Protected: Will Lawyers Become Obsolete?
June 22, 2012
Spammers Target Social Networks
June 21, 2012
It is no surprise that the increased use of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter is decreasing the amount of “quality” content being created. According to the recent BGR article “Social Media Spam: 40% of Facebook, Twitter, and Other Social Networks are Spam” excellent information may be in the minority sooner than we think.
According to the article, one of the reasons that social networks are decreasing in quality content is due to the fact that they are being increasingly targeted by spammers. Apparently, social spamming is much more effective than email spamming.
According to Mark Risher, chief executive officer of anti-spam software company Impermium:
“Spammers are responsible for creating as much as 40% of the accounts on popular social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. Social spam can be a lot more effective than e-mail spam.The bad guys are taking to this with great abandon. Roughly 8% of messages sent on social networks are spam according to Risher, and that figure has doubled in the past six months, the spam expert estimates.”
While social networking sites are trying to increase their efforts to stop spammers, it doesn’t seem to be making much of an impact. Tough to search spam or what is defined as spam.
Jasmine Ashton, June 21, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
Thomson Reuters Touts Its Innovative Knack
June 21, 2012
Here’s an unusual announcement from the giant Thomson Reuters. The Sacramento Bee informs us that “Thomson Reuters Delivers Efficient Enterprise Access to Industry Standards with Advanced Techstreet Subscriptions.” Techstreet, part of Thomson Reuters’ Intellectual Property & Science division, provides industry codes and standards worldwide. The press release emphasizes:
“The Techstreet Subscription service, which provides unlimited access to a controlled set of documents for multiple users in one or more locations, now has faster and more responsive search options to locate documents quickly. These include suggested search, filtered search and the ability to save searches for future use. Users can also learn of newly added, relevant industry standards with a new document notification center for managing content alerts. A redesigned user interface offers a clean and modern look for easy navigation.”
This subscription angle is an interesting marketing approach– standards documents plus traditional search. Perhaps we will see more such methods in the future.
Techstreet emerged to take advantage of advanced Web technologies to rapidly deliver industry codes and standards to engineers and technical professionals. Thomson Reuters leverages their status as the world’s most trusted news source to supply critical information to professionals in financial, legal, accounting, science, and media markets. The company is headquartered in New York city, but also maintains major operations in London and Eagan, Minnesota.
Cynthia Murrell, June 21, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
Numbers Do Not Lie: Big Things, Small Packages
June 21, 2012
Big things come in small packages, and that is the challenge desktop internet is currently facing when compared to mobile devices. The mismatched growth in mobile usage and monetization now casts a shadow that looms over the internet industry according to Mary Meeker Explains the Mobile Monetization Challenge. Mobile usage hit 10% of the total global Internet traffic as of May 2012. That may not sound like much, but it was only five percent at that time last year.
According to Meeker, cost and ecommerce are playing a big role as:
“There are lots of places to find evidence of the mobile monetization gap. Effective desktop CPMs are five times the price of mobile Internet CPMs in the U.S.: $3.50 versus $0.75. And companies like Pandora, Tencent and Zynga currently report that average revenue per user is as much as five times lower on mobile.”
“Mobile e-commerce is 8 percent of the total e-commerce market in the U.S. Today, payments for and within applications account for 71 percent of revenue versus 29 percent for mobile advertising”
Right now there are over 1.1 billion global mobile 3G subscribers as compared to the 2.3 billion global internet users. The mobile device offers desktop accessibility with the added convenience of portability at a reasonable price. When you consider all the details, it isn’t surprising the hard number results favor the smaller package.
Jennifer Shockley, June 21, 2012
EU Data Laws Threaten Enterprise on the Cloud
June 21, 2012
Various cultures hold differing opinions on the nature of information and its implications on security. The United States has earned a reputation as increasingly difficult to deal with, as the quest for national security has led to regulations that create hardships for software developers and users alike. However, there is now talk about the implications of new European Union laws on Cloud platforms and enterprise software. IT World gives a full report in, “EU Data Laws are Latest Threat to Cloud.”
Kevin Fogerty, the author, introduces the issue:
European data-sovereignty laws requiring international companies to keep data on customers in the customer’s own country are not only causing headaches for database managers, they’re holding back adoption of cloud computing in many large companies according to a story in GigaOm yesterday. Corporate IT managers have been wary of European data-privacy laws since the early 2000s, when requirements designed to limit the degree to which corporations could move or exploit the personal data of customers came into vogue on the Continent.
Europe is clearly still struggling with the idea of national sovereignty versus sovereignty of the union. It is bleeding over into IT development and causing headaches. However, we are also told that the United States is driving some of these regulations and subsequent frustrations:
More recently, fears of U.S. prosecutors subpoenaing private data on European customers in European countries has accelerated the priority of data sovereignty laws as well.
So for multi-national companies who truly need an enterprise solution that will allow the transfer and access of data across country borders, what is to be done? For now, it may be that some of the legalities of the new regulations need time to be vetted and moderated. In the meantime, it would be wise for organizations to choose a smart third-party solution that can increase the efficiency of their SharePoint platform without running up against these regulations.
Fabasoft Mindbreeze is a great solution for organizations on either side of the Atlantic. For customers in the United States, Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise guarantees the highest level of security. For European users, Mindbreeze was truly written with EU standards in mind; therefore insuring compliance without added stress or workload.
Daniel Fallmann addresses some of the concerns surrounding the use of the US Patriot Act to access international data:
During the development of Fabasoft Mindbreeze we focused 100% exclusively on European values – not one single bit of American software product is to be found. The US Patriot Act doesn’t apply. Not using US American manufactured software ensures that US authorities have no right to access European Cloud data.
While most users need not be concerned with the Patriot Act and its potential implications for unauthorized access of data, some European customers will rest assured knowing that Fabasoft Mindbreeze engineers products with EU standards in mind, ensuring fewer headaches.
Emily Rae Aldridge, June 21, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Hurdles and all, Amazon Stays on Track
June 21, 2012
Amazon is making leaps and bounds on the fast track and the article How Amazon Saves a Ton of Money, gives a glance at their running history. The ecommerce titan claims their evolving and the only certainty is the focus will remain on their customers.
How does one achieve 152 million active customers and enough warehouse space to completely fill 313 football fields? According to Amazon, you focus relentlessly on the customer. Happy consumers generate more traffic, which attracts more sellers. The more sellers the better product selection which enables lower cost structure and pricing. Since 2002 their customers remain happy enough to increase average sales volume by 5 billion per year.
With all their focus on the consumer, Amazon lacks in some areas:
“On a 102-degree day, 15 workers in an Amazon warehouse collapsed from the heat, six of whom needed to be rushed to the emergency room.”
“Despite a $5 billion cash reserve, Amazon donates nothing to charities — if an employee wants to deduct a donation from his or her paycheck, they have to pay an additional 6% fee.”
“Amazon buys books at up to 45% off the cover price causing small book publishers to lose over $3 per transaction.”
Facebook, Microsoft and EBay may have happier employees but when it comes to keeping customers happy, Amazon left them at the starting line. The sited article gave a binocular view of Amazon’s race towards success and some of the hurdles their leaping.
Jennifer Shockley, June 21, 2012
Center of Excellence to Benefit Japanese Enterprises
June 21, 2012
In an effort to introduce product lifecycle management (PLM) solutions to a larger Japanese market Geometric Limited, a PLM provider with a strong foothold in Asia, and DIPRO, a Japanese, a CAD/CAM/CAE solutions provider located in Japan, have joined forced to create a Center of Excellence (CoE). According to the article, “Geometric and DIPRO Partner to Tap the Japanese Market”, on MCAD Café, the CoE is the fruition of a long partnership with a lot of promise and possibility.
According to the article,
“Under the agreement, the two companies would jointly offer PLM, CAD/CAM/CAE, and engineering services. To further strengthen the quality of services to customers, the companies have agreed upon an exchange of human resources, whereby Geometric’s employees will take technology expertise to Japan, while DIPRO’s employees will bring in automotive domain knowledge in context of Japanese culture to the offshore centre.”
PLM providers are not only moving into new countries which traditionally have not fully utilized PLM solutions; they are also moving into non-traditional industry. Previous to the economic bust of only a few years ago PLM was reserved for a few select industries (automotive, manufacturing, etc…) and the wealthiest enterprises among the select. Thanks to economic challenges and the advent of the cloud PLM has moved to more industries, most notably healthcare and finance, and to smaller enterprises. Companies like Inforbix work hard to ensure that small and midsized enterprises are able to receive the same PLM services that once were financially impossible. Through cloud technology and a shift in expectations PLM is now available to most companies around the world.
Catherine Lamsfuss, June 21, 2012
Yippy and MuseGlobal Get Hitched. Yippy. Er, Hooray.
June 21, 2012
Take a unified search company known for its clustering technology (Yippy) and mix with a leading provider of content integration and data virtualization services (MuseGlobal). The results, according to a recent press release, will be a powerful unified access to a huge data cloud of curated content.
Carnegie Mellon University developed the award-winning deep research engine now known as Yippy.com. Yippy acquired the software in 2010, along with a perpetual license for advanced enterprise software solution Velocity. That’s where Yippy’s patented clustering methods come from.
MuseGlobal claims to maintain the largest and most versatile library of content connections in the world. The company has built a fully documented source factory that monitors, maintains, and updates connectors constantly, boosting sustainability and scalability. Muse Smart Connectors are available out-of-the-box for content federation and harvesting, in any format and across any location.
The press release declares:
“The merger of Yippy and MuseGlobal combines two wholly synergistic companies that bring together an exclusive and vast range of resources and abilities that no other search or information-based company in the world possesses including majors such as Google, Microsoft and HP/Autonomy. The combined companies will create an information cloud that will represent a significant shift in the business of enterprise, vertical and consumer search with unlimited consumer and commercial uses. The Companies’ registered trademark ‘Welcome to the Cloud’ embodies its combined data virtualization initiatives.”
The merger will increase the number of issued and outstanding common shares from 53 million to approximately 67 million. MuseGlobal was founded in the UK in 1998, and became a commercial entity in 2001. The company is now based in San Francisco, CA. Yippy makes its home in Fort Meyers, FL, and prides itself on its strong Web search privacy stance—it neither tracks nor save users’ information, including search history. The merged company will employ about 50 workers in four countries.
Cynthia Murrell, June 21, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
Google. Evil? Interesting Question.
June 21, 2012
Here’s an interesting take on Google’s role in the information ecosystem: eWeek explains that “Google, the Ultimate Private Intelligence Agency, Is Raising EU’s Ire.” Comparing Google’s info gathering tactics to those of government intelligence agencies, the article reveals that European Union investigators are concerned about users’ privacy. Writer Wayne Rash asserts that, unlike the FCC, Europe’s Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés “has some actual teeth,” so Google may have cause for concern. The article explains:
“The matter was made worse when Google defied the request of the EU government to delay the implementation of its privacy policy until it could confirm that Google was in compliance with European laws. Google simply went ahead and did what it wanted.
“It’s worth noting that the privacy rules in the EU are quite a bit different from those in the U.S. A private company simply cannot share personal information with anyone. They cannot collect information without specific permission, and personal information cannot be held or transmitted beyond the borders of the EU.”
To continue and heighten the sky-is-falling theme, popular among pundits and poobahs, AlterNet describes “The Terrifying Ways Google Is Destroying Your Privacy.” You can’t go wrong with predictions of doom, right? This piece by David Rosen declares:
“Through the spectacle of post-modern capitalism, the private has become public, the property of the corporation that owns your keystrokes. The digital revolution has morphed the personal into an electronic commodity; the electronic commodity is the exchange currency of an encroaching, 21st-centurydigital feudalism.”
Feudalism, huh? Perhaps that means we can look forward to the return of knights in shining armor and dragons, too. I can’t wait!
Cynthia Murrell, June 21, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
Protected: Serviant Webinar: Predictive Analysis
June 21, 2012
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