Publishers Out Of Sorts…Again
July 20, 2015
Here we go again, the same old panic song that has been sung around the digital landscape since the advent of portable devices: the publishing industry is losing money. The Guardian reports on how mobile devices are now hurting news outlets: “News Outlets Face Losing Control To Apple, Facebook, And Google.”
The news outlets are losing money as users move to mobile devices to access the news via Apple, Facebook, and Google. The article shares a bunch of statistics supporting this claim, which only backs up facts people already knew.
It does make a sound suggestion of traditional news outlets changing their business model by possibly teaming with the new ways people consume their news.
Here is a good rebuttal, however:
“ ‘Fragmentation of news provision, which weakens the bargaining power of journalism organisations, has coincided with a concentration of power in platforms,’ said Emily Bell, director of the Tow Center at Columbia university, in a lead commentary for the report.”
Seventy percent of mobile device users have a news app on their phone, but only a third of them use it at least once a week. Only diehard loyalists are returning to the traditional outlets and paying a subscription fee for the services. The rest of the time they turn to social media for their news.
This is not anything new. These outlets will adapt, because despite social media’s popularity there is still something to be said for a viable and trusted news outlet, that is, if you can trust the outlet.
Whitney Grace, July 20, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
The Bestest Enterprise Search Diagram Ever. Really.
July 19, 2015
I like the word “bestest.” It is so right for diagrams that summarize the complex nature of search. The write up “The Best Enterprise Search Diagram You’ve Ever Seen” is a fetching smile to attract me the person who has never seen a better diagram ever to order a special report. What does the diagram look like? Here’s a not too legible version, but it is close enough for horseshoes:
The pink boxes are contributing activities. The red boxes in the middle of the diagram are direct search management tasks, and the red box in the gray rectangle is the total experience of search. Have at it. Let me know how you fair with your strategy tasks. Also, fill me in on how “search strategy” meshes with the location of the search box. Just askin? I am eager to hear how the search log insight is going to work. I like insight.
For those following this diagram, may I offer a suggestion: Look for a lateral arabesque within your organization or get a Subway sandwich franchise.
Stephen E Arnold, July 19, 2015
Another the End of Article with Some Trivial Omissions
July 19, 2015
Far be it from me to find fault with an economics essay published by the British open source, online hip newspaper The Guardian. I want to point you at “The End of Capitalism Has Begun.” Like Francis Fukuyama’s end of book, the end seems to be unwilling to arrive. Note: if you find that the article has disappeared online, you may have to sign up to access the nuggets generated by The Guardian. Another alternative, which is pretty tough in rural Kentucky, is to visit your local convenience store and purchase a dead tree edition. Do not complain to me about a dead link, which in this blog are little tombstones marking online failures.
There is some rugby and polo club references in the article. The one that I circled was the reference to Karl Marx’s “The Fragment on Machines” from his thriller The Grundrisse, which connoted to me “floor plans.” But, my German like my math skills are not what they used to be. Anyway, who am I kidding. I know you have read that document. If not, you can get a sniff at this link.
According to the Guardian, the point of the fragment is:
he [Marx] had imagined something close to the information economy in which we live. And, he wrote, its existence would “blow capitalism sky high.
The end of capitalism?
Another interesting item in the essay is the vision of the future. At my age, I do not worry too much about the future beyond waking each morning and recognizing my surroundings. The Guardian worries about 20175. Here’s the passage I highlighted:
I don’t mean this as a way to avoid the question: the general economic parameters of a post capitalist society by, for example, the year 2075, can be outlined. But if such a society is structured around human liberation, not economics, unpredictable things will begin to shape it.
Why raise the issue?
Now to the omission. I know this is almost as irrelevant as the emergence of a monitored environment. What about the growing IS/ISIS/Daesh movement? The Greek matter is interesting to me because if the state keeps on trucking down the interstate highway its has been following, the trucks will be loaded with folks eager to take advantage of the beach front property and nice views Greece affords.
I noted a number of other points away from which the essay steered its speeding Russian Zil. How does one find information in the end of world?
I think about information access more than I ponder the differences between Horatio in Hamlet and Daniel Doyce in Little Dorrit. To get up to speed on Daniel Doyce, check out this link.
Like Fukuyama’s social analysis, this end of may point to speaking engagements and consulting work. The hope is that the author may want these to be never-ending. Forget the information access and the implications and impacts of IS/ISIS/Daesh.
Let’s hope online search works unless it is now the end of that too.
Stephen E Arnold, July 19, 2015
Big Data Vendor List
July 19, 2015
I scanned the Big Data list. I won’t linger too long. You can too. (Apologies to Robert Frost and “The Pasture.” The clarity part I will leave to you.)
The list appears in this article: “42 Big Data Startups.” One reader added 16 other companies. I am unclear. I tried to “wait to watch the water clear” but it did not.
Main thoughts:
- What’s a start up? A number in the companies in the list have been around for a while; for example, Talend was founded in 2005. Let’s see, despite the muddy water, that works out to a decade.
- Why is there just one company with “search” solutions on the list. The search-aware outfit is Datastax. But the company’s information access capability was not mentioned. The list totters as a result like the “little calf that’s standing by the mother.”
- What’s the rationale for clumping in an earthworm type laundry list services, software, applications that sit on top of data management systems, and outfits which focus on a niche like geolocation or search engine optimization? There are no horses, sheep, or pigs in the Frost poem. At least, I did not discern any nor did the person who came along.
Listicles can be interesting, humorous, and informative. Lists without logic are not particularly useful unless one is eager to demonstrate the importance of specified criteria and sort of useful classification of items in the list.
Stephen E Arnold, July 19, 2015
Whither IHS Goldfire Search
July 18, 2015
Short honk: I followed the Invention Machine for a while years ago. Developed to display systems and methods which could solve a problem, the Invention Machine was acquired by IHS, a Swiss Army Knife outfit.
The company made a push for Goldfire, the Invention Machine packaged as an enterprise search solution, a couple of years ago.
Curious about its market position?’
I navigated to the Goldfire blog and saw that 13 months have elapsed since the last post. That article was “Unlock Corporate Knowledge to Avoid Repeating Past Mistakes.”
The post stated:
Have you invested a lot of time, effort and money in file management systems yet still can’t find relevant engineering answers?
Good question. Perhaps IHS has come to understand that finding revenues from patent-centric technology can be tricky. On the other hand, the company’s revenues from search may be so massive that IHS does not have time to update its blog.
The individual whom I understood was one of the leaders of the IHS search pack is, according to LinkedIn, responsible for Virgil Visions, which is an independent video company, which according to Vimeo is owned by Mr. Belfiore. I could not determine who the IHS top search boss is. Use the comments section to help fill my addled goose’s brain.
Is IHS another in the long line of non search oriented outfits to gain access to information not available before it owned a search system?
Stephen E Arnold, July 18, 2015
dtSearch and Encrypted PDFs
July 18, 2015
Short honk: The Little Engine That Could information access system is dtSearch. Long a fave with Microsoft centric folks looking for an alternative for keyword search, dtSearch has added some oomph. “New dtSearch Release Enhances Support for Encrypted PDFs.” According to the write up:
The release expands these document filters to directly support a broader range of encrypted PDFs, covering PDF files encrypted with an owner password up to 128-bit RC4 and 128-bit and 256-bit AES.
For more information about what can be processed, navigate to www.dtsearch.com.
Stephen E Arnold, July 18, 2015
Google: The Forever Rising Revenue Starship
July 18, 2015
I read “Google Adds a Record $60 Billion to Its Stock in One Day.” According to this write up and dozens of others, the GOOG has broken a barrier. The company is, like a deep space probe of money, into the Forever Rising.
I read:
Google Inc. just gave its investors the biggest present ever. The search-engine giant added $65 billion to its market capitalization today, more than the size of Hewlett-Packard Co. The surge, following earnings that topped analyst estimates, is the biggest one-day gain in value ever for a U.S. company, according to data compiled by S&P Dow Jones Indices. Apple Inc. held the previous record, with a $46.4 billion surge in April 2012.
Will legal hassles, cost cutting, the surge in mobile usage, and the challenges of making money in China and Russia slow the Forever Rising, the new monetary interstellar vehicle?
Absolutely not. Lawyers, even countries, cannot exert sufficient gravitational pull to cause the money craft to veer from its trajectory.
Diamonds Are Forever. Oh, that’s the movie thing.
Stephen E Arnold, July 18, 2015
Short Honk: Open Semantic Search Appliance
July 17, 2015
Several people have asked me about Open Semantic Search. I sent a couple of emails to the professional identified on the DNS record as the contact point. No response yet from our inquiry emails, but this is not unusual. People are so darned busy today.
The Open Semantic Search organization is offering an open semantic search appliance. The appliance is not a box like the much loved Google Search Appliance or the Maxxcat solutions. The appliance is virtual.
The explanation of the data enriching system is located at this link. The resources required are modest and based on the information I scanned, the open semantic search appliance is a solution to many information access woes.
I will be able to search, explore, and analyze. Give the system a whirl. We will add it to our list of tasks. We assume it will present the same exciting challenges as other Lucene/Solr solutions. The addition of semantics will add a new wrinkle or two.
If you are into semantics and open source, the system may be for you.
Stephen E Arnold, July 17, 2015
Amazon: A Hungry Female Tarantula Amidst Digital Bananas
July 17, 2015
I read “The Book World Need Not Fear Amazon.” The essay tips its fedora to Amazon’s 20th year in business. I am reminded: “It [Amazon] kick started the ebook revolution.” Revolutions are good, aren’t they?
The main idea is that publishers are not too thrilled to find the Amazon tarantula in their now mostly empty book stores. The revenue from backlists is no longer the olive groves they once were.
The write up states:
Some publishers believe that, essentially, Bezos’s company despises them: they are unnecessary intermediaries between authors and the reading public. And then there are the working conditions in Amazon’s warehouses, and the company’s tax avoidance … The news that the European commission is investigating Amazon’s business practices – among which is the stipulation that rivals should never receive more favorable terms – has brought cheer.
But the kicker is this statement:
Perhaps Amazon will destroy literary culture. Or perhaps in 20 years’ time we’ll find it hard to remember, as we do with Microsoft, why we were so afraid of it.
Fascinating. The problem is not what Amazon has done. The problem is what book publishers were unable to do. The emergence of a digital book powerhouse comes as a result of publishers who were content and still are thrilled to operate with water wheels and oxen as sources of power.
The Amazon plugs in to a market that no longer reads by candlelight. The fear is warranted, but I don’t have too much sympathy for those who are increasingly disintermediated and marginalized.
Stephen E Arnold, July 17, 2015
Google Patent Search: Wake Up Call for Derwent and TotalPatent
July 17, 2015
Patent documents are not something that high school students read. To be more accurate, patent documents are confections of legalese and engineering incantations read by those [a] paid to read them or [b] folks who have a dog in the fight.
The Google was not into patents in its Backrub days. That changed over time. Now the Google is inventing its way to a Great Wall of China patent fence.
Along the way, the Google hit upon the idea that some patent documents could be scanned and made searchable. The public version of the service became available in 2006. You can explore the collection at Google Patent Search.
After nine years of Google style evolution, the system includes US, European, and World Intellectual Property Organization documents.
The system returns results without ads. I ran a query for Sergey Bring and received this list of results. I noticed that some documents do not show a thumbnail of the document image. In my experience, some functions work; others do not. Glitch or feature?
I read “Google’s New, Simplified Patent Search Now Integrates Prior Art And Google Scholar.”
The write up points out that Google Patents includes information germane to the user’s query from Google Scholar and “results of Prior Art.” I read:
The idea is that the new patent search will be easier to use both by experts in the field as well as the general public to look for patents and related materials. Given the rising interest in safeguarding IP among developers and founders who may have never had to consider patents much before, this could prove to be especially useful.
When I click on a patent, I see additional options:
The “find prior art” button displays:
The service is likely to get some tire kicking by those interested in patents.
My take on the new service is that the Google may have an opportunity to generate some fresh revenues.
Patent searches conducted on the for fee services from Thomson Reuters and Reed Elsevier can be expensive. There are also some useful “free” services such as FreePatentsOnline.com.
The Google with a bit of effort can add some bells and whistles and charge for them. For the “free” crowd, the Google can continue to integrate open source content, not just books and references to scholarly literature. Prior art often has a generous embrace.
For the for fee crowd, the Google can add the types of entity functions, among other advanced features, that the for fee services offer.
In short, the Google may be looking at the hundreds of millions of revenue available from those with a must have motivation and add some functions that make advertisers sit up and take notice. Maybe the USPTO would consider the Google as a source for its search technology.
I see this development as an important one because the GOOG can make some waves in a market most humans know little about. Think of the ads the Google can run for student debt advice.
My question remains, “Why has Google been so slow to take advantage of market niches in which complacent competitors and providers of free services have been slow to innovate?”
Stephen E Arnold, July 17, 2015
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