On Embedding Valuable Outside Links
July 17, 2015
If media websites take this suggestion from an article at Monday Note, titled “How Linking to Knowledge Could Boost News Media,” there will be no need to search; we’ll just follow the yellow brick links. Writer Frederic Filloux laments the current state of affairs, wherein websites mostly link to internal content, and describes how embedded links could be much, much more valuable. He describes:
“Now picture this: A hypothetical big-issue story about GE’s strategic climate change thinking, published in the Wall Street Journal, the FT, or in The Atlantic, suddenly opens to a vast web of knowledge. The text (along with graphics, videos, etc.) provided by the news media staff, is amplified by access to three books on global warming, two Ted Talks, several databases containing references to places and people mentioned in the story, an academic paper from Knowledge@Wharton, a MOOC from Coursera, a survey from a Scandinavian research institute, a National Geographic documentary, etc. Since (supposedly), all of the above is semanticized and speaks the same lingua franca as the original journalistic content, the process is largely automatized.”
Filloux posits that such a trend would be valuable not only for today’s Web surfers, but also for future historians and researchers. He cites recent work by a couple of French scholars, Fabian Suchanek and Nicoleta Preda, who have been looking into what they call “Semantic Culturonomics,” defined as “a paradigm that uses semantic knowledge bases in order to give meaning to textual corpora such as news and social media.” Web media that keeps this paradigm in mind will wildly surpass newspapers in the role of contemporary historical documentation, because good outside links will greatly enrich the content.
Before this vision becomes reality, though, media websites must be convinced that linking to valuable content outside their site is worth the risk that users will wander away. The write-up insists that a reputation for providing valuable outside links will more than make up for any amount of such drifting visitors. We’ll see whether media sites agree.
Cynthia Murrell, July 17, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Hadoop Rounds Up Open Source Goodies
July 17, 2015
Summer time is here and what better way to celebrate the warm weather and fun in the sun than with some fantastic open source tools. Okay, so you probably will not take your computer to the beach, but if you have a vacation planned one of these tools might help you complete your work faster so you can get closer to that umbrella and cocktail. Datamation has a great listicle focused on “Hadoop And Big Data: 60 Top Open Source Tools.”
Hadoop is one of the most adopted open source tool to provide big data solutions. The Hadoop market is expected to be worth $1 billion by 2020 and IBM has dedicated 3,500 employees to develop Apache Spark, part of the Hadoop ecosystem.
As open source is a huge part of the Hadoop landscape, Datamation’s list provides invaluable information on tools that could mean the difference between a successful project and failed one. Also they could save some extra cash on the IT budget.
“This area has a seen a lot of activity recently, with the launch of many new projects. Many of the most noteworthy projects are managed by the Apache Foundation and are closely related to Hadoop.”
Datamation has maintained this list for a while and they update it from time to time as the industry changes. The list isn’t sorted on a comparison scale, one being the best, rather they tools are grouped into categories and a short description is given to explain what the tool does. The categories include: Hadoop-related tools, big data analysis platforms and tools, databases and data warehouses, business intelligence, data mining, big data search, programming languages, query engines, and in-memory technology. There is a tool for nearly every sort of problem that could come up in a Hadoop environment, so the listicle is definitely worth a glance.
Whitney Grace, July 17, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Tips for Enterprise Search Vendors When They Disappoint Their Venture Pals
July 16, 2015
The video is not about enterprise search vendors. But I found the video via a recommendation from a person who spends endless hours with a dragline for odd ball management advice.
I clicked on the link to “Disappoint Someone.” The video is interesting because it provides the sort of advice that is guaranteed to create some excitement combined with consternation.
The video omits one tip which I have found helpful now that I am retired.
Make a video and send the person whom you wish to disappoint a link.
Works really well, but if you are into the face to face thing with funders who want revenue and profits now. Go for it.
I assumed the creator of the video would have included this tip. Their video delivered the goods for me.
Stephen E Arnold, July 16, 2015
Google Revenue Tweaks: Mobilegeddon the New Beginning
July 16, 2015
I read “Google’s Mobilegeddon Moves Hitting Marketers, Sites.” The write up reports an action by Google that I had not considered. The ballyhooed mobilegeddon hit my radar months ago.
Here’s the big news, according to ZDNet:
there’s a 25 percent gap between what they pay for clicks vs. what they get. “Parity or click through rates are growing faster than cost per clicks,” said Gaffney [presumably an Adobe principal wizard]. “We’re not even close right now. To see the gap widening is troubling.”
My view: Get used to it, gentle reader. The GOOG has a number of strings, but some of the chunkiest and most curvaceous in terms of revenue have been on “The Biggest Loser.”
As a result, the revenue mavens at the Google are beefing up other revenue streams.
Adobe is cheerleading for Facebook, but seems to be quite placid when the Zuck wants Flash to be disappeared.
Google, Zuck, Adobe: What’s this mean pour vous. Spend more, get less. Enjoy the excitement of the new feature “World That Click Streams Abandoned.”
Stephen E Arnold, July 16, 2015
Microsoft Takes SharePoint Criticism Seriously
July 16, 2015
Organizations are reaching the point where a shift toward mobile productivity and adoption must take place; therefore, their enterprise solution must follow suit. While Office 365 adoption has soared in light of the realization, Microsoft still has work to do in order to give users the experience that they demand from a mobile and social heavy platform. ComputerWorld goes into more details with their article, “Onus on Microsoft as SharePoint and OneDrive Roadmaps Reach Crossroads.”
The article states Microsoft’s current progress and future goals:
“With the advent of SharePoint Server 2016 (public beta expected 4Q 2015, with general availability 2Q 2016), Edwards believes Microsoft is placing renewed focus on file management, content management, sites, and portals. Going forward, Redmond claims it will also continue to develop the hybrid capabilities of SharePoint, recognizing that hybrid deployments are a steady state for many large organizations, and not just a temporary position to enable migration to the cloud.”
Few users chose to adopt the opportunities offered by Office 365 and SharePoint 2013, so Microsoft has to make SharePoint Server 2016 look like a new, enticing offering worthy of being taken seriously. So far, they have done a good job of building up some hype and attention. Stephen E. Arnold is a longtime leader in search and he has been covering the news surrounding the release on ArnoldIT.com. Additionally, his dedicated SharePoint feed makes it easy to catch the latest news, tips, and tricks at a glance.
Emily Rae Aldridge, July 16, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Search the Snowden Documents
July 16, 2015
This cat has long since forgotten what the inside of the bag looked like. Have you perused the documents that were released by Edward Snowden, beginning in 2013? A website simply titled “Snowden Doc Search” will let you do just that through a user-friendly search system. The project’s Description page states:
“The search is based upon the most complete archive of Snowden documents to date. It is meant to encourage users to explore the documents through its extensive filtering capabilities. While users are able to search specifically by title, description, document, document date, and release date, categories also allow filtering by agency, codeword, document topic, countries mentioned, SIGADS, classification, and countries shared with. Results contain not only full document text, pdf, and description, but also links to relevant articles and basic document data, such as codewords used and countries mentioned within the document.”
The result of teamwork between the Courage Foundation and Transparency Toolkit, the searchable site is built upon the document/ news story archive maintained by the Edward Snowden Defense Fund. The sites Description page also supplies links to the raw dataset and to Transparency Toolkit’s Github page, for anyone who would care to take a look. Just remember, “going incognito doesn’t hide your browsing from your employer, your internet service provider, or the websites you visit.” (Chrome)
Cynthia Murrell, July 16 , 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Quality Peer Reviews Are More Subjective Than Real Science
July 16, 2015
Peer reviewed journals are supposed to have an extra degree of authority, because a team of experts read and critiqued an academic work. Science 2.0 points out in the article, “Peer Review Is Subjective And The Quality Is Highly Variable” that peer-reviewed journals might not be worth their weight in opinions.
Peer reviews are supposed to be objective criticisms of work, but personal beliefs and political views are working their way into the process and have been for some time. It should not come as a surprise, when academia has been plagued by this problem for decades. It also has also been discussed, but peer review problems are brushed under the rug. In true academic fashion, someone is conducting a test to determine how reliable peer review comments are:
“A new paper on peer review discusses the weaknesses we all see – it is easy to hijack peer review when it is a volunteer effort that can drive out anyone who does not meet the political or cultural litmus test. Wikipedia is dominated by angry white men and climate science is dominated by different angry white men, but in both cases they were caught conspiring to block out anyone who dissented from their beliefs. Then there is the fluctuating nature of guidelines. Some peer review is lax if you are a member, like at the National Academy of Sciences, while the most prominent open access journal is really editorial review, where they check off four boxes and it may never go to peer review or require any data, especially if it matches the aesthetic self-identification of the editor or they don’t want to be yelled at on Twitter.”
The peer review problem is getting worse in the digital landscape. There are suggested solutions, such as banning all fees associated with academic journals and databases, homogenizing review criteria across fields, but the problems would be far from corrected. Reviewers are paid to review works, which likely involves kickbacks of some kind. Also trying to get different academic journals, much less different fields to standardize an issue will take a huge amount of effort and work, if they can come to any sort of agreement.
Fixing the review system will not be done quickly and anytime money is involved, the process is slowed even further. In short, academic journals are far from being objective, which is why it pays to do your own research and take everything with a grain of salt.
Whitney Grace, July 16, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Google, Its Strategy, and Cost Cutting: Excitement Looms
July 15, 2015
I will not mention Loon balloons. I promise.
Navigate to “Google Product Strategy: Make Two of Everything.” The write up points out that Google’s strategy is a variation on the Doublemint twins trope. If one is good, two are better. More better. Just like Vonage.
The write up points out:
The company’s actions have shown it doesn’t really believe in focusing on a single solution to a problem, regardless of how much easier that would make things for users. It has to deal with external competitors in all sorts of areas, and Google seems to see no reason why competition can’t also come from within—Google products competing with other Google products.
Internal competition good. Revenue? Well, now that is the one point I found lacking in the write up. Doublemint twins are expensive. Imagine being a frat rat trying to woo both of the Doublemint twins. Twice the cost. Exponentiate the management hassles. Yikes. Talk about complexity between classes and on weekends. I stayed in the library. A simple college life for me.
Google has for more than a decade done many things. The Googlers have many interests. I understand. I have many interests, but I have learned at age 70 that one must bring discipline to make any progress.
After many years of effort, Google’s business model is based on the GoTo/Overture pay-to-play approach to traffic. Google, if I recall the Yahoo settlement regarding GoTo/Overture methods, did not invent its approach to online advertising.
What has played out over the last decade has been online advertising generating 90 to 95 percent of Google’s revenue.
The wild and crazy stuff has not, in my opinion, has not altered Google’s dependence on the online advertising business model.
How much more profitable would Google have been if it did not do the two of everything method? How much money would the company generate for stakeholders if some of the moon shots were put back in the hanger and the lights turned out.
Solving death. Great idea. Live forever. Well, maybe. Frittering away dough on YouTube and creating a mass of unfindable and often forgettable video content.
The write up mentions Android and Chrome. Google Glass and the wonky Google watch warrant a mention. The author identifies more than 10 additional duplications.
In my opinion, the big message is a lack of discipline. Now there is a new CFO who wants to cut costs. See “The five things Wall Street Wants from Google’s new CFO.” The write up also misses the mark.
Wall Street wants the revenues from the good old days. Go back to the hockey stick financials from 2004 to 2007. The company is, as Steve Ballmer said, a one-trick pony.
Google might consider taking a gander at the Sakai’s concept of bunsha. Those Xooglers are cranking out innovative outfits once they leave the GOOG. Some of these are going to do the hockey stick thing. (Sorry, no company names in a free blog, gentle reader.)
What’s happening is that Google is embracing the procedures of a high school math club. Now you can ponder the Loon balloons, elevators to space, etc. etc.
Stephen E Arnold, July 15, 2015
Pew, Pew, Phew: Bad News for Real Publishers
July 15, 2015
I am not a real publisher. I am mostly retired. I live in Harrod’s Creek, Kentucky. Google thinks I am in Greenspring, Kentucky. The mail person thinks I live in Louisville. The newspapers to which I subscribe think I am Tyson Arnold. Tyson, as you may recall, was one of my prized boxers.
Publishers, in short, don’t know that my dog reads their dead tree outputs. Ah, the life away from the hustle, bustle, tweets, and Facebook posts of the major metropolitan areas.
But apparently, even here, where the AR 15s lay waste to the squirrels, news comes via means other than printed publications. Bummer.
Navigate to “New Pew Data: More Americans Are Getting News on Facebook and Twitter.” I like the sonance of the “new pew” juxtaposition. But, to business. The write up reports:
Facebook and Twitter users across all demographics are increasingly using the social networks as news sources, though they are seeking out different types of news content on each platform…
The article points to a Pew research report, which I don’t think I will scrutinize. (I have a juicy new document from Recorded Future and a couple of European Community reports about the Dark Web.)
You, gentle reader, should plan to scrutinize the data in the study. For me, the report is old news.
For publishers, the Pew data in the study are a knife to the heart. I saw knives plunged into these outfits’ torso years ago.
Everyone seems to recognize that “real publishers” may be facing some challenges when they try to pump up those revenues. The only outfits who seem to be unaware of their plight are—wait for it—the publishers themselves.
Okay, back to more substantive stuff, not “the real world impact of journalism.”
Stephen E Arnold, July 15, 2015
Remote Access Round Up
July 15, 2015
I received an inquiry about remote access tools. With the mass media frenzy over the hack of a Italian services firm, interest in controlling another computer from a distance—that is, by remote control—seems to be on the uptick. If you want to dabble with remote access, navigate to “9 Free Remote Access Tools.” You can download a few and give them a whirl. The real question is, “How do you get the tool on another computer if that computer is not your mom’s or a helpless neighbor’s machine?” That is the big question, not the RAT technology. Enjoy.
Stephen E Arnold, July 18, 2015
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
