The Gray Lady Does a Sophie Choice to RIF Real Pros
October 19, 2011
Last week, The New York Times announced internally that it will eliminate 20 newsroom positions through “voluntary buyouts instead of firings.” The core business of the Times has always been the print newspaper, yet that business is shrinking. No matter how successful the digital business is, it cannot replace the revenue the print business once had. Business Insider’s “The Incredible Shrinking New York Times Keeps On… Shrinking” tells us more:
Unless the New York Times Company can figure out a way to turn around the print newspaper circulation revenue (highly unlikely), this shrinkage will continue. Even if the online pay wall is wildly successful, it will not replace the circulation and ad revenue the company will lose as print subscribers cancel. And as the print business shrinks, the print cost structure that supports it will have to shrink, too.
The company’s print-ad business has steadily shrunk over the past four years and the future looks wimpy. In the full memo executive editor Jill Abramson sent to staff, she comments that the difficult and uncertain economy has posed a challenge to the company: balancing journalism in the digital age. Online business for the Times is thriving, but without the profitable print business it one had, the future is somewhat less rosy than Google’s.
Andrea Hayden, October 19, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Make Excel Excel in SharePoint
October 19, 2011
Excel must be a hot app to use within, next, and through SharePoint. We prefer to create calculation “leaves” and the put the numerical goodies in a document with explanations. But we realize that the ArnoldIT goslings are in the minority.
Some employees and executives live in an Excel spreadsheet; their entire workday is focused on numbers, shortcut codes, and little white boxes. They use the data organization program for keeping track of numbers and word processing, but sometimes it doesn’t work well with SharePoint. The Apps4Rent blog brought to our attention “Excel Services in SharePoint,” a write-up about the Excel Services app. The app is built on ASP.Net and SharePoint technologies and has many core components that streamline the collaboration between the two programs. Many features are the Excel web service, UDFs, ECMAScript, Representational State Transfer service, Excel calculation services, custom applications, and much more. We learned:
Above all this, in multiple server configurations, Excel Services load-balances requests across multiple Excel Calculation Services occurrences in a farm configuration. If your installation includes multiple application servers, Excel Services will balance the load in an attempt to help ensure that no single application server is overloaded by requests.
Excel is a common part of many workers’ daily life and so is SharePoint. Using Excel Services to generate content will not only make some SharePoint users’ workload more efficient, but if you rely on SurfRay Ontolica, users will be able to find the content.
Whitney Grace, October 19, 2011
SurfRay
IBM Makes Headlines with Dr. Jai Menon
October 18, 2011
These new computers can extract and find information in data that can aid human cognition. When we created [supercomputer] Watson, it combined hardware and deep analysis software that we designed to work together. We are moving away from computers that compute, to computers that can extract information from the huge amounts of unstructured data – because every two days we generate more data than all data from the dawn of civilisation until 2003.
Menon goes on to expound on its practical applications, not just theoretical significance. Industries such as medicine, business, and communications will all be revolutionized by the successful implementation of this new technology. We will continue to follow data-centric computing and report on its future implications.
Our question, “When will the PR about Watson give way to some products and services we can use here in Harrod’s Creek. Marketing speak is not useful, although it can be entertaining.
Emily Rae Aldridge, October 18, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Google Opens Cloud SQL Database for App Engine Developers
October 18, 2011
Due to popular demand by App Engine developers, Google has come out with a relational database called Google Cloud SQLfor its cloud-hosted App Engine application development and hosting platform.According to the ComputerWorld article, Google Ads Cloud-based SQL Database to App Engine, Navneet Joneja, product manager for Google Cloud SQL, said in a recent blog post:
You can now choose to power your App Engine applications with a familiar relational database in a fully-managed cloud environment. This allows you to focus on developing your applications and services, free from the chores of managing, maintaining and administering relational databases.
For now the database is available on limited preview mode and is free of charge for the select developers who have access to it. However, once the service leaves the preview stage, Google will charge developers for the management of their databases. The search giant said it will announce pricing 30 days before they begin charging, so developers shouldn’t to get too comfortable. With Microsoft getting the warm fuzzies over Hadoop, we think there will be some interesting pushing and shoving going on. If pro football coaches can do, so can Google and Microsoft.
Jasmine Ashton, October 18, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Quote to Note: Modern Truisms
October 18, 2011
I don’t plan on getting back on the rubber chicken circuit, but a good quote is often useful. I noted one in the hard copy newspaper of the faltering New York Times. The story with the quote was “A Series of Red Flags for Financial Planning Concern,” page B5 of the Personal Business section in the Business Section of the October 15, New York Times. I love that metadata. Don’t you?
Here’s the quote attributed to Dan Candura, “a financial planner,” whose photograph accompanies the article. Mr. Candura does not have the cheerful demeanor of a character on the defunct TV show “Friends” in my opinion. He allegedly said:
It’s easier to sell the bad stuff than the good stuff.
I must say that when I read the quote I thought about search and content processing marketers, azure chip consultants flogging studies, and assorted unemployed English teachers, failed Webmasters, and political science majors turned “search expert.”
What is the “bad stuff”. Well, if I understand the New York Times’ write up, the “bad stuff” are investments that are too good to be true. In search and content processing, the “bad stuff” are systems which contain cost spikes like those children’s toys which shoot a crazy doll in one’s face without warning.
The only problem, of course, is that the search bad stuff does not end with cost spikes. Other “benefits” of selling search and content processing systems include:
- Content adaptors which don’t work as advertised or have to be customized to handle a specific client situation
- Technical issues associated with updating indexes in “real time”, a bogus concept in my experience
- The need for “eternal engineering support.” The idea is that the license gets the consultants in the door. The consultants never leave, however.
A pop and tune from the Jack in the Box lovers to Mr. Candura, who was quite “candid”.
Stephen E Arnold, October 18, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Oracle Settles the DOJ False Claims Suit
October 18, 2011
Forbes reported on some heft news with their article, “Oracle To Pay $199.5M To Settle Charge It Ripped Off Uncle Sam (Updated).”
The Federal Department of Justice won a lawsuit against Oracle, who allegedly overcharged the government’s General Services Administration for software and services. Oracle has agreed to pay 199.5 million in this settlement brought under the false claims act.
According to the article, the DOJ said the following:
[T]he settlement involved allegation that “Oracle knowingly failed to meet its contractual obligations to provide GSA with current, accurate and complete information about its commercial sales practices, including discounts offered to other customers, and that Oracle knowingly made false statements to GSA about its sales practices and discounts.
Additionally, Oracle did not comply with their GSA contract by not disclosing discounts they gave to commercial customers and failing to pass on those higher discounts to the government.
The DOJ’s settlement is now added into the over $7.8 billion recovered under the false claims act.
Megan Feil, October 18, 2011
Survey: SharePoint at Work with Some Surprises
October 18, 2011
In today’s modern office, SharePoint 2010 is one of the main tools businesses employ to solve their business solutions and help their workers collaborate on their projects. While this is a factual statement, one can’t figure out how businesses use SharePoint unless you actively visit an office. EndUserSharePoint.com wrote an article called, “How Are Businesses Using SharePoint? New Survey Results-Application, Platform, or Appform?”
Derek Weeks, the author, conducts a semi-annual survey with the aforementioned name. He asked the SharePoint community to voice their opinions on the collaborative content platform and how they use it, what challenges they face, and how they strategize. Weeks discovered that the 2010 version is outpacing the 2007 version in deployment. End user adoption and training were ranked as the biggest challenges. This coupled with a lack of business strategy is a setup for failure.
With the increasing importance of SharePoint in the enterprise, it is time for many organizations to investigate, lay the plans, and begin executing their business strategy around the appform. As our SharePoint Conference 2011 panel discussed, strategies can be accelerated by really understanding and putting together a plan around what businesses can achieve with SharePoint.
The survey results point out what we already know as SharePoint experts: form a plan or waste time and money. Search and analytics was another concern for end users in their SharePoint experience. SurfRay can address findability issues quickly and with minimal manual scripting. The big plus is that SurfRay licensees gain an advantage in user satisfaction surveys.
Whitney Grace, October 18, 2011
SurfRay
In the News: SharePoint Semantics, October 7 to 13, 2011
October 18, 2011
This week, SharePoint Semantics delivered several informative search related stories. Each brief critically analyzes articles discussing various aspects of the SharePoint experience.
In the post Another Round of Microsoft SharePoint Governance From SharePoint Magazine Ken Toth tackles the issue of managing your businesses goals rather than simply managing a platform. One aspect of this is to fully engage users with smooth and intuitive SharePoint navigation. Toth notes:
“For successful governance, senior management must be on board, transparency must be maintained, change management must be open, decision making at lower levels must take place, and governance frameworks must be continually improved.”
This week, readers also received advice on navigating Microsoft’s tedious online forums. Some Harsh Words For SharePoint Forums from Mike Walsh explains the phases of forum integration and how Microsoft provides the minimum input they can get away with at each stage of development of a new product. Toth advises utilizing the customized support from Smartlogic Semaphore staff to avoid such issues.
The SharePoint Hub app is hot commodity according to Microsoft SharePoint Hub App Now Available. This new app allows users to connect to the SharePoint community from your mobile phone, facebook, and twitter. This app also allows you to access the SharePoint official blog.
If you find that not all your SharePoint content databases show up when you run a PowerShell cmdlet, there may be a problem with one of your databases being in a “Stopped” state. How to See All of Your SharePoint 2010 Content Databases provides readers with some tips on how to avoid this issue. Toth says:
“SharePoint admins may have trouble finding their databases in PowerShell, but SharePoint end users often have trouble finding their essential enterprise unstructured content within these databases. If your end users’ search and navigation experience is less than adequate, introduce a Smartlogic Semaphore Content Intelligence Platform.”
This week’s SharePoint Semantics blog postings reiterate the fact that SharePoint is not infallible information management system. Follow Toth’s advice, and partner your SharePoint softeware with productslike Smartlogic’s Semaphore Content Intelligence Platform.
Jasmine Ashton, October 18, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Is Mobile Search a Slam Dunk for the Google?
October 17, 2011
Can Mobile Search Be as Big for Google as Desktop Search? generated some poobahing in the digital anther today. I can answer the question:
Google sure wants it to be.
In our work, we look at search in different “environments.” The mobile terrarium is one crazy place. Different demographics do quite different things. As a result, “search” is losing what semblance of meaning it had. Here are three examples
- Little kids don’t search. Little kids immerse themselves in a flow. Yikes, ads don’t work the same way in the pre literate world of the two year old fooling with an iPad.
- Type A professionals don’t type lots of stuff into small devices when moving around. Excuse me. I call someone or use a short cut. Yikes, bad for ads.
- College students watch videos and send Facebook messages. A search is more like a question fired off to someone who is in the person’s “friend” list. Yikes. Another problem for the Google. Maybe Facebook has an edge at the moment, but there is always Google+ or Google Plus. Try and search for that name from a BlackBerry that doesn’t work. Yikes. Bad for ads.
Net net: Google is a company forged in the portal days of the late 1990s. Mobile is a newish thing and requires newish solutions. Think Google finds these examples a slam dunk? I don’t.
Stephen E Arnold, October 17, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Google, Microsoft, and Bias: Austrian Economics Anyone?
October 17, 2011
I read “Patent Analyst Accused of Anti-Google Stance Funded by Microsoft”. The blogger, analyst, professional documenter of intellectual property issues disclosed that a big outfit was going to pay him to write a study. On the plus side, the individual did explain what he was doing. The action is a reasonable step to take. If I were lucky enough to have people pay me to write content in Beyond Search, I would do more than slap a plug for my publisher on my stories. On the down side, the individual disclosed what he was doing and is getting some negative vibes from poobahs, pundits, and programmers-turned-Adwords lovers.
In June I received an invitation to a black tie party in Washington, DC. The invitation made clear that heavy hitters would be in attendance and that I should bring my wife in evening attire which displayed her considerable charms to their best advantage. I don’t live in Washington any longer, but the person holding the party disclosed in that invitation that a big outfit was paying to get formerly influential people like me to show up.
I did a job with a company in which I invested. We hired a content management poobah. After the fact, we learned that the lad had a crush on a certain CMS system, did not have particularly good technical skills, and had even less robust management skills. The cat was a smooth talker, and we were able to get the person to walk the plank without too much hassle. We learned that this “crush” on the CMS vendor was part of an elaborate “I am objective, but I love some people more than others because some people refer work to me.” I adjusted by baloney detector and have mostly avoided the “on the take”, “in the bag”, and “working for the shadowy folks” problem.
Let’s be clear. The azure chip consultants sell coverage, speaking slots, and direct mail promotion of their clients. The “pay to play” model has trashed the programs of a number of once useful conferences. I never believe a sales presentation, a demonstration, or the hash served in webinars. Call me cautious, but in today’s business world, the reality is that money talks.
My hunch is that this “damned if you do and damned if you don’t” situation for the blogger is par for the course. What is objectivity? With college researchers spoofing data sets, database publishers refusing to remove bogus or sponsored articles from for fee databases, and authors making up entire books which are presented as non fiction, what is the big deal?
Disinformation of this type is easily spotted. What’s more interesting is the type of weaponized content I described in my key note at the intelligence conference in Washington, DC on October 11 and 12. Instead of chasing the obvious, maybe the satraps could think about next generation issues?
Nah, that’s too much work.
Stephen E Arnold, October 17, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com. Who? My publisher, gentle reader. My publisher.
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