Is Google Anchored in Social Reality?
April 16, 2012
In the article, “Google CEO Page: Social Networking Service Surpassing Predictions,” Larry Page shares his positive thoughts regarding Google’s social networking future. However, ComScore http://www.comscore.com/ presents some statistics that challenge the validation of his optimistic outlook.
“Google, the leading Web-search provider, is playing catch- up with Facebook Inc., which has more than 845 million users versus more than 100 million for Google+. U.S. users spent an average 3.3 minutes on Google’s social network in January 2012, compared with 7.5 hours for Facebook, according to ComScore Inc. Page said his company’s early focus on Web search came at the expense of helping people socialize.”
Ironically, Google+ is the fourth attempt by Google to rival Facebook. They created Orkut in 2004. Orkut was a hit with the Brazilians. It was followed in 2008 by Google Friend Connect which was retired in March 2012. Google Buzz was their third disappointment. Launched in 2010, the service was terminated in 2011.
The history of Google’s failed attempts to compete clearly shows they’ve lost this popularity contest. Facebook firmly takes the lead in both user numbers and time spent online by an overwhelming margin. This makes it difficult to understand how Mr. Page can rationalize gaining ground against the Facebook behemoth in the social networking industry. My question, “Is Google realistic about its social networking options?”
Jennifer Shockley, April 16, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Boxfish Brings Search to TV
April 16, 2012
Technology Review recently reported on a new startup that helps users search for words and phrases from TV in the article “Searching the Small Screen.”
According to the article, as of late March, California based Boxfish opened a beta version of its site to the public, allowing users to search through words and phrases that have been seen on television over the past month. The site also allows users to see topics that are trending and set up alerts for specific terms.
Boxfish is currently indexing TV dialogue from the US, UK and Ireland and they plan to add Australia and Canada soon.
The article states:
“The site is simple to use. If you search for, say, “cookie,” you’ll receive a list of results posted in chronological order along with a bit of the transcript in which the word appeared. On the right side of the screen you can see how many times it has been used recently, on how many channels, and also the words most commonly used in the same context. Click on a search result and you’ll see a big chunk of the transcript with bold text indicating the section that includes the search term.”
Since the product is so new, Boxfish still has a few kinks to work out. However, this could be a cool new way for TV watchers to keep up with anything from politics and current events to the latest celebrity gossip.
Jasmine Ashton, April 16, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Branding a SharePoint 2010 Infrastructure
April 16, 2012
Frequent SharePoint author, Yaroslav Pentsarskyy has authored a new book, SharePoint 2010 Branding in Practice: A Guide for Web Developers. Pentsarskyy contends there are few guides or best practices for how to implement branding in SharePoint 2010, and yet branding is an important marketing priority for any organization. PR News gives more details in the story, “New Guide Helps Developers Implement Branding Concepts.”
“‘My book explores how to brand collaboration sites as well as publishing sites,’ says Pentsarskyy. ‘It also demonstrates how you can brand sites that are hosted not only on a dedicated server but on a shared infrastructure in a cloud.’ Written for web developers or user interface developers who already know CSS, JavaScript and HTML, the book discusses publishing masterpage structure, applying common design artifacts and settings on existing specialized sites, publishing page layout structure, applying branding to SharePoint list views and much more.”
Pentsarskyy is right, branding and presentation is important for both your internal structure and your external appearance. However, there may be an easier solution than struggling through a SharePoint customization process. Fabasoft Mindbreeze is a smart third-party solution with a number of integrating components to improve an enterprise infrastructure.
Consider Fabasoft Mindbreeze InSite. Requiring no installation, configuration, or maintenance, an organization can improve the efficiency and appearance of their external websites.
“An attractive website serves as an effective digital business card. Surprise your website visitors with an intuitive search.”
To satisfy employees and internal users, Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise is service-oriented and cost-effective. End users are pleased with the intuitive interface.
“Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise finds every scrap of information within a very short time, whether document, contract, note, e-mail or calendar entry, in intranet or internet, person- or text-related. The software solution finds all required information, regardless of source, for its users. Get a comprehensive overview of corporate knowledge in seconds without redundancy or loss of data.”
Pentsarskyy’s book is no doubt informative, and readers will learn a great deal about how SharePoint branding can be achieved through customization. However, for users who need less investment and more return, Fabasoft Mindbreeze might be just the solution to consider.
Emily Rae Aldridge, April 16, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Siemens Hosting a PLM Conference in May
April 16, 2012
Viva Las Vegas! The Siemens PLM Connections conference is scheduled for May 7th – 10th at the Rio Hotel and Casino. With all the attendees and information available at this conference – What Happens at PLM Connection Shouldn’t Stay at PLM Connection as the CAD/CAM Performance article of the same name so eloquently versed .
This conference has a lot to offer:
“The three-year-old conference, which is produced by the official Siemens PLM user group, PLM World, will give you access to nearly 2,000 other attendees to share ideas with, more than 70 hours of free training, over 350 technical breakout sessions, a vendor trade fair, and key executives and development folks from Siemens.”
Siemens says that attendees can experience up to 10% increase in productivity and attendees help their departments achieve an additional 10-15% gain in knowledge and productivity.
This is just one of many conferences happening all over the world. The key is to find the one that fits the needs and information that you are looking for. The Congress on the Future of Engineering Software (COFES 2012) is right around the corner on April 12th – April 15th. It will feature an interesting cross section of companies, including innovative companies like Inforbix, who revolutionized with way companies find, reuse and share product information. With so many options, look around and find the conference that is right for you and your company.
Jennifer Wensink, April 16, 2012
Exclusive Interview: Paul Doscher, President of Lucid Imagination
April 16, 2012
The Search Wizards Speak features Paul Doscher, the new president of Lucid Imagination. Mr. Doscher joined Lucid Imagination in December 2011. He had been president of Dassault Exalead USA prior to assuming the top spot at fast-growing, customer- and community-centric Lucid Imagination.
I spoke with Mr. Doscher when he was working for the Dassault Exalead organization. When he shifted to Lucid Imagination, I spoke with him about his views of open source search. After that brief initial conversation, I met again with Mr. Doscher and probed into his views about the impact open source search is having on traditional for-fee, proprietary search systems.
When I asked about the shift from proprietary search systems to open source search, he told me:
Today organizations need the flexibility to adapt and make changes. A proprietary solution may not permit the licensee to make enhancements. If a change is made, the proprietary search vendor may “own” the fix and will add that innovation to its core product. The licensee who created the fix gets nothing and may have had to pay for the right to innovate. As corporate information technology struggles to keep up with escalating business information demands and an ever increasing mountain of growing content of all types, open source search provides a cost effective and efficient way to develop applications to address the challenges and opportunities in today’s enterprise.
Mr. Doscher has strong views about how licensees of enterprise search systems have learned about costs, the time required to deploy a system, and the effort needed to keep a search system up and running. I asked him about Lucid Imagination’s approach to a search engagement. He said:
Our approach to an engagement is to listen to what our customers need, prepare an action plan, and then deliver. In a sense, our approach is the type of involvement that many software companies have stepped away from. We have an enthusiastic group of engineers and professionals who work with clients to meet their needs.
The full text of the interview appears on the ArnoldIT.com Web site. For more information about Lucid Imagination’s open source search system, you will want to explore the company’s Web site and its blog. In addition, an interview with one of the founders of Lucid Imagination, Marc Krellenstein, and with Eric Gries, a former executive at Lucid Imagination, is available in the Beyond Search archives.
Stephen E Arnold, April 16, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
New Open Source Search Information Service Available
April 16, 2012
Open source search was not a viable option for the enterprise in 2003 when ArnoldIT started work on the first Enterprise Search Report. Stephen E. Arnold wrote two more editions before he decided that proprietary search solutions were becoming “look alikes.” In the ArnoldIT 2011 study, The New Landscape of Enterprise Search, Stephen E Arnold and his editorial team decided not to cover open source search solutions because the sector was moving rapidly and no large players had emerged. Now almost a year after the New Landscape of Enterprise Search, the pace of innovation has increased significantly and there are some significant commercial open source search ventures in the US and elsewhere.
The ArnoldIT editorial team, which consists of librarians and technologists, recommended that we begin the task of identifying important articles to determine if there were sufficient mass to warrant a Beyond Search type of publication focused on open source search. We concluded that there was an increasing flow of information about open source search. Therefore, we want to share this information with others who have an interest in what is shaping up to be a disruptive force in information retrieval.
We want to help document that there is a new approach to enterprise search. The solutions involve the cloud, toolkits, and ready-to-run services available with a mouse click. The vendors pushing forward range from companies which have an established profile in the business community; for instance, IBM and Lucid Imagination. There are some open source search solutions which are not widely known in certain organizations; Xapian and Summa Summix come to mind. In between there are dozens of open source search, content processing, and hybrid services.
ArnoldIT recently completed a study of open source search option. After finishing our research for a client, we decided to move forward on a new information service. OpenSearchNews.com will discuss big data search solutions, including Amazon’s CloudSearch service, Basho Riak, and Constellio. If you are not familiar with these solutions and have an interest in search, you will want to check out OpenSearchNews.com.
The new microsite, now publicly available, publishes Monday through Friday and provides critical commentary, information about products, and highlights additional sources about open source search. The information service will report about the companies, trends, and products which offer an alternative to the seven figure solutions from proprietary enterprise search solutions. The approach of the service will be similar to that taken by researchers who want information that provides essential facts and links to high-value sources of information. The service will provide up-to-date news and analysis about the dynamic market for open source search and will publish Monday to Friday at www.opensearchnews.com. Additional information about the new information service is available on the site’s About page. Keep in mind that we don’t do “real” news. We have more in common with researchers and analysts than those who work for organizations embracing the tenets of Mr. Murdoch.
Recent stories include:
- Enterprise Adoption of Solr Lucene Rises
- In the Future, Enterprise Search Will Be a Service
- Lucid Works 2.0 Attracts Enterprise Suitors
Emily Aldridge, the editor of the publication, is an MLS and expert searcher who demonstrated exceptional capabilities in tracking down information about products and projects with names like Hounder, Oxyus, and Piscator.
Emily Aldridge, editor of the new information service, said:
“Open source search has become a fast-growing segment of the enterprise search and big data markets. The number of companies competing in this segment is growing. Large commercial enterprises are embracing open source and providing useful software to anyone who wants to use it. Two good examples are the contributions of Lucid Imagination and LinkedIn. The Danish government has supported an open source search initiative which provides search features for libraries looking to provide a patron with a single search box for a range of content in different collections.”
The information service will cover cloud solutions, open source search appliances, and mention commercial services which have open source software under the glossy exteriors of products and services from Amazon and IBM. We will also cover related subjects such as proprietary cloud search services. Comments will be accepted, and like other ArnoldIT information services we hope to combine useful information with some pointed observations.
Like Beyond Search, we will roll out new features and functions over time. We plan to use Google’s AdSense to help offset the cost of producing the service. If you want to learn more about the publication, contact us at seaky2000 at yahoo dot com.
Don C. Anderson, Senior Engineer, ArnoldIT, April 16, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Quote to Note: Google Fears for Net Freedom
April 15, 2012
Navigate to “Google’s Sergey Brin: Facebook and Apple a Threat to Internet Freedom.” From the Googler who wanted China to change its internal policies:
Brin said he and co-founder Larry Page would not have been able to create Google if the internet was dominated by Facebook. “You have to play by their rules, which are really restrictive,” he said. “The kind of environment that we developed Google in, the reason that we were able to develop a search engine, is the web was so open. Once you get too many rules, that will stifle innovation.”
There you go. Right from the outfit which has orphaned Web site owners with Panda bites, left users out in the cold with the termination of services like Knol, and the stock play which is designed to leave Messrs. Brin, Page, and Schmidt in control no matter what.
Yowza.
Stephen E Arnold, April 15, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Amazon and the Poobahs
April 15, 2012
I read “What Amazon’s Ebook Strategy Means.” Interesting but a few degrees off center. The main point seems to be that one cannot believe corporate executives. A second point is that corporate executives in publishing should abandon efforts to protect content with digital rights management schemes.
Good start. I find that public statements by anyone require some untangling. “Meaningful use” comments from Administration officials is an example of the difference between what may be meant, what one understands, and what is actually going on.
I also like the definition of three terms. I understand disintermediation. That’s what has happened to corporate libraries when “point and click” interfaces made MBAs and English majors into expert online searchers. There was a cost savings angle too. Even better. I am semi-okay with the definition of monopoly. However, in the online world, monopolies emerge because of economics, human motivation, and the nature of systems to enjoy nodes. Big nodes are often good. Little nodes are okay, but it is tough to make them pay off unless there is a business angle. The point is important because traditional publishing represents nodes from a different time. Online nodes are here, and they squeeze, subsume, and erode nodes from a different era. I don’t think the Vanderbilts and JP Morgans of the past were into this nuance, but if these gentlemen were alive today, the business nuances would be acted upon.
I am not so sure about eh word “monopsomy.” Most buyers follow habitual behavior. This is an aspect of online which is little appreciated. The idea is that once a person online has fallen into a groove, getting out of that groove is tough. No matter how much criticism is aimed at Apple iTunes, try to get most users to change. For that “one click away” baloney. So monopsomy is a five dollar word which simply does not apply to online and user habit.
Armed with these terms, the article asserts:
If the major publishers switch to selling ebooks without DRM, then they can enable customers to buy books from a variety of outlets and move away from the walled garden of the Kindle store. They see DRM as a defense against piracy, but piracy is a much less immediate threat than a gigantic multinational with revenue of $48 Billion in 2011 (more than the entire global publishing industry) that has expressed its intention to “disrupt” them, and whose chief executive said recently “even well-meaning gatekeepers slow innovation” (where “innovation” is code-speak for “opportunities for me to turn a profit”). And so they will deep-six their existing commitment to DRM and use the terms of the DoJ-imposed settlement to wiggle out of the most-favored-nation terms imposed by Amazon, in order to sell their wares as widely as possible.
Several observations:
First, I sure wouldn’t want to try and figure out how to make traditional publishing work in today’s world. I left that sector in the 1990s because the writing was on the wall. Shrinking margins, a shift in media channels, and the quest for blockbusters spoke to me. I am not sure traditional publishing is much more than a chase to find the one book that sells. James A Twitchell documented this a long time ago in Carnival Culture. The blend of online and the carnival are a potent combination.
Second, Amazon itself is vulnerable. The shrinking margins and the increasingly aggressive and somewhat clever behavior tells me that Jeff Bezos and his merry band know that extraordinary measures are required. The race is to capture users and leverage habitual behavior before another company does. The shortest distance between a book reader and habit is low ball prices. The WalMart approach is part of the Google Android play. Buying customers is a time honored retail method. YouTube is buying an audience with free content. Amazon is buying an audience with cheap Kindles and maybe once again cheap books. But Amazon has to pump up the revenue, control costs, and lock in its customers. Tough job.
Third, the content landscape has already shifted. Literacy in the US is a goner for large segments of the populace. Whether it is the tiny sound bite articles in Men’s Journal or the emergence of books which are collections of items, books are becoming something a relatively modest percentage of the 320 million people in the US consume. The same pressure which newspapers and magazines experience applies to book publishers. Look at the emergence of videos instead of white papers. Scary, cheap, easy, and very non-book.
What’s habit got to do with this? Traditional publishers have their habits. Buy low, sell high, and hope for a blockbuster. Online habits are different. Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google are big nodes and each node fosters habitual behavior among its users. Traditional publishing, therefore, is a subset of an online node. Subsets, in may cases, are expendable or have to become luxury items. The online nodes become the arbiters of taste, fashion, and what’s hot, good, or visible. Publishers have this role but for a rapidly decreasing segment of the online universe.
Chasing blockbusters is a tough business. Cutting costs and avoiding financial catastrophe is also a tough job. I am not sure either the publishers or Amazon is up to the task. And DRM? Changing habits is difficult. Isn’t it better to form the habits and use the systems and methods of capitalism than offer advice from the sidelines? The context of online has changed the rules. The old business models are interesting but less useful in the world of online.
Stephen E Arnold, April 15, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Amazon Search and Solr
April 15, 2012
“Search-as-a-Service With Solr and PlatformLayer” put an interesting spin on the Amazon search-as-a-service offering. The article describes putting Solr running on Amazon’s platform layer. The journey was not without some excitement but it did work. You can find step by step instructions at “PlatformLayer: Everything as a Service.” The companion write up is “SolrAAS” which picks up once you have Solr installed.
The article points out that Platform Layer may be a better choice for developers. There is no Amazon lock in, and if you don’t like the way Platform Layer does something, “it’s open source, so you can change it / get it changed.”
Good write up. Recommended.
Stephen E Arnold, April 15, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Kontagent Ksuite Enhanced
April 15, 2012
The Kontagent Blog recently reported on their new enhanced suite of their social/mobile analytics platform in the post “Kontagent’s New Ksuite DataMine Changes Social/Mobile Analytics Game for App Developers.”
According to the article, the enhanced kSuite platform, now includes a data mining option that equips data analysts with unlimited query powers to help social gaming and mobile app developers better engage and monetize users. As one of the only app analytics solutions available on the cloud that allows for big data exploration. It also allows more flexibility and power than ever before.
Jeff Tseng, Kontagent Co-Founder and CEO said:
“Until now, data mining in our market has been largely unaffordable. You had to build or license expensive proprietary software, buy the servers, load the data, and hire engineers to maintain the database. With the kSuite DataMine solution, we are literally changing the game as well as dramatically reducing costs by providing a turnkey, 100% hosted solution with no customer overhead whatsoever.”
As technological progression moves towards apps rather than individual products, Kontagent’s DataMine is certainly a game changer.
Jasmine Ashton, April 15, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
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