Google: More Like Apple?
March 4, 2012
You may know about “more like this.” Well, we think Google has a twist on this search feature. We call it “more like Apple.”
Bloomberg Businessweek recently reported on a new move that Google is planning in hopes of beating out Apple once and for all in the article “Google’s Real Estate Plans Hint It Wants to Own Your Living Room.”
The article argues that while Google has had incredible success in getting other companies to utilize its Android software, the search giant will never be able to out compete Apple until it starts making its own hardware as well. This is where Google’s $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola comes into play.
The article states:
“Though patents were one reason for the purchase, increasingly there are signs that Google will use Motorola to create a more integrated, Apple-esque approach. According to documents unearthed by the San Jose Mercury News, the company is building huge hardware-testing labs, including pricey anechoic chambers for testing the performance of antennae on mobile devices.”
This is definitely a risky move for an already very successful company. The real question is, is Google capable of being Apple? Heck, is Google even capable of preventing encroachment by Amazon, Microsoft, and Yandex?
Jasmine Ashton, March 4, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Data Mining Hits the Big Screen
March 4, 2012
It seems that 3D is not just for the big screen any more. According to the SlideShare article “Visual Data Mining with HeatMiner” three-dimensional heatmaps can be used to represent data. The makers of HeatMiner claim that large data sets with a variety of correlating attributes can be hard to understand “using traditional data analysis and visualization methods.” “HeatMiner is a new visual data mining technology which visualizes the data as three-dimensional heatmaps.” HeatMiner argues that most data reports are too simple and therefore lack accuracy. Visual data mining with HeatMiner relies on 3D shapes to represent frequent value combinations. “Colors can be used as the fourth dimension or to ease interpretation.” At first glance the technology is very attractive and does grab your attention but will is that enough for users to buy into this visual mining technology. Only time will tell if this new technology is actually practical or just a pretty picture.
April Holmes, March 4, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Protected: When Good SharePoint Governance Goes Bad or Lack There Of
March 3, 2012
Big Data Bridges Diverse Fields
March 3, 2012
Solving the big data problem and what we are going to do with the immense amount of unstructured information that is just sitting in cyber space, is on the forefront of many minds.
The New York Times technology blog Bits recently reported on this issue in the article “IBM: Big Data, Bigger Patterns.”
According to the article, the recent explosion of information available on the Internet paired with inexpensive computer hardware has made it possible for enterprises to store huge amounts of unstructured data. Now that we know it is possible, the goal is to do it cost effectively.
In order to remain cost sensitive, many companies are trying to find overlapping interests and commonalities between different fields.
The article states:
“The trend of looking for commonalities and overlapping interests is emerging in many parts of both academia and business. At the ultra small nanoscale examination of a cell, researchers say, the disciplines of biology, chemistry and physics begin to collapse in on each other. In a broader search for patterns, students of the statistical computing language known as R have used methods of counting algae blooms to prove patterns of genocide against native peoples in Central America.”
While the cross pollination of various business interests is very exciting, we’re interested to see if it leads to complications down the road.
Jasmine Ashton, March 3, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Scholarly Writers Boycott Scholarly Publishing Powerhouse
March 3, 2012
CBC News recently reported on the growing boycott of one of the world’s largest publishing firms, publishing 250,000 articles a year and with seven million publications in its archives, in the article, “Academic Publisher Elsevier Hit With Growing Boycott.”
According to the story, the boycott, also know as the “Cost of Knowledge” campaign, started in January by an international group of researchers. It originated after a critical blog post by a Cambridge University professor accused the Dutch-based publisher Elsevier of charging extremely high prices for access to its articles and using a “ruthless” approach to negotiations with academic libraries and supporting legislation that could hamper the move to more open access to published research.
The article states:
“Since then, thousands of researchers around the world, including several university and government researchers in Canada, have publicly committed to the protest by declaring they will not publish in Elsevier journals, peer review papers for those journals, or do editing work for them.”
The boycotters have two complaints: the publisher is charging excessively for its journals, and is pushing to stop free access to taxpayer funded research. It appears that damage control for this scholarly publishing powerhouse has not worked and the call for change is even greater. We’re interested to see if the boycotts lead to change.
Jasmine Ashton, March 3, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Google Predicts the Oscars
March 3, 2012
It is that time of year again when friends and families gather around their television sets to weigh in on who should win the Oscars. Google and search, however, do not usually come to mind when thinking of the Academy Awards — until now.
Web Pro News recently reported on the search giant’s prognostications in the article, “Google Predicts Oscar Winners.”
According to the article, a Google search team crunched the numbers and broke down the search data and made predictions for the categories of Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Picture.
How did they figure it out? When discussing Best Picture predictions, the Google blog stated:
“Last year we found that for three years running, the films that won best picture had two things in common when it came to search data. First, the winning movies had all shown an upward trend in search volume for at least four consecutive weeks during the previous year. Second, within the U.S. the winning film had the highest percentage of its searches originating from the state of New York.”
While the Google blog ended up narrowing it down to three potential winners, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, The Artist, and Midnight in Paris, I found the title of the article somewhat misleading. While Google utilized search to narrow down the candidates, it did not predict a sole winner. How do you think Google did? If you were grading Google, did the company get an A or an F?
Jasmine Ashton, March 3, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Ontoprise GmbH: Multiple Issues Says Wikipedia
March 3, 2012
Now Wikipedia is a go-to resource for Google. I heard from one of my colleagues that Wikipedia turns up as the top hit on a surprising number of queries. I don’t trust Wikipedia, but I don’t trust any encyclopedia produced by volunteers including volunteers. Volunteers often participate in a spoofing fiesta.
Note: I will be using this symbol when I write about subjects which trigger associations in my mind about use of words, bound phrases, and links to affect how results may be returned from Exalead.com, Jike.com, and Yandex.ru, among other modern Web indexing services either supported by government entities or commercial organizations.
I was updating my list of Overflight companies. We have added five companies to a new Overflight service called, quite imaginatively, Taxonomy Overflight. We have added five firms and are going through the process of figuring out if the outfits are in business or putting on a vaudeville act for paying customers.
The first five companies are:
We will be adding to the Taxonomy Overflight another group of companies on March 4, 2012. I have not yet decided how to “score” each vendor. For enterprise search Overflight, I use a goose method. Click here for an example: Overflight about Autonomy. Three ducks. Darned good.
I wanted to mention one quite interesting finding. We came across a company doing business as Ontoprise. The firm’s Web site is www.ontoprise.de. We are checking to see which companies have legitimate Web sites, no matter how sparse.
We noted that the Wikipedia entry for Ontoprise carried this somewhat interesting “warning”:
The gist of this warning is to give me a sense of caution, if not wariness, with regard to this company which offers products which delivered “ontologies.” The company’s research is called “Ontorule”, which has a faintly ominous sound to me. If I look at the naming of products from such firms as Convera before it experienced financial stress, Convera’s product naming was like science fiction but less dogmatic than Ontoprise’s language choice. So I cannot correlate Convera and Ontoprise on other than my personal “semantic”baloney detector. But Convera went south in a rather unexpected business action.
LexisNexis Fails to Make the Leap
March 2, 2012
Leap Day is a bit odd for everyone. It just seems strange to have the 29th added to February every four years. However, for the most part, everyone assumes that Leap Day will cause no major problems. That was not the case for some law librarians who reported their findings in, “Lexis Litigation Lists Lag on LeapDay.”
“While trying to run a Litigant Strategic Profile from LexisNexis’ CourtLink system, we kept noticing that the reports simply wouldn’t run. We contacted Lexis in the morning to see what the issue was and they told us that they would investigate the issue and return our call as soon as they figured out what was causing it, or when they got it corrected. Morning turned to afternoon, and finally we heard back from them with a surprising answer. Turns out that the Litigant Strategic Profiles couldn’t understand February 29th, and therefore the reports simply wouldn’t run. The solution was to not run the reports until March 1st, when the system would be back to normal.”
The author rightly points out that his $2 alarm clock recognizes Leap Day, but a very expensive subscription database cannot. Needless to say, anyone needing Litigant Strategic Profiles on February 29, 2012, would not be satisfied to wait until the next day to continue their projects. The news is a poor reflection on LexisNexis. While the company later denied the Leap Day connection, and maintains it was a non-related “systems issue,” this is a good reminder of how dependent we are as professionals upon information storage and retrieval systems.
Glitches are a reality, bugs a way of life, but when our systems shut down, we shut down. This is all the more reason to invest in trusted, vetted information solutions and have contingency and redundancy plans for when issues arise. Even then, problems will occur, but stay calm and trust those old-fashioned solutions: patience and common sense.
Emily Rae Aldridge, March 2, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Protected: SharePoint Microblogging Shares Content Quickly and Easily
March 2, 2012
Internet Explorer Becomes Anorexic
March 2, 2012
Notice anything about this version of the Microsoft Internet Explorer browser?
Imagine my surprise when I opened Internet Explorer to check a site that would not render in Chrome without delivering a “danger” message.
I had a platform preview version of the browser. I learned this when I clicked the Help word and selected About. Here’s what I saw:
The changes I noticed were disconcerting to me. You, on the other hand, may love the “enhancements”. I noted:
- No icons to do stuff like refresh a page
- No search box, no nothing
- No title bar into which to enter a Web address. To navigate to Google, I selected Page, Open, and typed the url into a box
- No obvious way to use a bookmark
- No way to get back to a version of Internet Explorer with my bookmarks.
I am semi amused but Opera looks better and better each time I encounter Google menus with different options, crazy pop up boxes, and simplification which is less than helpful.
Honk!
Stephen E Arnold, March 2, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
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