Amazonia, December 31, 2018
December 31, 2018
Everyone’s favorite online bookstore is thinking big thoughts. Keep tabs on the Bezos bulldozer with this week’s highlights.
Amazon Does Ontologies
Just when the jargon of the 1990s enterprise search engines has almost disappeared, Koinalert pointed out that AWS has added the ONT_Dev Platform. Yes, you can now create a list of controlled terms and use them without the likes of pesky specialist vendors. You can find more details in the Koinalert post, which points out that Google is planning a me too. Good for you, Google.
Amazon Drones Stalled
Amazon drones are not delivering burritos yet. The Gazette reported that Jeff Bezos promised drones five years ago. Amazon has not given up. The company has drone wizards buzzing away in the US, Austria, France, Israel, and the United Kingdom. Slow going for the Bezos high fliers when it comes to drones. (Site is wonky and a pay wall may be in place.)
More Store Fronts and More Pressure on Delivery Services
Whole Foods will become a whole lot bigger. Amazon is going to invest some of those AWS bucks in expanding food? Nope. Prime Now. The FedEx, UPS, and local delivery outfits may face new pressure. Plus, the subscription model adds a new twist to what consumers perceive as “free.” Source: Digital Trends. But Amazon’s food retail initiative may face problems in some countries like India, says the Economic Times.
Amazon Flicks to Physical Theaters
The new Hollywood – namely, Amazon – wants to release its original films in Imax theaters. Amazon is turning on the charm to build bridges to the moguls who may fear for their financial lives. Why build theaters when there are plenty of venues in the US. Source: Telegraph newspaper
Play Ball with Amazon
The Amazonians are into sports. Reuters reported that Amazon is considering the purchase of the Yes Network. Involved in the talks are the New York Yankees. Will these folks play ball?
Amazon Wants to AWS Health Care
The capitalist tool points out that Amazon is poised to revolutionize health care. Forbes has discovered somewhat belatedly that Amazon has developed software able to make sense of patient records and clinical notes. Why? Forbes notes that the market for making sense of patient data is a $7 billion dollar opportunity for the vendor of Solimo drug store products. What’s a Solimo. See the next item.
Amazon Solimo: Stalled? What’s a Solimo
Amazon’s product line for goods sold at US type drug stores is on the landing strip with those Amazon drones. According to Marketwatch, the Solimo product line is slowing down. The number of stocking units or SKUs went up, but sales are slowing. The reason? Maybe market saturation? A warning signal perhaps? Saturation approaching?
Stephen E Arnold, December 31, 2019
Interfaces Going Mobile: Tiny Fingers Needed
December 31, 2018
Folks are expecting more and more information to be at their mobile fingertips, even communications with their employers. TechTarget posits, “What’s Driving the Next-Generation Mobile User Experience?” Reporter Maribel Lopez describes several advances she says have prompted organizations to offer efficient ways for their workers to communicate and collaborate through their mobile devices. She writes:
“Most organizations’ mobile efforts have evolved beyond the basics of a mobile-friendly website and an intranet accessed via a secure browser. Companies want to create contextual and predictive mobile experiences that delight customers and employees. Yet, many aspects of developing a compelling mobile user experience have changed with the introduction of new devices, computing processors and software. Mobile experiences today must move seamlessly across devices with multiple operating systems….
“Preserving context has always been a goal; now it’s an imperative. But a next-generation experience is more than delivering the same information to each screen. It doesn’t make sense to cram all of the functions of an application on a smartwatch. A strong mobile user experience provides the right information, to the right screen, for the task at hand. Application developers must define which data and workflows are appropriate for each device. For example, you can enable a speech interface on a PC, but it’s more useful on a mobile device where hands-free operation may be required.”
The article goes on to detail four advancements that have made the most difference in this employer-employee relationship. First is the evolution of ways to input data. What started as fingertip-touch has grown to include pens, gestures, docking stations, and, naturally, voice input. In fact, voice assistants like Alexa and H.R. chatbots bring potential for “deeper engagement,” we’re told; engagement that is sure to grow more engaging (intrusive?) as machine learning and analytics technologies progress. Improved hardware itself is a factor, of course, with smartphones now able to quickly process an astounding amount of data. Finally, there is the development of 5G cellular tech, which allows networks to keep up with the demands of those evolving devices.
Naturally, companies would not invest so much in mobile interfaces if they did not help their bottom lines. Though they are billed as a boon for employees, is it really beneficial for workers to relate to algorithms instead of flesh and blood coworkers? Depends on the worker, and on the company, I suppose.
Cynthia Murrell, December 31, 2018
Calling Dr. Bezos
December 31, 2018
Amazon has dominated every market it has entered, from books to cloud computing. With their eyes trained to the medical world, it looks like there is little to stop them. We discovered a little more about this intention from a recent Health Data Management story, “Amazon Launches NLP Service to Process Unstructured Text.”
According to the story:
“Amazon Comprehend Medical is being touted as a natural language processing service that makes it easy to use machine learning to accurately and quickly extract relevant information from unstructured text, such as medical notes, prescriptions, audio interview transcripts, as well as pathology and radiology reports.”
Proponents of this new endeavor tout the advances and ease that it will provide. However, not everyone thinks Prime for medical decisions is such a slam dunk. Thankfully, there are clear-eyed individuals, like Wharton School looking at this issue from all angles. As you might expect, there are a lot of grey areas and periods of adjustment that must be made in order for Amazon’s medical wing to really take flight. However, we have seen these hurdles jumped over before and have a hunch Amazon will make it work.
Patrick Roland, December 31, 2018
Will Algorithms Become a Dying Language?
December 30, 2018
It may sound insane, considering how much of our daily life revolves around algorithms. From your work, to your online shopping, to the maps that guide you on vacation, we depend on these codes. However, some engineers fear older algorithms will be lost to the sands of time and future generations will not be able to learn from there. Thankfully, a solution has arrived in the form of The Algorithm Archive.
According to its mission statement:
“The Arcane Algorithm Archive is a collaborative effort to create a guide for all important algorithms in all languages. This goal is obviously too ambitious for a book of any size, but it is a great project to learn from and work on and will hopefully become an incredible resource for programmers in the future.”
A program like this is so important. Maybe the place that has the most to learn from this long evolution of algorithms are those public government agencies. Some writers think many of these agencies have no idea what is in their algorithms, let alone how much they have to do with major policy decisions. Hindsight is truly 20/20.
Patrick Roland, December 30, 2018
Facebook: The Fallacy of Rules in an Open Ended Datasphere
December 29, 2018
I read “Inside Facebook’s Secret Rulebook for Global Political Speech.” Yogi Berra time: It’s déjà vu all over again.”
Some history, gentle reader.
Years ago I met with a text analytics company. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss how to identify problematic content; for example, falsified reports related to a warfighting location.
I listened as the 20 somethings and a couple of MBA types bandied about ideas for creating a set of rules that would identify the ways in which information is falsified. There was the inevitable knowledgebase, a taxonomy of terms and jargon, and rules. “If then” stuff.
The big idea was to filter the content with the front end of old school look ups and then feed the outputs into the company’s smart system. I listened and suggested that the cost and time of fiddling with rules would consume the available manpower, time, and money.
Ho, ho, ho was the response. Listen to the old goose from rural Kentucky.
Yeah, that was in 2005, and where is that system now? It’s being used as a utility for IBM’s staggering mountain of smart software and for finding items of interest for a handful of financial clients.
Ho, ho, ho. The joke is one the whiz kids and the investors, who care going to run out of patience when the light bulb does on and says:
“Yo, folks, figuring out what’s fake, shaped, disinformationized, or reformationized content is what makes search difficult.”
I read a scoop from the New York Times. Yep, that’s the print newspaper which delivers to my door each day information that is two or three days old. I see most of the stories online in one form or another. Tip: 85 percent of news is triggered by AP or Reuters feeds.
The article reveals that Facebook’s really smart people cannot figure out how to deal with various types of speech: Political and other types. The child porn content on WhatsApp is a challenge as well I would add.
The write up says:
An examination of the files revealed numerous gaps, biases and outright errors. As Facebook employees grope for the right answers, they have allowed extremist language to flourish in some countries while censoring mainstream speech in others.
Yep, a scoop.
Facebook’s hubris, like the text processing company which dragged me into a series of bull sessions, allows the company to demonstrate that it cannot cope with filtering within a datasphere in which controls are going to be tough to enforce.
The fix is to create a for fee country club. If a person does not meet the criteria, no membership for you. Then each member gets the equivalent of a US social security number which is linked to the verified identity, the payment mechanism, and other data the system can link.
Amazon has this type of system available, but I am not sure the Facebookers are going to pay Amazon to use its policeware to create a clean, well lit place. (Sorry, Ernest, not “lighted”.)
As a final point, may I suggest that rules based systems where big data floweth are going to be tough to create, update, and pay for.
On the other hand, why not hire the New York Times to set up an old school editorial board to do the work. News is not ringing the financial bell at the NYT, so maybe becoming the Facebook solution is a path forward. The cost may put Facebook in the dog house with investors, but the NYT regains it position as the arbiter of what’s in and what’s out.
Power again!
Stephen E Arnold, December 29, 2018
Intelligenx Features Threat Intelligence Services
December 28, 2018
We have once before noted a tendency for Intelligenx to mold itself to the marketplace. The directory search publisher that once declared its mission was “to change the way the world finds information” now bills itself as a threat intelligence firm, with a wide roster of security-related services and a selection of related white papers. Interesting pivot. The write-up on their home page emphasizes:
“Intelligenx enables you to regain control of information security with a variety of solutions that provide adaptable fast environments. We take you a step further on Security and one step ahead of the threats. Intelligenx aggregates all information security data across systems, employees and social markers to provide a single integrated view of your safety. Companies and Government agencies have been suffering from attacks by a variety of groups and technologies around the world. After 2 decades of providing talented teams and solutions to the market, it became evident that the industry needed a decentralized and secure solution to fill the gap. For that reason, Intelligenx set out to identify and alert our clients of threats using Analytics as our basic approach. We generate adaptive and self-evolving platforms using cutting-edge concepts, powered by a constantly growing interdisciplinary work team.”
This is indeed an interesting direction for the publishing industry. As for the Clay platform, Weissman suspects this timing may be an effort to make its parent company, New York Media, LLC, look tasty to potential buyers. The company is reported to have already fielded a few offers.
Perhaps it is just this sort of adaptability that has allowed the company to survive since its founding in 1996. Intelligenx is based in Herndon, Virginia.
Cynthia Murrell, December 28, 2018
AT&T Copyright Infringement Gets Complicated
December 28, 2018
For as long as we’ve had digital copyright infringement, we’ve had hardliners saying it should be an offense worthy of online banishment. Others have said that is a violation of rights, which has been the most consistent outlook on the sin. However, one major player in the digital sphere is not having it any longer and that could be a major misstep. At least, that’s the view of the Techdirt article, “AT&T Ignores Numerous Pitfalls, Begins Kicking Pirates Off the Internet.”
According to the story:
“Axios was the first to break the story with a comically one-sided report that failed to raise a single concern about the practice of booting users offline for copyright infringement, nor cite any of the countless examples where such efforts haven’t worked or have gone poorly.”
This article discusses how alarming this action is. It’s seen as essentially being the judge, jury, and executioner of online users without a fair treatment. This has become a really disturbing trend for AT&T. Recently, the giant has taken a real stock tumble when they’ve been accused of mistreating Dish subscribers. Looks like rough waters are ahead for AT&T and we’d keep our distance if we were you.
Patrick Roland, December 28, 2018
Silicon Valley: A Choke Collar and a Geofence
December 27, 2018
Will the free wheeling, Wild West, break things approach thrive in 2019? Beyond Search does not think so. The trend toward censorship, content control, and decryption is evident. Whether it is India telling Amazon and Wal-Mart what the ecommerce companies can sell or Australia’s legislation which gives the government authority to order backdoors under certain conditions — government controls are beginning to arrive.
I read “Silicon Valley May Rue the Day it Called for Government Intervention Against Microsoft.” The source is one with which I am not familiar. The content may be one of those confections of hyperbole, fake news, and hand waving that are quite popular.
I read the essay because it called attention to the scrutiny given to Microsoft, urged along some may assert by competitors afraid of the company’s power.
The parallel is not exact. What struck me, however, is the specter of focused, intense energy to deal with the casualties of years of non regulation. Like an elastic band, the potential energy may be released with a snap.
The write up asserts:
Silicon Valley’s regulations-for-thee-but-not-for-me attitude has come back to bite them. They want the strictest form of regulation for telecommunications providers but no scrutiny of themselves, and now the tables have been turned.
I also noted this statement:
They took it for granted that regulators would never go after content platforms like their own, but now it is precisely those platforms that are squarely in the sights of many politicians.
Wrong. High technology companies are now likely to get choke collars and geofences.
Stephen E Arnold, December 27, 2018
Google Hangouts: Dead or Alive?
December 27, 2018
First came the announcement that Google Hangouts was on its way out. Then came data loss and an earlier than planned shut down.
But the Beyond Search goose is confused. Is Google Hangouts a winner or an “also participated” ribbon winner? Though we know it lags behind Zoom.us, a similar service, the IBTimes reports, “Google Has No Plans to Retire Messaging Platform Hangouts, Says G Suite Product Lead.” Reporter Rohit RVN writes:
“There were rumors on the internet last week that Google had decided to shut the Hangouts messaging platform in 2020. Many opined that the search engine giant, which failed to take on Facebook and Twitter with Google+ social media platform, has now given up on challenging more popular messenger applications WhatsApp and Telegram, among others. However, Scott Johnston, a product lead in G Suite at Google (Hangouts Meet & Chat, Google Voice), has rubbished the reports about the company planning to close Hangouts. Johnston took to Twitter and claimed that Google has no immediate or long-term plans to retire Hangouts.”
So, they say it’s more of a transition than a shuttering. Johnson also emphasized that the Google plans to help existing users of the “Classic” Hangouts make a smooth transition to its G Suite counterparts. The write-up goes on to mention that Google has recently begun beta testing Duplex, an AI feature, on Pixel phones in certain pilot cities. We’re told the tool can perform advanced functions, like making dinner reservations.
Useful for many. But the Beyond Search goslings are okay just pecking around the murky pond. Low tech, but the method works.
Cynthia Murrell, December 27, 2018
Amazon Hungry to Take Over More Diverse Industries
December 27, 2018
Amazon Web Services is the secret juggernaut of the home shopping giant. It has been reported far and wide just how many businesses, from private and public sector alike, use AWS to host their material. While Amazon has been raking in the money, they are starting to make enemies from…their clients? It looks that way judging from a recent CNBC story, “AWS is Competing With its Customers.”
According to the story:
“AWS is the world’s biggest public cloud, generating $6.68 billion in revenue for Amazon in the third quarter, up 46 percent year over year. But as Amazon expands into countless new areas, from grocery stores to health care, some companies that have previously worked with Amazon have found a partner becoming the competition overnight.”
This would not be the first time we’ve heard of Amazon entering a market and gobbling it whole. However, this particularly puts artificial intelligence companies in a tough spot. Many are known to use AWS, but with news like that of Amazon redoubling its efforts to break into AI, suddenly this partnership doesn’t seem so rosy. We’d be watching our backs if we were any industry reliant on AWS, which is…pretty much everyone.
Patrick Roland, December 27, 2018
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