Wikipedia Travel Site Anticipated
August 8, 2012
Rumor has it that Wikipedia is about to branch in a new direction. CNet News asks, “Wikipedia to Debut Revolutionary Travel Site?” At the time reporter Chris Matyszczyk wrote this article, the new venture had not been confirmed by the company. It is said that the site might be, like Wikipedia itself, free of advertising. The write up tells us:
“It is also reportedly to be bolstered by the arrival of 31 out of 48 administrators of Wikitravel, which does bear more than a passing resemblance to Wikipedia.
“Wikitravel is owned by Internet Brands — a group that includes FlyerTalk and FrugalTravelGuy.
According to Tnooz.com, there has been something of a contretemps between Internet Brands and certain factions at Wikitravel. There has been criticism, for example, of a lack of technological investment.”
Matyszczyk also speculates that the new site could enjoy the same prominent placement in Google results that Wikipedia has captured. He notes that getting trustworthy travel information online is challenging. Is that review really from a hotel guest, or written the hotel itself? Or was it penned by a competing establishment?
It is unclear how a Wikipedia travel site would be any more reliable than existing travel sites, but perhaps the organization has something up its sleeve. We’ll see; Wikipedia has disappointed before.
Cynthia Murrell, August 8, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
A Periodical for Linguists?
August 8, 2012
What would a linguistics magazine look like? Back in 2007, Language Log’s Mark Liberman created a spoof cover of the hypothetical “Linguistics Today,” which he reproduces in his recent post, “Linguistics: the Magazine.” He shares two other parody covers for magazines that might be aimed at language nerds, Mignon Fogarty’s “Grammarian” and Jon McWhorter’s “Werd.” Lots of fun, but Liberman isn’t entirely kidding. He proposes:
“Jokes, parodies, and illustrations aside, I really do think that this is a good idea. A semi-ironic supermarket-magazine approach might work — especially for cover stories — but the most plausible core market, I think, would be more a upscale and intellectual one. In addition to those cover stories about the juicier aspects of interpersonal communication, there could be sections dealing with language variation and change, speech and language technology, literary analysis, political language, usage advice, language and gender, linguistic history, advertising language, forensic linguistics, scrabble, whatever . . .”
The write up mentions that the online publication option would probably be “easiest, cheapest, and sanest.” I, for one, would subscribe to such a publication, online or in print. Our burning questions: What system will be detailed in the Road&Track-style exploded diagram? And, more importantly, who will be the person featured in the foldout?
Cynthia Murrell, August 8, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Statistician Reveals Misconduct in the Psychology Field
August 8, 2012
So, it is not just the financial sector in which some folks play fast and loose. Discover Magazine declares, “Another Psychologist Resigns After a Data Detective’s Investigation.” The story follows a piece writer Ed Yong did the previous month on Dirk Smeesters, the psychologist whose misconduct in two papers doomed him to resign from the Rotterdam School of Management at Erasmus University in the Netherlands.
Smeesters’ misbehavior might never have been caught if it weren’t for the work of statistician Uri Simonsohn, an independent party who took it upon himself to follow up on the data behind Smeesters’ papers. Now, another psychologist has felt the sting of Simonsohn’s scrutiny; one Lawrence Sanna has resigned following an investigation at his former university. The article reveals that Sanna was:
“. . . a social psychologist formerly at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and more recently at the University of Michigan. Sanna worked on judgment, decision-making, and more recently morality. One of his latest papers – apparently showing that the link between physical altitude and moral behaviour was more than just metaphor – was widely covered.
UNC confirmed that they had launched a review, and University of Michigan confirmed that Sanna left his post effective 31 March 2012. But there the details stop.”
Yes, apparently North Carolina privacy law prohibits UNC from releasing the results of their investigation. Details are scarce, but the resignation itself is enough to cast a shadow of irony over Sanna’s emphasis in judgment, decision-making, and morality.
Cynthia Murrell, August 8, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Cloud Security Problems? No Big Problems. Just Hiccups
August 7, 2012
I was included to dismiss the blues sung by Steve Wozniak. You can get the gist of his concern about the cloud in “Apple Co Founder Wozniak Sees Trouble in the Cloud.” I mean the fellow is a genius, but he does have a handful of idiosyncrasies. I have sipped the cloud nectar from Amazon, Apple, Google, Hewlett Packard, IBM, and sundry others. Then I read “How Apple and Amazon Security Flaws Led to My Epic Hacking.” If true, cloud security can be fiddled with a phone call. Here’s the segment I noted:
But what happened to me exposes vital security flaws in several customer service systems, most notably Apple’s and Amazon’s. Apple tech support gave the hackers access to my iCloud account. Amazon tech support gave them the ability to see a piece of information — a partial credit card number — that Apple used to release information. In short, the very four digits that Amazon considers unimportant enough to display in the clear on the web are precisely the same ones that Apple considers secure enough to perform identity verification. The disconnect exposes flaws in data management policies endemic to the entire technology industry, and points to a looming nightmare as we enter the era of cloud computing and connected devices.
Maybe Mr. Wozniak is correct? Is clear thinking enabled with Segway polo and conversations among the Aftershocks’ team mates?
Stephen E Arnold, August 7, 2012
Sponsored by Augmentext
Social Media and Business: Boom or Bust?
August 7, 2012
Now here’s a Gartner prediction which may not resonate with Olympic athletes kicked out of the games due to their social media activities.
In fact, according to EMSNow’s article “Gartner Predicts That Refusing to Communicate by Social Media Will Be as Harmful to Companies as Ignoring Phone Calls or Emails Is Today” lacking in social media skills can swiftly plunge a business into a downward spiral.
When companies do not acknowledge online customer complaints… well, hades hath no fury like the customer scorned. Ignoring one unhappy comment can evolve into a social media carnival where the company clown gets pie thrown in their face all over the internet.
According to the article, there are 3 easy steps to take to prevent an epic social media failure:
- Participate. It is important that organizations don’t let a fear of someone saying something bad about them stop them from participating in social media.
- Don’t assume all comments require the same level of attention. Develop an appropriate response for the different types of interaction your business faces.
- Plan for an increase in social commentary and adapt communications practices to cope. This will require changes to job descriptions, performance metrics and business processes.
Deleting an angry comment may seem like the easy solution, but no good will come of it. Consumers want satisfaction and a polite communication can start paving the way to reasonable resolution in most cases.
This gosling does not need a crystal ball to predict that social media will continue to have a major effect on businesses in the future.
Jennifer Shockley, August 7, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Can the Lenovo-EMC Tie Up the Storage Market?
August 7, 2012
An interesting new partnership just joined the ranks of teams created in 2012. This one may have the potential to impact the industry with their complimentary companies. Techworld’s article “Lenovo and EMC join Forces on Storage, Servers” talks about the agreements made and what is on the table for the future.
The duo already has their wheels turning with production plans:
“As part of the alliance, the companies have formed a server technology development program meant to improve Lenovo’s x86 servers, which will be embedded into select EMC storage systems over time. Lenovo will also manufacture and resell EMC’s networked storage products to customers in China, and eventually other markets.”
“Under the partnership, Lenovo and EMC are also establishing a joint venture to sell network-attached storage (NAS) systems to small and medium businesses.”
Lenovo is well on their way to becoming the world’s top PC vendor this year and already dominates the market in China. However, EMC is the global top vendor for external disk and open networked disk storage systems. The combination has the potential to rock the market if they play their cards right.
In the competitive market of today a partnership like this can flourish, or one can falter. This partnership has the potential to dominate, but what happens if Lenovo brings out its own line of storage hardware tricked up with open source search functionality? We are confident EMC has this well in hand.
Jennifer Shockley, August 7, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Track the Output of SharePoint Fast Search Crawl Logs
August 7, 2012
Do you need to pull SharePoint Fast Search crawl logs? We do. We read with interest an item on Microsoft’s TechNet Web site. “Get SharePoint Search Crawl Logs” provides an almost ready-to-run script which will accept a search service name and display the associated crawl logs. If there is a crawl log with an error, the script flags that instance. To script can be edited so that it returns different information from the crawly logs. In order to make this tweak, the $crawlLogFilters can be edited.
SharePoint Fast usually does an excellent job of processing content. However, some documents can be malformed or an unexpected network issue can arise. As a result, certain content can be skipped or ignored. A visual inspection of crawl logs is not practical when SharePoint is processing large volumes of content.
If you want to view the crawl logs, TechNet provides a wealth of information. A good place to begin your investigation is in the TechNet Library. If you want to expOrt the SharePoint 2010 search crawl logs, you will find a useful Powershell script in Dave Mc’s Blog in the article “Export the SharePoint 2010 Search Crawl Log.” MSDN also provides information about exporting SharePoint 2010 search crawl logs. To access this information, navigate to the SharePoint Escalation Team’s blog.
Search Technologies’ team of experienced engineers can provide automation tools which eliminate the need to search for solutions to common problems. To learn more about our SharePoint and FFast Search implementation services, navigate to http://www.searchtechnologies.com/microsoft-search.html or contact us at info@searchtechnologies.com.
Iain Fletcher, August 7, 2012
Sponsored by Augmentext
Discussion on Plans for SharePoint 2013 Migrations
August 7, 2012
In “Migrating to SharePoint 2013,” Chris Wright speculates on the new SharePoint release, potential adoption rates, Cloud versus on-premises deployments, and third party options. The author points out that those users of SharePoint Online have a relatively clear upgrade path without much to worry about. However, he adds this about on-premises users:
On-premises users of SharePoint have a much bigger decision to make, and more traditional upgrade options. Early commentators suggest that the full locally installed version of SharePoint has seen slightly less focus than the cloud version. The biggest areas of improvement are web content management, enterprise content management and search.
Wright also suggests that if all else fails, look into a third party migration tool for an easier solution. Third party tools should not be overlooked when adding value to your SharePoint system. We like the feedback we’ve seen about Fabasoft Mindbreeze. Here you can read about the mobility solutions from Mindbreeze:
Fabasoft Mindbreeze Mobile makes company knowledge available on all mobile devices. You can act freely, independently and yet always securely. Irrespective of what format the data is in. Full functionality: Search results are displayed homogenously to the web client with regards to clear design and intuitive navigation.
And with information pairing of your cloud and on-premise data, users can easily access important business information on the go from their smartphones and tablets. The well-established and cost-effective solution is worth a second look at http://www.mindbreeze.com/.
Philip West, August 7, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Connecting Engineering to Other Departments through Data Management
August 7, 2012
One of the greatest problems, historically, impacting manufacturing enterprises is the lack of connectivity between engineering and other departments. Product lifecycle management (PLM) solutions have helped diminish that problem but haven’t eliminated it entirely. A recent Concurrent Engineering article, “PLM and Product Development Connects Engineering and Service”, discusses how PLM solutions need to bridge the gap between engineering and other departments.
As the article explains it,
“Developments in PLM now look to decrease the gap between engineering and service parts of an organisation. This makes collaboration and data sharing more convenient and more sustainable. It will reduce reliance on meetings and manual feedback procedures because the PLM system will automatically feed data across departments. Extending the scope of PLM across an organisation increases serviceability and creates a more unified approach to product development.”
Inforbix is a PLM provider that approaches data management differently. As their Website explains,
“Inforbix captures engineering information (eg. CAD data, bill of materials, information from PDM, and other enterprise systems) and makes it available for people outside of engineering. Inforbix product data apps are intuitive and easy to use. It’s a “Google-like” approach that makes finding and sharing engineering and manufacturing data fast and easy.”
As more enterprises demand their PLM solutions do just what Inforbix described above we will see an increase in PLM providers following suit.
Catherine Lamsfuss, August 7, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext.
Craigslist Alters Its Licensing
August 7, 2012
There is a new twist in free classified ads, and this one may cause a few posters’ to pull a muscle. Baligu’s article “Craigslist Now Asks for Exclusive License When Posting” advises us to take a look at the small print when posting on Craigslist in the future.
The popular post up anything site has changed the way users submit content and it looks like they took lessons from some unlikely sources.
In order to complete the process one clicks on the ‘continue’, but now that simple gesture confirms that craigslist is the exclusive licensee of your content. You have officially given them the exclusive right to enforce copyrights against anyone copying, republishing, distributing or preparing derivative works without Craigslist’s consent.
Sound familiar? For comparison, here is Yelp, Facebook and Google’s language, in that order:
“As such, you hereby irrevocably grant us world-wide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sub licensable, transferable rights to use Your Content for any purpose.”
“You grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook.”
“When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, reproduce, modify, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content.”
See the similarities? Once you click that button, your content is no longer ‘your’ content. One could almost say the sites we utilize, actually utilize us more. Ya gotta love that community spirit of the internet. For some reason…I am not cheering.
Jennifer Shockley, August 7, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
