Augmenting the Future with Aurasma
June 24, 2011
I somehow missed the earlier reporting until now. Straight out of science fiction, “Aurasma App Is Augmented Reality, Augmented” gives a glimpse of the next app to potentially saturate the market.
Aurasma describes itself as an augmented reality platform. With an equipped Smartphone, one can point the window at the world and conjure up an associated “aura”, or online video content. The content is created by anyone and stored in an infrastructure provided by the brains of this innovation, Autonomy. The article stated:
The idea is that media companies can use Aurasma to recognize printed matter – street posters, newspapers, magazines – to call up compelling video and online content they have made themselves or from TV stations and movie studios. … It’s making the world browsable.
Okay, the given examples of animating the assembly instructions of flat-pack furniture, talking newspapers and bringing advertisements to life will be at least momentarily entertaining. But these applications toe the gimmick line and can lose their appeal as quickly as animated ads have ruined the internet.
Let’s consider some of the more useful extensions. In engineering, for one: imagine issuing equipment specs or construction issue drawings with associated 3-D models rather than typical 2-D likenesses. Sure, 3-D CAD files exist, but not everyone can afford those licenses merely for viewing. Highlighting all of the most important and oft ignored drawing details with Aurasma animations would be another option. Any industry based on communicating thru flat images could benefit greatly from this service.
Further and a bit closer to home, making the world "browsable" is tantamount to making it searchable. If the technology sticks it will not take long before search can be leveraged thru Autonomy’s brilliant platform. It sounds like another layer is being added to the prospering location based services business. If we could view it through Aurasma, we would probably see some cheerfully dancing dollar signs.
Sarah Rogers, June 23, 2011
ArnoldIT.com, the resource for enterprise search information and current news about data fusion
Does Google Have the Ooomph to PaaS Other Vendors
June 24, 2011
Writer Derrick Harris details several potential problems for Google in Gigaom’s article, “Can Google App Engine Compete in the Enterprise?”
First and foremost, the company has discontinued the App Engine for Business. That service was specially designed to function in enterprise environments, and was created in partnership with VMware. It seems that many users balked at limitations, like the inability to gain access from outside the owner’s domain.
Google is still working on the more generic App Engine, which is currently in preview mode, but the Platform as a Service’s (PaaS) full release may come too late for the company to profit fully. Harris conferred with the senior product manager for Google App Engine, Gregory D’alesandre, before drawing his conclusions, asserting:
D’alesandre acknowledged that he’s impressed with some of the PaaS offerings that have hit the market lately. If anything, timing might be critical for Google, which will need to get the production-ready App Engine into the market before any of the myriad other PaaS offerings gather too much momentum. I thought App Engine for Business was a formidable competitor when announced, but time and new PaaS launches — including from Amazon Web Services — have dulled its edge.
Harris also points out that Google’s architecture is considered outdated by at least one insider. That’s not good.
The GOOG is still a giant, but it had better step up its game if it wants such stature in the enterprise market. Our view is that the chatter about new cloud centric platform services is increasing. At the same time, technical issues and concerns about security are capturing headlines. Once again, truth and fiction become difficult to separate. We will just PaaS. Next.
Cynthia Murrell June 23, 2011
ArnoldIT.com, the resource for enterprise search information and current news about data fusion
OpenText to Unify Data with an Integration Center
June 24, 2011
I am easily confused. I thought OpenText’s original SGML data management system performed integration. Guess not.
In “Content Integration Software unifies data across enterprise,” ThomasNet News serves up welcome news from OpenText about its latest product, Integration Center. Ah, unification; such a lovely concept. We learned:
Most integration technologies focus on either structured data in databases or content in document repositories, but not both. Now with OpenText Integration Center, which inherently understands both structured data and unstructured content, customers can give business decision makers easy access to corporate information assets through ECM Suite 2010.
Being able to go to one source for all its data would certainly be a boon for most companies, saving both time and money. It could unlock the value of data that has been sitting dormant because wrangling it was not deemed worth the effort.
OpenText also boasts about several other advantages of its software. For example, simplified content migration and data archiving and, consequently, the ability to decommission legacy systems.
Yay, efficiency! It also integrates diverse systems, from data warehouses to content management.
The company has been helping clients manage their data for a couple of decades now, and does so around the globe.
Cynthia Murrell June 23, 2011
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, the resource for enterprise search information and current news about data fusion
Protected: Extending the SharePoint Ecosystem
June 24, 2011
Jike: China Gets a Way to Control What Is Findable
June 23, 2011
Governments are going to have to get control of information flow or face the sort of issues that are now popping up on cable TV news. Nothing is quite as nifty as a “real” journalist standing in the midst of the disgruntled in Ireland, Greece, Libya, and Syria.
China understands this basic fact: electronic information can work just like a hot flame under a wok filled with sesame oil. Solution: turn off the flame or control it. Thinq_ reveals that “China Launches State-Approved Search Engine.” Are we surprised?
The state controlled search engine is called Jike, and is an arm of the People’s Daily, the communist party’s newspaper. Support for the move comes from some unlikely sources:
According to a report in a Wall Street Journal blog, executives from web portal Sohu, English language news outlet Sina and China’s current search engine leader Baidu all turned up to ‘offer their support’. We’re not entirely sure what incentives the execs were given in order to make them show up, but they seem to have been rather persuasive.
Indeed. I wonder whether sticks or carrots were used.
Jike enters a field already dominated by Google and Baidu, who have both struggled with government censorship in China. Will the next step be the complete exclusion of non-approved search engines?
It certainly looks like the government is well on its way to implementing permanent filtering of the Internet. I can think of some tough questins to ask; for example, “Will this clamp down occur if agitation occurs in other countries?” I won’t attempt to answer this question. A better one is, “When will social media be subject to both filtering and more forceful action?” My thought is, “Soon.”
Cynthia Murrell June 23, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia, publishers of The New Landscape of Enterprise Search.
Will Google Do Real News?
June 23, 2011
Will Google do “real” news? I read “Salon CEO Gingras Resigns to Become Global Head of News Products at Google.” I think this is a fascinating action on the part of Google. In Google: The Digital Gutenberg, published by Infonortics Ltd. in 2009, I looked at Google’s content technology. My focus was not on indexing. I reviewed the parse, tag, chop, and reassemble systems and methods that Google’s wizards had invented. The monograph is available at this link. The monograph may be useful for anyone who wants to understand what happens when “real” journalists get access to the goodies in the Googleplex. In addition, to Odwalla beverages, the Google open source documents suggest that snippets of text and facts can be automatically assembled into outputs that one could describe as “reports” or “new information objects.” Sure, a human is needed in some of these processes, but Google uses lots of humans. Its public relations machine and liberal mouse pad distribution policy helps keep the myth alive that Google is all math all the time. Not exactly accurate.
The write up says:
The new position as the senior executive overseeing Google News, as well as other products that may be in the pipeline, comes several years after Gingras worked as a consultant at the Mountain View campus, focusing on ways the search giant could improve its news products.
What will come from a “real” journalist getting a chance to learn about some of the auto assembly technology? I offer some ideas in my Digital Gutenberg monograph. Publishers may want to ponder this idea as well. Google is more than search, and we are going to learn more about its intentions in the near future.
Five years ago, when Google was at the top of its game, I would have had little hesitation to give Google a better than 50 percent chance of success. Now with the Amazon, Apple, and Facebook environment, I am not so sure. Google has been relying more on buying stuff that works and playing a hard game of “Me Too.”
With the most recent reworking of Google News, I find myself turning to Pulse, Yahoo News, and NewsNow.co.uk. Am I alone?
Stephen E Arnold, June 23, 2011
From the leader in next-generation analysis of search and content processing, Beyond Search.
Google and Alleged Hosting of Phishing Sites
June 23, 2011
Has Google become a phishing buddy? That’s what F-Secure is saying in “Phishing Sites Hosted on Google Servers.”
An examination of spreadsheets on Google Docs reveals various phishing sites. What makes these attacks particularly nasty is that they “are hosted on the real Google.com, complete with a valid SSL certificate.” F-Secure provides screen shots of what appears to be particularly high-quality phishing. Even more confusing, “apparent Google employees are linking to” phishing forms.
If F-Secure’s right, this is very unsettling. Savvy users have prided themselves for years on being able to spot and avoid phishing attempts. But these spreadsheets have experts scratching their heads as to their validity. If they’re not sure, how can the average user tell the difference?
Stephen E. Arnold, June 23, 2011
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, your source for strategic information services
The GOOG MSFT User Experience
June 23, 2011
One of the goslings asked me to take a quick look at US7966638, “ Interactive Media Display across Devices.” Here’s the abstract:
A computer-implemented method includes identifying a computer-based portable program module, automatically altering code in the portable program module to permit display of the module on a television-based display so that the displayed module has a substantially similar appearance on the television-based display as on a computer display, and providing the altered code for execution on a processor connected to a television-based display.
The question today at lunch is, “How likely is it that Google will be on the same Windows 8 interface bicycle?”
My view: Google has struggled to make use of its plethora of interesting inventions. Assume this invention moves to the “one interface” across any of a user’s devices or veers in another direction. Will Google be forced to buy a company that has been able to connect the dots? The example of which I am thinking is the Sage TV buy. The issue may be internal communication about available technology regardless of the team originating the system and method.
Stephen E Arnold, June 23, 2011
From the leader in next-generation analysis of search and content processing, Beyond Search.
Protected: Making SharePoint More Social
June 23, 2011
A Data Handover
June 22, 2011
In “Twitter and Google Hand Over Data: We’re All Newspapers Now,” PocketLint examines changes in how Twitter and Google now respond to requests from authorities for details about their users.
Two Twitter-related cases in England, one that had the “South Tyneside council acquiring Twitter data connected to someone who had published potentially libelous statements on a blog,” are examined. Google is facing a court order that will require it to hand over emails deleted by (celebrity chef) Gordon Ramsay’s father in law Chris Hutchinson.
“For some this (ability to identify users) is reassuring, after all the anonymity available with the Internet can pose legitimate threats and opportunities for many to act unpleasantly or even illegally and without punishment.”
While some might like it, the long view of these developments has to make you ask how much data will be provided, ie all of John Doe’s e-mail, all of John Doe’s e-mail to Jane Doe, or John Doe’s April 15, 9:42am e-mail to Jane Doe, and once that data is released, where does the go and who’s reading their contents?
These are questions that perhaps need to be asked and answered.
Stephen E. Arnold, June 22, 2011
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