a me-too company. The burst of value from its use of previous search learnings had slowed. I suppose the early indicators were the reliance on former AltaVista learnings and the dust up about online advertising, a matter settled before the Google IPO.
The story about a Flipboard killer caused me to ask, “Really?”
Flipboard is a software and service that repurposes existing content to make it more convenient for a tablet user to read articles from preferred sources. There is great potential in Flipboard, particularly with its interface and the software’s user base on the iPad. I have zero complaints about Flipboard, its advertising potential, or its business model. (Flipbook has been around while. What’s this say about Google’s reflexes?)
The point for me is that once again Google seems to be watching for innovations that get traction. Then either after one of those management processes that end up with a decision to follow a me too strategy, a company chases a market leader. Long before the “innovator’s dilemma” became essential reading, the hot start ups could bedevil the incumbents. Smart incumbents find a way to retain control either by acquisition, pricing, or some other MBA method.
Some companies are able to emulate. The example that I have heard many MBA types use is Toyota and the Lexus. For a few years in the early 1990s, Toyota made life interesting for luxury car makers and gave migraines to some BMW and Mercedes executives. The economy, time, and shifting market tactics have allowed one of the all time leaders in “me too” thinking to become a player in the luxury car market. But BMW and Mercedes are hanging in there. Toyota, like many large organizations, has wrestled with cost controls and made decisions that have produced some fascinating consequences in the US market. Is “black eye” an MBA approved word? Probably not.
Google, according the the write up, is crafting a Flipboard “killer”. Well, maybe. I think Google can compete in the Flipbook sector which is already well served with a broad range of applications from dozens of vendors. I confuse the functionality of Pulse, TweetMag, and dozens of others.
Google is a powerful company, but I am not sure that “killer” is a concept I associate with the firm’s products and services right now. “Killer” to me evokes thoughts about Amazon and its blend of WalMart-esque retail and economical cloud services, Facebook with its Facebook members disrupting governments and dating patterns around the world, and, of course, Apple. I drove by a Best Buy in Louisville, Kentucky, and saw a line. Obviously some of those in the technically challenged commonwealth wanted to buy an iPad when the big box opened this morning (April 17, 2011). In the advertising space, I learned that there is a challenger to Google and the Groupon / Living Social services called TryItLocal.com. Like kudzu, Google may have to do more than focus on a single vendor in a single niche.
Google has sufficient cachet to create a good story. For me, I just want to see proof in the form of new revenue and users. Proof is not reading an article about what may happen. I want to see a better search result, not read about Panda. I want to see high quality hits, not read about Google penalizing a particular company as reported in Google Lowers the Boom on eHow.com. Alleged penalizing of a particular firm and its content is an indication that Google is just reacting.
Flipbook is proactive. Thank goodness it has some additional capital to move forward. Patching leaks in an ageing speedboat whilst underway in choppy seas reveals quite a bit about the state of the craft in my opinion. Google was “about” search. More effort needs to be put into that core competency; otherwise, curated finding services are going to be fertile ground for the next Google in my opinion.
Stephen E Arnold, April 18, 2011
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Facebook Remains a Threat to the Google
April 18, 2011
Does Facebook’s reach know no bounds? ABC’s Good Morning America reports, “Michigan Man Finds Kidney on Facebook.”
You may be familiar with the glacial pace of organ donation waiting lists. Patient Jeff Kurze of Warren, Michigan, achieved a way around that arduous process. His wife Roxy found a kidney through Facebook. Yep, just like the Egyptian dust up, the method relied upon Facebook. Even a Googler involved in some aspect of the Egyptian protest used the “F” word on a TV news program I watched. Google is search. Facebook is something else.
In the ABC article, I noted this passage:
After Jeff suffered a mini stroke last fall, doctors said it could take five years for him to climb the kidney waiting list and get the type O match he needed. That’s when a desperate Roxy took to Facebook. Wishing a kidney would fall out of the sky so my husband can stop suffering,’ Roxy Kurze, a 30-year-old web designer, wrote on her Facebook wall. ’So if anyone knows of a live donor with type O blood, PLEASE let me know.’
Facebook friend Ricky Cisco responded, and to make a long story short, the transfer was arranged. Fabulous human interest story, but the part that intrigues us at Beyond Search is this: as people turn to the Facebook community more and more to find everything from a book recommendation to an organ donation, how will Google and its ilk adapt? Will hooking a bonus to social innovation deliver a kidney to the faltering Google?
Cynthia Murrell April 18, 2011
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Protected: SharePoint: Time Is Money
April 18, 2011
EReaderIQ: Find Kindle Freebies and Bargains
April 17, 2011
We are book lovers here at Beyond Search. We want to call your attention to “eReaderIQ Is a Complete Database of Free and Discounted eBooks on Amazon”.
Whitson Gordon at Lifehacker points out a source of goodies with “eReaderIQ Is a Complete Database of Free and Discounted eBooks on Amazon.” The service offers a database, updated hourly, of all of Amazon’s eBooks. Search is available, but the browse option works well for a reader like me.
Gordon likes the alerts feature:
. . . where you can track other books on Amazon and get alerted to when their price drops. You can import your Amazon.com wish list, or just paste in its URL on the price tracker. Then, just give it your email and the price drop you’d like to be notified for (e.g. entering $1 would alert you when the book’s price drops by $1).
You set your geographic region and then browse. There is an advanced search feature and some hot links to “free” Kindle books and to price drops on Amazon eBooks. Check it out at eReaderIQ.com.
Cynthia Murrell April 17, 2011
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PacificNetwork and Funnelback Update
April 17, 2011
In “Funnelback on the Move” we noted that the open source search vendor, owned by Squiz, inked a deal with PacificNetwork.tv. That was in July 2009. We saw another reference to this two year old deal in “Funnelback Signs Deal with American TV Network.”
The current news story focuses on the Funnelback hosted search service. for PacificNetwork’s Web and video library. The SaaS search service searches the web site and the video library, categorizing the results into two groups: webpage and audio/video results with direct links. The article said:
Mr Stuart Beil, Funnelback’s General Manager, says, ‘PacificNetwork. tv has great web site and video library content and they wanted an easy to use and effective search solution that would unlock the value of their online assets by helping users find and use relevant online content. Funnelback is pleased it can drive, and continue to add, search value for PacificNetwork. tv.
PacificNetwork.tv provides TV and Internet of nine major channels in Hawaii. They are focused on the island chain’s local culture and people. Its new relationship with Funnelback will improve the information services it offers Hawaii. Funnelback has one more item that makes it interesting: it is open source. The PacficiNetwork story does seems a bit like old wine in a new bottle, er, blog.
Whitney Grace, April 17, 2011
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Google and Its Social Signal
April 17, 2011
This short item is about improving relevance ranking, not about getting 20,000 Googlers to “do social” in order to get a super sized bonus. With the carnage search engine optimization wizards and content farm managers have created, relevance is trendy again at the “new” Google.
So, the 12 year old Google is on the lookout for ways to improve their ranking systems and it seems that they are at it again. According to the Search Engine Watch article “Checks and Balances in Ranking Signals” Google has introduced a new social signal. The new signal is known as the +1 button.
According to the author of the article this new system is simply “Google’s latest move to reshape their ranking algorithms.” Links were once the primary way that people found the information that was relevant to them until spammers entered the scene. According to the write up:
An ongoing battle between Google and the spammers has followed. Google gradually made some progress, with most of the major firms who sell links exiting that business.
Google has introduced programs such as Google Analytics and Google Toolbar that work as a type of checks and balances to weed out the spammers. Google can monitor the user behavior on each of these sites and determine what search results users find relevant thereby weeding out potential spammers. Though the idea of weeding out spammers seems good with the amount of money that Google makes from advertisers it’s likely that spam isn’t Google’s main concern.
The challenge, however, is that some users may be quite comfortable relying on services that make it easy to ask a friend for the needed information. That method does not lead directly to Google and its search box that requires the user’s query to unlock a treasure trove of information. Facebook, to cite one example, lets a teen, tween, or recent journalism school graduate ask a friend. Catching up might be harder to do than Neil Sedaka’s challenge in “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do”. To wit:
I beg of you, don’t say goodbye
Can’t we give our love another try
Come on baby, let’s start a new
‘Cause breaking up is hard to do
Get your copy on iTunes right now.
Stephen E Arnold and Alice Holmes, April 17, 2011
Freebie unlike an iTunes music object
A Swiftian Moment: Google Becomes the Music Biz
April 16, 2011
My broken leg and ankle notwithstanding, I want to take a moment to call to your attention a Swiftian idea: Google opens its checkbook and buys the entire music industry. Good stuff. The idea is that Google or its executives have enough money to buy the entire music industry. Yep, Arrowsmith to Nikolaj Znaider.
First, whip out your dog eared copy of Cliffs Notes for Gulliver’s Travels or click here for the free version. Second, scan it to get the drift of the satire. You will recall the Queen’s dwarfs, the former top dog of Lagado, and, of course, the Yahoos and Houyhnhnms. Third, point your browser at “Why Google Should Buy the Music Industry.” Once in the Googleplex, Google can be a player on iPods, Android devices, and elevators worldwide.
Once that Google check is cashed presto chango!
Google has power to push which could launch music consumer services on Android users and contracts with darned interesting terms on the likes of Amazon, Apple, and (why not?) Microsoft, the motion picture industry, and the pesky cable and TV industry. Each of these is annoying because Google’s objectives are either slowed, blunted, or derailed by these entities and groups.
If I were taking one of those required classes in the English Department, I suppose an essay comparing Jonathan Swift and the author of Open Source, Open Genomics, Open content’s article. However, this is the rough and tumble world of poobahism, punditry, and pontification. The idea is a good one because it would have flashed through the minds of such outstanding executives as Cornelius Vanderbilt and John Pierpont Morgan.
Nothing negotiates like power and money, or is it money and power?
My view is today’s financial climate might entertain this idea. The problem is that some would object to pragmatic capitalism applied in this manner. The method works quite well in such US sectors as telecommunications, railroads, and politics, music hits a particular chord. The “hooks” are set deep.
Alas, another solution to Google’s music woes may have to be found. Either a solution emerges or Google will face another China maneuver. At this time, China is a big, juicy, complex market. Google appears to be playing a minor role. Is music the next Middle Kingdom for Google? Makes no difference to me. I am hard of hearing. But noise I usually detect.
Stephen E Arnold, April 16, 2011
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