The Knowledge Quotient Saucisson Link: Back to Sociology in the 1970s
August 5, 2014
I have mentioned recent “expert analyses” of the enterprise search and content marketing sector. In my view, these reports are little more than gussied up search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing plays. See, for example, this description of the IDC report about “knowledge quotient”. Sounds good, right. So does most content marketing and PR generated by enterprise search vendors trying to create sustainable revenue and sufficient profits to keep the investors on their boats, in their helicopters, and on the golf course. Disappointing revenues are not acceptable to those with money who worry about risk and return, not their mortgage payment.
Some content processing vendors are in need of sales leads. Others are just desperate for revenue. The companies with venture money in their bank account have to deliver a return. Annoyed funding sources may replace company presidents. This type of financial blitzkrieg has struck BA Insight and LucidWorks. Other search vendors are in legal hot water; for example, one Fast Search & Transfer executive and two high profile Autonomy Corp. professionals. Other companies tap dance from buzzword to catchphrase in the hopes of avoiding the fate of Convera, Delphes, or Entopia. The marketing beat goes on, but the revenues for search solutions remains a challenge. How will IBM hit $10 billion in Watson revenues in five or six years? Good question, but I know the answer. Perhaps accounting procedures might deliver what looks like a home run for Watson. Perhaps the Jeopardy winner will have to undergo Beverly Hills-style plastic surgery? Will the new Watson look like today’s Watson? I would suggest that some artificiality could be discerned.
Last week, one of my two or three readers wrote to inform me that the phrase “knowledge quotient” is a registered trademark. One of my researchers told me that when one uses the phrase “knowledge quotient,” one should include the appropriate symbol. Omission can mean many bad things, mostly involving attorneys:
Another one of the goslings picked up the vaporous “knowledge quotient” and poked around for other uses of the word. Remember. I encountered this nearly meaningless quasi academic jargon in the title of an IDC report about content processing, authored by the intrepid expert Dave Schubmehl.
According to one of my semi reliable goslings, the phrase turned up in a Portland State University thesis. The authors were David Clitheroe and Garrett Long.
The trademark was registered in 2004 by Penn State University. Yep, that’s the university which I associate with an unfortunate management “issue.” According to Justia, the person registering the phrase “knowledge quotient” was a Penn State employee named Gene V J Maciol.
So we are considering a chunk of academic jargon cooked up to fulfill a requirement to get an advanced degree in sociology in 1972. That was about 40 years ago. I am not familiar with sociology or the concept knowledge quotient.
I printed out the 111 page document and read it. I do have some observations about the concept and its relationship to search and content processing. Spoiler alert: Zero, none, zip, nada, zilch.
The topic of the sociology paper is helping kids in trouble. I bristled at the assumptions implicit in the write up. Some cities had sufficient resources to help children. Certain types of faculties are just super. I assume neither of the study’s authors were in a reformatory, orphanage, or insane asylum.
Anyway the phrase “knowledge quotient” is toothless. It means, according to page 31:
the group’s awareness and knowledge of the [troubled youth or orphan] home.
And the “quotient” part? Here it is in all its glory:
A knowledge quotient reflects the group’s awareness and knowledge of the home.
Quote to Note: HP and Autonomy
August 5, 2014
I read “HP and Autonomy Bitter Battle.” I found the write up interesting, but I remember my high school Latin teacher offering some phrases to learn. One of them was caveat emptor. According to the Cornell Law Web site, the catchphrase put shoppers on alert when prowling the more interesting shops in 2nd century BCE Rome. The translation which even aspiring and real lawyers learn is:
Let the buyer beware.
The BBC article is less evocative than Milton’s reference to a blue mantle, but it did contain one quote to note for my collection. After explaining the $11 billion deal, the story offers:
The two sides have been at war since HP had to write off most of the purchase price in what now looks like one of the worst deals in corporate history.
I fancy the superlative. The BBC’s position is clearly stated:
What is far from clear amidst the claim and counter claim is whether Autonomy did break any accounting rules in the run up to its sale to HP – and if so, why that was not spotted in the process of due diligence which is a key part of any such deal.
There was one Autonomy when the deal was closed. Prior to the purchase, there were many HP directors, officers, and accountants going over the deal.
I know that Mike Lynch is a pretty bright guy, but was he smart enough to outwit so many folks with green eyeshades, MBAs, and HP calculators?
I have a modest question racing through my mind:
Who was on the HP Board of Directors when the deal was approved?
I may look up the names of this roster of business and technical luminaries some day. I wonder if Meg Whitman recalls who gave the green light for the biggest deal in enterprise search and content processing history?
Even the relatively swift Microsoft paid $1.2 billion for a search company that subsequently was found to have done some fancy dancing with its revenues. HP’s team paid 10 times as much and has become a business school case study for “what now looks like one of the worst deals in corporate history.”
Yikes. Enron displaced?
Stephen E Arnold, August 5, 2014
Music Playlists Inspire Hope For Information Playlists
August 5, 2014
Computers are soulless machines that are programmed to understand our tastes and make suggestions based off them. Face it, though, computers cannot predict change in people’s tastes, because humans have erratic behaviors. How does this relate to music? According to The Next Web’s article “Why We Crave Human-Curated Playlists” music listeners want human made playlists again, because it allows them to discover new music.
“The unique thing about a playlist is how human it is. When you create a playlist, you’re sharing information about yourself. Sharing a playlist allows for others to look into your music tastes and even into your personality. This connection is what makes following artists on services like Spotify seem more emotionally invested. You get to hear music that the artists are inspired by, and what they’re currently jamming to at this very moment.”
A mixture of algorithms and human creation are the key to appealing to people’s tastes for the old mixed with the new. The human element makes music selection more interesting and is what music startups need to consider. It also gives hope to information professionals worried about being replaced with computers. Information professionals can help people find the best content and make it more personalized.
Whitney Grace, August 05, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Video Series Helps Unpack SharePoint
August 5, 2014
Some people love video series for Internet how-tos, and others hate the idea, but for those interested in learning more about SharePoint, the visual can be helpful. Jeremy Chapman has The Garage Series for Office 365 on Channel 9. His episode, “Understanding the New World of Apps for Office and SharePoint” might be helpful to some.
He sums up his latest episode:
“This is a ‘lost episode’ of the Garage Series filmed in New Orleans, host Jeremy Chapman is joined by architect TSP and Office extensibility guru, Richard diZerega, to discuss the new app model for Office and SharePoint. Richard also takes on the challenge to help navigate the culinary options of New Orleans by integrating Web services directly with Office and SharePoint using in-box and custom apps.”
Stephen E. Arnold has made a career out of reporting on all things search. His Web site, ArnoldIT.com, is an aggregator of helpful tips, tricks, and news, all revolving around different aspects of search. His SharePoint coverage is particularly helpful and end users and managers alike may find his reporting a compliment to their SharePoint duties.
Emily Rae Aldridge, August 05, 2014
Attensity Leverages Biz360 Invention
August 4, 2014
In 2010, Attensity purchased Biz360. The Beyond Search comment on this deal is at http://bit.ly/1p4were. One of the goslings reminded me that I had not instructed a writer to tackle Attensity’s July 2014 announcement “Attensity Adds to Patent Portfolio for Unstructured Data Analysis Technology.” PR-type “stories” can disappear, but for now you can find a description of “Attensity Adds to Patent Portfolio for Unstructured Data Analysis Technology” at http://reut.rs/1qU8Sre.
My researcher showed me a hard copy of 8,645,395, and I scanned the abstract and claims. The abstract, like many search and content processing inventions, seemed somewhat similar to other text parsing systems and methods. The invention was filed in April 2008, two years before Attensity purchased Biz360, a social media monitoring company. Attensity, as you may know, is a text analysis company founded by Dr. David Bean. Dr. Bean employed various “deep” analytic processes to figure out the meaning of words, phrases, and documents. My limited understanding of Attensity’s methods suggested to me that Attensity’s Bean-centric technology could process text to achieve a similar result. I had a phone call from AT&T regarding the utility of certain Attensity outputs. I assume that the Bean methods required some reinforcement to keep pace with customers’ expectations about Attensity’s Bean-centric system. Neither the goslings nor I are patent attorneys. So after you download 395, seek out a patent attorney and get him/her to explain its mysteries to you.
The abstract states:
A system for evaluating a review having unstructured text comprises a segment splitter for separating at least a portion of the unstructured text into one or more segments, each segment comprising one or more words; a segment parser coupled to the segment splitter for assigning one or more lexical categories to one or more of the one or more words of each segment; an information extractor coupled to the segment parser for identifying a feature word and an opinion word contained in the one or more segments; and a sentiment rating engine coupled to the information extractor for calculating an opinion score based upon an opinion grouping, the opinion grouping including at least the feature word and the opinion word identified by the information extractor.
This invention tackles the Mean Joe Green of content processing from the point of view of a quite specific type of content: A review. Amazon has quite a few reviews, but the notion of an “shaped” review is a thorny one. See, for example, http://bit.ly/1pz1q0V.) The invention’s approach identifies words with different roles; some words are “opinion words” and others are “feature words.” By hooking a “sentiment engine” to this indexing operation, the Biz360 invention can generate an “opinion score.” The system uses item, language, training model, feature, opinion, and rating modifier databases. These, I assume, are either maintained by subject matter experts (expensive), smart software working automatically (often evidencing “drift” so results may not be on point), or a hybrid approach (humans cost money).
The Attensity/Biz360 system relies on a number of knowledge bases. How are these updated? What is the latency between identifying new content and updating the knowledge bases to make the new content available to the user or a software process generating an alert or another type of report?
The 20 claims embrace the components working as a well oiled content analyzer. The claim I noted is that the system’s opinion score uses a positive and negative range. I worked on a sentiment system that made use of a stop light metaphor: red for negative sentiment and green for positive sentiment. When our system could not figure out whether the text was positive or negative we used a yellow light.
The approach used for a US government project a decade ago, used a very simple metaphor to communicate a situation without scores, values, and scales. Image source: http://bit.ly/1tNvkT8
Attensity said, according the news story cited above:
By splitting the unstructured text into one or more segments, lexical categories can be created and a sentiment-rating engine coupled to the information can now evaluate the opinions for products, services and entities.
Okay, but I think that the splitting of text into segment was a function of iPhrase and search vendors converting unstructured text into XML and then indexing the outputs.
Attensity’s Jonathan Schwartz, General Counsel at Attensity is quoted in the news story as asserting:
“The issuance of this patent further validates the years of research and affirms our innovative leadership. We expect additional patent issuances, which will further strengthen our broad IP portfolio.”
Okay, this sounds good but the invention took place prior to Attensity’s owning Biz360. Attensity, therefore, purchased the invention of folks who did not work at Attensity in the period prior to the filing in 2008. I understand that company’s buy other companies to get technology and people. I find it interesting that Attensity’s work “validates” Attensity’s research and “affirms” Attensity’s “innovative leadership.”
I would word what the patent delivers and Attensity’s contributions differently. I am no legal eagle or sentiment expert. I do like less marketing razzle dazzle, but I am in the minority on this point.
Net net: Attensity is an interesting company. Will it be able to deliver products that make the licensees’ sentiment score move in a direction that leads to sustaining revenue and generous profits. With the $90 million in funding the company received in 2014, the 14-year-old company will have some work to do to deliver a healthy return to its stakeholders. Expert System, Lexalytics, and others are racing down the same quarter mile drag strip. Which firm will be the winner? Which will blow an engine?
Stephen E Arnold, August 4, 2014
The Cloud: Flecked with Scattered Twinkie-Like Information
August 4, 2014
I read “Cloud Revenue Jumps, Led by Old Computing Titans.” If you have a hard copy of the “real” journalism Mt. Parnassus, you can find this story in the August 4, 2014 version delivered to Kentucky. Online, the story carries an August 3, 2014 date and, if you are quick, you may be able to locate it at http://nyti.ms/1xUXLw9.
I found the write up fascinating because the guts of the story pivot on three firms engaged in selling consulting services: Synergy, Gartner, and IDC. The facts of the article appear to come from the financial reports and other public statements of Amazon, IBM, and Microsoft. As real news goes, relying on “experts” and somewhat broad groupings of financial information continues to make the wheels of commerce go round. I like it. The confection is an excellent Twinkie-like approach to a diaphanous, hard to define topic—the cloud.
This cookbook does not explain how to whip up interest in consultant reports, the activities of large companies, or the specifics of some ingredients. An oversight it seems.
There were a couple of passages in the write up that I found thought starters.
Here’s the first item, a quote from a Synergy expert:
It’s not just talk—they are backing it up with a lot of investment.
I presume this is a reference to Amazon’s spending which seems to have put the company in the company of bears, IBM’s bet the farm approach to its tactics to keep the company an investment my grandmother would love, and Microsoft which is fresh from its knock-it-out-of-the-park mobile phone and Windows 8 initiatives.
A second passage begins “The so called magic quadrant…” and ends with the paragraph beginning “Amazon is still the star.” In between this atta boy for Gartner’s work is an interesting grammatical construction:
This year, helped by the [IBM] acquisition of Soft Layer, a cloud start up, and its own internal investment, it [IBM] has moved sharply to the right and higher thought it is not yet in the leaders area—the vision is strong, according to Gartner, but the executive still lags a bit.”
I am not trained in poetry, although I think some of the search analysts are, indeed, English majors. But I find these points remarkable:
- In a report by experts, IBM has moved. Now did IBM move or did an expert move IBM. The suggestion that IBM can move its $100 billion hulk around a “magic quadrant” drew a yellow highlight from me. I suppose I could have written, my yellow highlighted moved from the table to the paper and marked a yellow line, but that leaves out the who doesn’t it?
- I like the idea that an acquisition and internal development trigger the movement of IBM.
- In a moment of hedging, the New York Times’ writer added that Gartner analyzed IBM and found that its execution lagged. Okay, so IBM cannot deliver cloud whatever very well.
Third, I noted the disclaimer paragraph:
Measurements in the cloud marketplace are tricky. Companies define their cloud businesses differently. And the big companies do not report their cloud revenue or profit separately, although they do occasionally make statements.
High fives all around because no one knows much about what “cloud” means and the companies are not particularly generous with facts. The flow of baloney, however, appears to have caught the attention of the “experts” and the real journalists.
Please, read the original because it is a tribute to the public relations folks who labored to create this cloud stuff.
My interest is, as you may know, search. Now search has moved to the cloud, and there are some examples. The problem is that hard data about the ease with which the services can be deployed, the costs of the system over time, and the amount of customization required to deliver an acceptable service are sparse, not available, or made up.
Two observations:
Search from the cloud seems to be small potatoes. Sure, there are search services available from Amazon, and I suppose one can assume that the billion dollar bet on Watson will be cloud friendly someday. Microsoft cloud search is best experienced first hand. Fire up Windows 8.1 and run a query. You can see how the system deals with local, SkyDrive (once OneDrive), and Web content. A money maker for sure I assume.
I like certain time sharing services. However, I do not like Hollywood style naming and I do not like unsubstantiated assertions presented as fact. If you find this type of Twinkie satisfying, gorge yourself on the mid tier consulting firms’ outputs. Let me know how reality matches up to a sector where measurements are tricky and facts are not available.
Stephen E Arnold, August 4, 2014
IDG: Another Unexpected Action
August 4, 2014
I received an email from IDG, owner of the mid tier consulting outfit IDC.
The most remarkable item in this marketing email was the offer for information about “Web Hosting: How to Break Free from Servers.” I clicked on the link and saw this title:
The information is a “white paper” with the title “Hosting Is Dead.” Now if I go to a car dealer with an ad for a car at a special price and the salesman says, “Oh, we don’t have that auto. I can sell you this higher priced auto” I get annoyed. Some folks would call this bait and switch. But the IDG “white paper” is offered for free, presumably by a company keen to get sales leads.
Well, I filled in the information, using one of my special accounts, and this is what I received after accepting the cookie from IDG:
So what’s the white paper after jumping through these hoops?
The white paper is 17 pages in length. The basic idea in the rather colorful white paper is that I should not purchase do it yourself hosting. The choice, the authors argue, is buy Pantheon.
There are “real” numbers backing up this assertion:
Well, sort of real numbers. There is not pricing for the Pantheon solution. I did some poking around and found this Web page on the Pantheon Web site at https://www.getpantheon.com/pricing:
I don’t want to misread this information so check it out yourself. I would point out that these questions flashed through my mind:
- Why not put the prices in the white paper? Why didn’t IDG present some “real” analysis in their email to me? Why did I come away from this clumsy marketing thinking, “Isn’t this a variation on the Schubmehl affair?”
- Isn’t it possible to use a similar service at a far lower price point via SquareSpace?
- What are the benefits of Drupal compared to Hippo CMS or a similar solution?
There is one important take away for me from this reading, clicking, and exploring. The notion that IDG and its units are delivering McKinsey- or Bain-grade information has been put to rest.
IDG is, in my mind, closer to the content marketing outfits trying to outguess Google.
This would be amusing if it were not such a large window into the ways in which IDG and its units are pursuing revenue by presenting sales silliness as high value information.
Oh, not a peep about the search functionality in Pantheon solution. Not surprising because I don’t see the difference among the hosting outfits that are “dead” and the approach suggested by Pantheon.
Stephen E Arnold, August 1, 2014
Germany Considers Treating Google More like a Regulated Monopoly
August 4, 2014
An article on Venturebeat is titled Germany to Google: Maybe You Should be Treated Like an Electric Company. A German governmental agency is proposing the possibility of regulating Google like they would a utilities monopoly. This continues the trend of Europe distrusting the search giant and figuring out how to regulate it. European governments are not only concerned about fair competition though. The article states,
“And European leaders increasingly understand that foreign tech companies are eating their lunch, and not with a good glass of wine in some outdoor café. A recent internal document from Deustche Telecom, for instance, reportedly acknowledged that the European information and telecommunications industry is now dominated by American and Asian firms. Additionally, the new president-elect of the European Commission has promoted home-grown European technology for the continent, with the digital economy being his chief focus.”
Only recently Germany criticized the outcome of the ECC’s inquiry into Google’s practices for being “too soft on the company.” Although Google did not offer a comment for the piece, Germany’s proposal will certainly not be welcomed by Google, a company built on variable rate pricing that is opaque. How serious Germany is about pursuing their regulations remains to be seen.
Chelsea Kerwin, August 04, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
How to Get Wisdom from the Crowd, Divide by Confidence
August 4, 2014
The article titled Forget the Wisdom of Crowds, Neurobiologists Reveal the Wisdom of the Confident on MIT Technology Review engages with new research on collective opinions in a group of people. The concept of the wisdom of the crowd posits that a group of people might be better able to form a correct opinion than an individual expert. Does this sound wrong to you? The article states,
“This phenomenon is commonplace today on websites such as Reddit in which users vote on the importance of particular stories and the most popular are given greater prominence. However, anyone familiar with Reddit will know that the collective opinion isn’t always wise…
It turns out that if a crowd offers a wide range of independent estimates, then it is more likely to be wise.”
Once biased is introduced to a crowd, however, there opinion is much more likely to be “stupid.” Scientists believe that by separating confident thinkers from more sheep-like thinkers allow for a greater chance of the groups arrival at wisdom. Anyone who has played a trivia game on a team already knows that the most confident person is often trusted over other hesitant players. But what happens when this notion is applied to search and retrieval? Scientists are still working on applying this information to real world scenarios.
Chelsea Kerwin, August 04, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Are HP, Google and IDC “Out of Square”?
August 2, 2014
Editor’s note: These three companies are involved in search and content processing. The opinion piece considers the question, “Is management unable to ensure standard business processes working in some businesses today?” Links have been inserted to open source information that puts some of the author’s comments in context. Comments about this essay may be posted using the Comments function for this blog.
Forgetting to Put Postage on Lots of Letters
I read “HP to Pay $32.5 Million to Settle Claims of Overbilling USPS.” (Keep in mind you may have to pony up some cash to access this article. Mr. Murdoch needs cash to buy more media properties. Do your part!)
The main point of the story, told by “real” journalists, is that the company failed “to comply with pricing terms.” The “real” news story asserts:
The DOJ also alleged H-P made misrepresentations during the negotiation of the contract with the USPS regarding its pricing and its plans to ensure it would provide the required most favored customer pricing.
I suppose any company can overlook putting postage on an envelope. When that happened to me in my day of snail mail activity, my local postmistress Claudette would give me a call and I would go to the Harrod’s Creek post office and buy a stamp.
I am no big time manager, but I understood that snail mail required a stamp. If you are a member of the House or Senate, the rules are different, but even the savvy Congressperson makes sure the proper markings appear on the absolutely essential missives.
My mind, which I admit is not as agile as it was when I worked at Halliburton Nuclear Utility Services, drew a dotted line between this seemingly trivial matter of goofing on an administrative procedure and the fantastic events still swirling around Hewlett Packard’s purchase of Autonomy, a vendor of search and content processing software.
A number of questions flapped slowly across my mind:
- Is HP management becoming careless with trivial matters like paying $11 billion for a company generating about $800 million in revenue and forgetting to pay the US post office?
- Is the thread weaving together such HP events as the mobile operating system affair, the HP tablet, the fumbling of the Alta Vista opportunity, and the apparent administrative goofs like the Autonomy purchase and this alleged postage stamp licking flawed administrative processes?
- What does the stamp sticking, Autonomy litigating, and alleged eavesdropping say about the company’s “git ‘er done” approach?
The attitude may apply to confident senior managers with incentives to produce revenue. Image source: http://profileengine.com/groups/profile/420722222/larry-the-cable-guy-for-president
I don’t think too much about Hewlett Packard. I do wonder if HP is an isolated actor or if companies with search interests are focusing on priorities that seem to be orthogonal to what I understand to be appropriate corporate behavior. One isolated event is highly suggestive.
But what do similar events suggest? In this short essai, I want to summarize two events. Both of these are interesting. For me, I see a common theme connecting the HP stamp licking and the two macro events. The glue fixing these in my mind is what seems to be a failure of management to pay attention to details.
But first, let’s go back in time for a modest effort penned by Edmund Spenser.
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