Entertainment Needs and Personality Drive Facebook Visits
July 5, 2012
A study published earlier this month in the Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media suggests that time spent on Facebook correlates strongly to personality type.
Motivations behind frequent visits may vary, but the study shows that much of what causes people to flock to the site can be traced back to personality and a simple need to be entertained. A recent article on WebProNews titled, “New Facebook Study Reveals Motivation Behind Facebook Visits,” elaborates on the study, commenting on possible motivational factors of participants. We learn in the article:
“Looking at motivational factors that could encourage individuals to spend time on Facebook, the researchers found that entertainment and passing time, along with information seeking, to be the top driving forces for visiting the social site. […]
While self expression was mentioned in the study a possible factor for visiting Facebook, limitations of the design kept the authors from formulating any theories on how it actually played into the time spent.”
Although many Facebook frequenters, like myself, may claim the attraction to the site is maintaining and building relationships, this simply does not prove to be true. The entertainment motive is repeatedly shown to be the most powerful predictor of how much time users spend on the social media site.
Andrea Hayden, July 5, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
Google Taps R&D in Israel
July 5, 2012
Eric Schmidt, speaking recently at a conference in Tel Aviv, was full of praise for Israel’s engineers, Haaretz reports in “Google Chairman Eric Schmidt: Israel is a ‘Tech Miracle’.” Google’s development centers there are the company’s most efficient, he said, and are perpetually growing. Reporter Lior Kodner writes:
“Speaking at a Tel Aviv conference called ‘Big Tent,’ Schmidt said that the quality of Israel’s engineers is very high, not least due to the country’s universities and the training acquired in the army. He also praised local salespeople as among the best in the world, saying they continue to contribute to the company’s profits.
“‘We love Israel,’ Schmidt said, drawing applause from the crowd.”
Schmidt touched on several other topics in his talk. The leader spoke about his company’s China problems, emphasizing Google’s anti-censorship stance. Regarding the role of technology in the Arab Spring, Schmidt insisted credit belongs to the people who used it, not to the tech companies. (Was anyone asserting otherwise?) In answer to whether Google will snap up a newspaper or ramp up content production, he responded that the company is satisfied with linking to other people’s work. “Producing content is difficult”, he said. So there is a realm the company won’t take on; good to know.
The Google chief also shared his views on innovation. Success lies in trying things, he believes, which means you will sometimes fail. Forget about the failures (presumably after learning from them),and move forward. Good advice.
Cynthia Murrell, July 5, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
Protected: The Federal Government Turns to Litigation Software
July 5, 2012
Exalead Two Years after the Sale
July 4, 2012
I was looking at my Overflight page for Exalead, the search system acquired by the French “systems” company Dassault in mid 2010. I have not run across Exalead in my work, but I have moved “beyond search.” A number of companies once dominant in enterprise search have been nudged out from under the microscope by outfits which are triggering more attention here in Harrod’s Creek. To put this comment in context, let me mention several firms: Attivio, Artirix, Digital Reasoning, Elasticsearch, Ikanow, Lucid Imagination, Polyspot, Quid, and Sphinx to pluck a few from the “hot company queue” on one of my infamous 4×6 hot pink note cards.
We maintain some public Web pages which make it easy to see at a glance how much coverage a particular vendor gets. You can find the splash page for Overflight on ArnoldIT.com and the Exalead page here.
A snippet of the Exalead information on my Overflight service at http://arnoldit.com/overflight/search/report.php?name=exalead
The news focuses quite understandably on Dassault Systèmes, the parent company. The content push is in the area of managing manufacturing information. What is interesting is that Dassault now faces some new competition in this space. Check out Inforbix for one example.
The blog posts are even more fascinating. Exalead is following other search vendors with webinars. I have expressed my personal webinar fatigue and my annoyance at the stream of “invitations” to join a forward thinking executive. I will learn new things and the time will be well spent. I don’t buy it. I can read more quickly than I can absorb serial conversation. But that’s just me.
The second thing I noticed was information about the company’s winning an award. I have seen a number of similar announcements. Recognition is important, but my question was, “How many people were in the competition?” and “How were winners selected?” I have not heard of LT Innovative or its award, but that may be my limitation.
Third, I saw a link to a blog post which further links to information which explains how to build an “SBA in 10 minutes.” An “SBA” is a search based application. The idea is that most organizations have had it with proprietary search systems. In order to get out of a fouled nest, vendors have worked up language that suggests “finding” without using the scarlet phrase “enterprise search.” My question, “Is it really possible to build a real application in a real 10 minutes?” Heck, I can’t get MailChimp to output text without weird fonts in less than 15 minutes. I even struggled to get a Microsoft PowerPoint on my iPad 3. Fortunately one of the goslings had set up a Dropbox account and that worked. Total time: 20 minutes from start to finish.
What is missing from the flow of information about Exalead is information about major account wins. We try to highlight some of the important deals which we learn about; for example, “Microsoft Snags a Big Search Project.”
An Ode to Databases
July 4, 2012
The Damien Katz blog recently published a piece on the importance of databases, not unlike a love letter, called “Why Database Technology Matters.”
After rambling on for several paragraphs about how he finds databases so fascinating, Katz starts to narrow into his thesis which is that databases are one of the most significant advancements of humanity. They are as important as telecommunications and the Internet, as well as libraries (the first non-digital database).
After stating this point, Katz then goes on to discuss the databases created by IBM, Google, and Oracle. Katz writes:
“When IBM was at the absolute height of its power, they were the richest, most powerful company on the planet. They primarily sold mainframes for a lot of money, and at the core of those mainframes were big database engines, providing a big competitive advantage their customers gladly paid for.
Google has created a database indexing of the internet. They are force because they found ways to find meaning in the massive amounts of information already available. They are a very visible example of changing the way humanity thinks.”
This piece makes some interesting points regarding the impact that databases have had on our society. I admire Katz’s passion for the subject.
Jasmine Ashton, July 4, 2012
Sponsored by IKANOW
Engaging SharePoint Administrators with Business Knowledge and Experience
July 4, 2012
At the SharePoint Solutions Team Blog, Ricky Spears suggests some skills that server administrators can benefit from in his post, “The Missing Pieces in Most SharePoint Server Administrators’ Skill Sets.” Spears says that in his experience, Server Administrators should have a combination of three skill sets: business knowledge and experience, SharePoint knowledge and experience from a business perspective, and how to configure and administer SharePoint. The author expands on the first skill:
SharePoint integrates with every area of a business: sharing information, creating information, collaboration, information discovery, business intelligence, business process automation, and social interaction. The more a SharePoint Admin knows about your business (both generally, the specific day-to-day operations, and short-term and long-term goals) the better prepared she will be to configure SharePoint to support the needs of your business.
Spears’s emphasis on business knowledge may be because many organizations overlook these important skills. Spears suggests that Server Administrators should shadow employees and spend more time with managers to get a complete picture of the company goals.
The light read provides some basic ways to beef up your existing structure. To also strengthen your SharePoint system, consider Fabasoft Mindbreeze. Part of the full suite of solutions is the information pairing feature. Here is a highlight:
Our information pairing technology makes you unbeatable. Information pairing unites enterprise information and Cloud information. This results in a complete overview of a company’s knowledge – the basis for your competitive advantage – allowing you to act quickly, reliably, dynamically and profitably in all business matters.
Give your employees and Server Administrators quick and efficient access to business information so users can find, share, and reuse valuable knowledge. Read more at Mindbreeze, where they seem to have the benefits of a proper installation down pat.
Philip West, July 4, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Walmart Suffers Loses Its Innovation and Data Arm
July 4, 2012
Gigaom’s Eliza Kern reported on a significant loss from Walmart’s technology arm in the article “WalmartLabs Loses Kosmix Founders.”
According to the article, after a year of working in WalmartLabs as the innovative and data arm of the retail giant, Kosmix co-founders Venky Harinarayan and Anand Rajaraman have announced that they are leaving to “take time off from the industry.”
As a social media startup, after being acquired by the retail giant in 2011, Kosmix’s ability to aggregate social media and information about a particular topic allowed Walmart to analyze large sets of data and predict the buying habits of customers.
When explaining the goal behind WalmartLabs last Novermber, Harinarayan said:
“At Walmart Labs, we’re building a big and fast data group to combine store data with social media data in some meaningful way. For example, a Wal-Mart buyer in Arkansas doesn’t know the optimal time to stock football merchandise in Wisconsin. That buyer can look to the social streams to see when people in that region are tweeting about football or their favorite teams. Monitoring social media can even help Wal-Mart find breakout products.”
It looks like Walmart has some big shoes to fill in its technical line up. Hopefully the next group will stay longer than a year.
Jasmine Ashton, July 4, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
The Demands of PLM for Manufacturers Today
July 4, 2012
As the global economy becomes more competitive, resources more sparse and stakeholders more demanding it is no wonder that PLM is having to step up their game to offer more. A recent PC Quest article, “Accelerating Innovations in Product Design”, explains how with emerging technologies, especially 3D, PLM providers are able to offer more to a manufacturing community needing more by the minute.
As the article explains,
“Today, product definition resides not just within an individual company, but also across an extended enterprise, including suppliers, partners and customers. PLM has traditionally existed within the walls of an organization. Now companies are integrating supply chain network with their PLM systems to get visibility into the entire gamut of processes involved. The core of PLM today is to integrate manufacturing applications with business apps.”
When one really boils down PLM solutions data management is the key to a successful integration of processes and elimination of waste and duplication. Inforbix, a leader in the PLM solutions industry describes its apps as “…integrated cloud solutions for manufacturing companies that tackle everyday tasks such as finding, reusing, and sharing product data without the overhead of traditional data management systems.”
Catherine Lamsfuss, July 4, 2012
Useful Resource Courtesy of Autonomy
July 4, 2012
Autonomy stars in its own slide show explaining big data, we learn in eWeek’s “Enterprise Applications: How Autonomy’s Private Cloud Tackles Big Data, Analytics.” The slide show is reproduced in the article, and it does a good job of breaking down the increasingly influential phenomenon, starting with the basics. For example, the introductory slide explains:
“Big data is comprised of structured data, which is data that fits cleanly into spreadsheets and databases, and unstructured data, which is human-generated information . . . . Unstructured ‘diverse data’ now makes up more than 90 percent of the world’s data, and it is the fastest-growing form of information. Just as importantly, this ‘human information’ is where the interesting things happen. This is where customers share their experiences with a brand and indicate their buying preferences. This is where teams of corporate lawyers look to find evidence of fraud and compliance violations.”
Clear and succinct—gotta love it. The slides contains some helpful graphics, too, and include comparisons to help wrap one’s head around the colossal numbers involved. It also talks up Autonomy’s big-data expertise, but that is to be expected. I would recommend it as a resource for explaining the matter to the uninitiated or confused.
Autonomy, founded in 1996 and now owned by HP, offers a full range of cloud-based solutions that use Autonomy’s IDOL to tame mind-boggling amounts of unstructured data. The technology grew from research originally performed at Cambridge University, and now serves prominent public and private organizations around the globe.
Cynthia Murrell, July 4, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
Is Trouble Looming for Facebook?
July 4, 2012
The Next Web recently reported on a recent decline in Facebook unique users in the article “Comscore: Facebook’s Uniques in the United States Are Slipping.”
According to the article, comScore, Inc. found that Facebook is shedding unique users in the United States and this could easily snowball into a huge revenue loss for the social network. Between the months of March and May, unique users went from 158.93 million to 158.01 million.
Even though the decline is less than 1%, those looking to invest in Facebook are expecting it rapid growth, rather than slight declines.
The article states:
“The company has had a very rough time since its initial public offering, slipping in market value, with some calling its flotation scandalous for one reason or another. Facebook has been battered with negative opinion pieces in force since then. However, recently, the company found a new floor in the market, and is currently valued at roughly $68 billion.
Perhaps the largest threat to Facebook is if its users lose attraction with the site, heading elsewhere for their interactions. If that happens, Facebook will command fewer eyeballs, and thus, fewer dollars.”
It is difficult to determine whether or not Facebook has staying power or if it will just become another myspace. In my opinion, it has done an excellent job of continuing to evolve with the onslaught of mobile technology and will most likely continue to do so in the future.
Jasmine Ashton, July 4, 2012
Sponsored by IKANOW
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