Northern Lights: Classification Enables Classification
April 10, 2020
Old technology is being reborn as Northern Lights takes ABI Inform subsets from the 1980s and repackages them as a machine learning powered knowledge management platform. Yahoo Finance digs into the wheel of Internet past in the story, “Northern Light To Create Custom Search And Content Aggregation Solutions For Large Enterprises.” Northern Light is a company that specializes in content aggregation, enterprise search, and machine learning to provide knowledge management solutions. For twenty years, Northern Light built custom knowledge management platforms for market research sights, global enterprises, and competitive intelligence.
Northern Light’s newest project is a blast from the ABI Inform subsets past:
“One of Northern Light’s first custom solutions was announced by Global Venture, a natural resource consulting company. The solution, called Prospector, enables automated search and analysis of 43-101 reports, a national instrument for the Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects within Canada, which are required of Canadian mineral exploration and mining companies listed on the TSX Venture Exchange (TSX-V) or the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX). Disclosures covered by the 43-101 code include mineral exploration progress, reporting of resources and reserves, and more. 43-101 reports average 500 pages long and can reach 1000 pages. Traditional search which returns a list of documents is not helpful when the documents are so big.”
Global Venture worked with Northern Light to develop Prospector and it solved a huge search and content aggregation issue. Prospector was designed to digest 43-101 forms that are filled with loads of text and data tables that are in different formats. Investors dig through these forms for specific information that can lead to a useful insight. The machine learning aspect of Prospector saves investors a lot of research time.
Northern Light is working on other projects that requires custom knowledge management solutions. It appears old ideas still have value if they are revamped for modern technology.
Whitney Grace, April 10, 2020
Amazon: More Than Warehouse Staff Hired?
April 10, 2020
Google and Microsoft are taking away some of Amazon’s growing technological power. Jeff Bezos is not happy that, so AWS is hiring more people. What is the logic behind that? The Register explains why in the article, “AWS To Double Sales Droids As. Google, Microsoft’s Growing Clouds Threaten To Gobble Larger Slices of Bezos’ Pie.”
Due to the growing amount of sales Google and Microsoft are making in their cloud departments, AWS is hiring more sales people. AWS hopes that by increasing their sales staff they will make more sales and steal customers away from its rivals. These will not be regular sales people, though. AWS is hiring experts in security, AI, and data analytics. AWS will not reveal the size of its sales team or the exact number of people its hiring. Supposedly there are thousands on the team.
AWS currently dominants the cloud computing market at 32.3%. Microsoft has 16.9% and Google has 5.8% of the market. Will that growth last in 2020?
“But the Jeff-Bezos-run titan’s enormous growth has begun to slow recently as other providers catch up. Of the big four cloud providers, Google grew the most last year, swelling 87.8 per cent, Microsoft came in second, with 64 per cent growth. Alibaba was close behind with 63.8 per cent. But AWS’s growth, at 36 per cent, was half that of its nearest rival. AWS still posted the biggest revenue increase in absolute terms – with $9.2bn compared with Microsoft’s $7.1bn – but many saw the pair’s recent financial results as an early sign that rival services were beginning to catch up with Bezos’ behemoth.”
Google also plans to triple its size team, while Microsoft is trying to poach AWS’s cloud clients. So far Microsoft has been successful. The best example is that Microsoft won the Department of Defense’s $10 billion decade-long JEDI IT supply deal. AWS did not like that business decision, so AWS appealed and the courts will decide if the contract was fairly awarded.
The new hiring is the biggest business move from AWS in years. AWS wants to focus less on its basic services that assists organizations in developing products to actually building the finished product themselves and selling them. The battle is on for the cloud market, but it looks like thugs are going to go the Google way. Google controls most of western searches and AWS will control most cloud computing systems.
Whitney Grace, April 10, 2020
Google and Its Warm Relationship with France
April 10, 2020
We noted the trusted (honest) news story “French Regulator: Google Must Pay French News and Publishing Firms for Using Their Content.” The write up notes in a trusted way:
“Google’s practices caused a serious and immediate harm to the press sector, while the economic situation of publishers and news agencies is otherwise fragile, and while the law aimed on the contrary at improving the conditions of remuneration they derive from content produced by journalists,” the watchdog said in a statement.
Anyone indexing information or writing blog posts like this one should immediately stop pointing to content. It may have been a progressive act to burn the library in Alexandria. Monks at Mont St Michel? Wrong doers. No food and thorns under the cowl. And Google. Oh, Google will have its day in a French court. Hint: Bring a checkbook. Mais oui.
Stephen E Arnold, April 10, 2020
Customer Experience: Pretty Dismal It Seems
April 10, 2020
We noted “Companies Slow to Respond to Customer Experience Demands.” No kidding?
The write up contains some factoids. These are presented with minimal information about sample size, methodology, etc. No surprise. Whether true or not, the data may be useful. We found them suggestive:
- “Organizations struggle to align their CX strategies to voice of customer (VoC) feedback, with 68% having no formal process for considering this data and 28% which capture no feedback at all.”
- Faltering technology systems: Nearly one in three (30%) say their technology systems are failing to meet current needs and many teams still struggle with legacy systems (52%) and the integration of multiple technology systems (43%). Additionally, the inability to secure budgets (57%) remains a concern and skills shortages is seen as a growing concern (38%).
- Siloed channels and internal business organizations: Almost two thirds (63%) of organizations agree there is only partial collaboration between functions when it comes to designing CX, and 11% don’t collaborate at all. More than two thirds (69%) still have no cross-channel contact management strategy and only one third (33%) claim to have good or complete consistency across contact channels.
Do companies care? Nah. We learned something that seems intuitively on the money:
While just over three quarters (78%) of organizations indicate that they are satisfied with their customer satisfaction capability, only 9% of their customers rate customer experience at ‘advocacy’ level. Worryingly, just 5% of AI and robotics users say customers rate their experience at advocacy level, exposing the gap between emerging technologies and satisfaction levels.
We think the letters from the US airlines informing people like those on the DarkCyber team that the airlines care about us. Yeah, right. How about those chatbots behind “Listen to this message carefully. Our menu has changed.” Super stuff.
Stephen E Arnold, April 10, 2020
A Minor Point about Google Wave
April 9, 2020
I read “Google Wave’s Failure is a Great Lesson for Modern Real-Time Collaboration Tools.” I sure don’t want to get in a digital squabble. Revisionism is a respected skill at this time. The article points out:
The idea to focus on communication came from Jens who noticed a significant shift in the way people interacted online. The consensus between the brothers was that they should build a platform that would reflect those changes in its functionality.
I would suggest checking out Dr. Alon Halevy (who was Alon Levy for a while). He wrote:
I was the CEO of Megagon Labs from November 2015 until December 2018. Prior to Megagon, I headed the Structured Data Group of Google Research in Mountain View, California for a decade (here are a few thoughts about that decade). I joined Google in 2005 with the acquisition of my company, Transformic. Prior to that, I was a professor of Computer Science at the University of Washington, where I founded the UW CSE Database Group in 1998. You can follow me on Twitter for more (un)frequent updates. In the past, I used to blog and maybe I’ll return to it some day.
He added:
My group is responsible for Google Fusion Tables, a service for managing data in the cloud that focuses on ease of use, collaboration and data integration. Fusion Tables enables users to upload spreadsheets, CSV and KML files and share them with collaborators or with the public. You can easily integrate data from multiple sources (and organizations) and use a collection of visualizations to look at your data. In particular, Fusion Tables is deeply integrated with Google Maps, making it easy to visualize large geographic data sets. To facilitate collaboration, users can conduct fine-grained discussions on the data. You can see some examples of how Fusion Tables is being used. You can interact with Fusion Tables through our UI or our API.
The source for these quotes is https://homes.cs.washington.edu/~alon/.
With thousands of Googles, why did I focus on Dr. Halevy. The name change was a signal to which I attended. With a bit of work, one can locate slide decks which explain some of the functionality Dr. Halevy brought to Google.
Did Dr. Halevy inform the younger Googlers?
My research for Google Version 2: The Calculating Predator (Infonortics (now out of business says, “Yes.” Dr. Halevy had a significant impact on Google and influenced the company’s efforts in surveillance, data transformation, and collaborative services.
But as one of my friends says to me when we talk, “Nobody cares.” I would add that many of those waiting about Google are unaware of Transformics. That’s too bad. There was a reason why the Google acquired the firm. What is Dr. Halevy contributing to Facebook. Those early Transformic slide decks and Dr. Halevy’s technical papers may yield some insights. But that’s work. Better to go with revisionism.
Stephen E Arnold, April 9, 2020
Google Stadia: Amazon Jungle Sounds Startling Googzilla Maybe?
April 9, 2020
I used to live in Campinas, Brazil. Not the jungle exactly, but in the 1950s there were some interesting critters roaming around. At night, if you were lucky, we could hear snuffing at door jams. Yep, big cats, and not the Instagram type either.
Amazon announced in the way of the Bezos bulldozer that it would be getting into the online game business. You can read about that move in “Amazon Pushes into Making Video Games, Not Just Streaming Their Play.”
That bulldozer gear shift may have frightened some Googlers. A lot. DarkCyber noted “Google Stadia Now Free to Anyone with a Gmail Address.” The write up stated:
Google’s video game streaming platform, Stadia, is now free to anyone with a Gmail address, the company announced on Wednesday. To sweeten the deal, Google is also giving new users two months of Stadia Pro — including access to nine games — for free. Existing Stadia Pro subscribers won’t be charged for the next two months of the service, Google said. Previously, access to Stadia required purchasing the $129 Google Stadia Premiere Edition, a bundle that includes a Chromecast Ultra, a wireless Stadia Controller, and three months of Stadia Pro, the service that offered free games and video streams up to 4K resolution and 60 frames per second with HDR lighting.
If free doesn’t work, what’s next? A Microsoft Bing play like paying people to use a Web search service which is not particularly robust. Perhaps Google will offer coupons or run discounts on weekends like Harbor Freight. Green Stamps were popular with my mother in the late 1940s. Maybe Google could try that as a way to generate some excitement?
How long will the Googlers working on games stick to the project? Google initiatives die when the wizards realize they might miss a bonus or be left out of a really hot project that will ignite their career.
Will online games become another Dodgeball? Wait, I hear the Bezos bulldozer. Even I am frightened of the sound of crushing hopes, dreams, and shopping options. Yikes. How fast can Googzilla run?
Stephen E Arnold, April 9, 2020
Video Search: Maybe Find That for Which You Were Looking? Ha Ha
April 9, 2020
Searching for a motion picture online? It is collective intelligence to the rescue at Ask MetaFilter’s thread, “How to Find What Streaming Services Certain Films Are On?” Canadian poster NoneOfTheAbove was perusing this 1000 Greatest Films list and asked for an easy way to locate specific films on streaming services across the web.
The obvious is stated—use Google—with the caveat that those results may not tell you if a membership is required. Another suggestion is to follow links in the movie’s IMDb description, and one respondent notes that if one already has Roku, its search results point to sources available through that subscription. A couple people point to the streaming-service consolidator JustWatch, and one suggests Reelgood as a similar platform. The most descriptive answers, though, discuss Letterboxd:
“Another option is to sign up for a free membership with Letterboxd – that is a social-media movie-logging site that is really [darn] comprehensive. You can track what movies you want to see, what movies you have seen, and make endless lists of all kinds (‘Movies with female leads,’ ‘Movies with cute dogs,’ ‘Movies with Left-Handed Protaganists,’ whatever you want). A lot of members already have their own lists tracking their progress through the 1000 Greatest Movies list. Best of all – Letterboxd links to JustWatch and you can look at the streaming availability for a given movie when you pull it up on Letterboxd. So it may be fun to sign up for Letterboxd, make your own copy of the 1000 list, and then track your viewing progress. …Letterboxd also has a paid ‘Pro’ account where you can filter such a list based on a given streaming service like Netflix, but you may find that that’s overkill.” posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:45 AM on March 31 [1 favorite]
“Bonus of having your own Letterboxd account is that you can already mark the ones you’ve seen and quickly visually scan for the ones you haven’t seen yet, then click through per film to see on which streaming services it’s available. I’ve been going through a bunch of the Criterion Collection this way recently myself. :D” posted by rather be jorting at 12:23 PM on March 31 [2 favorites]
So there you have several options supplied by the hive mind. Even if you aren’t looking for a film right now, this list may be worth bookmarking for future reference. Finding videos remains a challenge. Search has been solved, right? Yeah, sure.
Cynthia Murrell, April 9, 2020
Google: Innovation Never Ends
April 9, 2020
As Jack Dorsey pledges $1 billion to good causes and Facebook introduces a service which forever will remain under wraps, Google is innovating as well. “YouTube Is Reportedly Planning to Launch an In-App Rival to Viral Video-Sharing App TikTok Before the End of 2020” reports just that—A me to of TikTok. Even the somewhat interesting team of Jeffrey Katzenberg (movie mogul) and Meg Whitman (manager extraordinaire and failed politician) went in a comparatively new direction.
The article about the TikTok initiative at Google reports:
This feature is called “Shorts,” and will live within YouTube’s existing mobile app…
Is the idea is to further reduce a viewer’s ability to focus and absorb long form content. DarkCyber knows that watching a video such as an online learning lecture taxes the brain. With about half the students participating in online learning showing up and even fewer paying attention, reducing attention spans is obviously a step forward.
DarkCyber is convinced that tiny screens, even smaller tinier concentration skills, and sponsored messages represent a breakthrough.
With solving death eluding the online ad giant, cloning a short form video puts other innovators on notice.
Stephen E Arnold, April 9, 2020
Brave Brave: Challenging the Google
April 9, 2020
Taking on a big tech company like Google is like tilting windmills. It is near impossible to win a case against big conglomerates worth billions of dollars, but the possibility exists. That is why the “Brave Browsers Creators Call Google Out for GDRP Violation” says Forklog. Google maintains its power and profit, because it collects user data and sells it to third parties. Google is supposed to alert users how it uses their data, but that does not appear to happen.
Brave is a private block-chain browser and its creators filed a complaint with the UK Competition and Markets Authority CMA against Google for infringing the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) purpose limitation. This violation gives Google a monopoly. Brave specifically filed the complaints with the Irish Data Protection Commission. Brave reports that the Irish regulator has monitored how Google handles user data and they have also informed other European regulators.
Dr. Johnny Ryan, Brave’s Chief Policy and Industry Relations Officer, explained Google allows user data to freely flow between its subsidiaries:
“Having everyone’s personal data does not mean Google is allowed to use that data across its entire business, for whatever purposes it wants. Rather, it has to seek a legal basis for each specific purpose, and be transparent about them,’ Dr Ryan argued, ‘But Brave’s new evidence reveals that Google reuses our personal data between its businesses and products in bewildering ways that infringe the purpose limitation principle. Google’s internal data free-for-all infringes the GDPR.’”
Google apparently has a monopoly because it leverages data from one of their markets and funnels it into others. The complaint from Brave points out that Google uses vague language to communicate with users how their data is used.
Other than violating users’ privacy, Google’s misuse of data could do more harm, such as price gauging, political misinformation, and other discrimination. Brave has offered to assist the CMA in further investigation. Brave has good reason to complain against Google, because monopolies are illegal in most western countries. The problems will their argument get much attention?
Whitney Grace, April 9, 2020
Google and Home Schooling
April 8, 2020
Ah, Google—good enough is good enough, right? Except when a pandemic comes along, and good enough really won’t cut it. Digital Trends reports, “Google Chromebook Quirk Forces a Decision: Parental Controls or Schoolwork?” Now that schools have been forced to close and students are studying remotely, a Google Chromebook/ Family Link foible is suddenly much more of a problem than when it was discovered last year. Writer Mythili Sampathkumar explains:
“When school districts all over the country announced they would be shutting down to help stem the spread of the coronavirus, officially called COVID-19, many parents purchased the relatively inexpensive Chromebooks to mimic students’ classroom experience. Parents can use Google’s Family Link app to control what websites and apps are accessed, when, and for how long for accounts identified as minors. But some students can’t sign into their schoolwork using those accounts. They need to use school-provided email addresses to access their schoolwork through Google Classroom — but Family Link parental controls can’t be synced to those school accounts. The Family Link app doesn’t allow parents to add a school email account for the same child user, preventing the child from using different logins to sign into the Chromebook and Google Classroom. It seems the situation is forcing parents to choose between what the Family Link website itself called ‘healthy digital habits’ and accessing learning materials for school during the lockdown, a choice many in the forum and those who spoke to Digital Trends do not think they should have to make.”
Schools do not have to worry about leveraging Family Link’s safe browsing features—they typically place universal security restrictions on their entire networks. Doing so at home, though, is not a good option for most parents. Not only would that block certain sites for parents, it would also restrict when they could use their devices. That just won’t do for parents who suddenly must work from home and help their kids with schoolwork. Will Google step up and fix the problem? Perhaps there is a way to cut down on Chrome glare?
Cynthia Murrell, April 8, 2020
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