Database Alternatives
March 25, 2009
I did not like the title of this article, “Slacker Databases Break All the Old Rules” here. I skipped the title and went directly to the write up, and I strongly recommend that you navigate to the article, read it, and save it in your useful info slide. The write up by Peter Wayner explains and to some depth analyzes the following data management tools:
- Amazon’s SimpleDB
- Apache’s CloudDB
- Google’s App Engine
- Persevere.
Take away: InfoWorld sees these as experiments. I see them as the future.
Stephen Arnold, March 25, 2009
Google Interview Worth Reading
March 25, 2009
The interview with Alfred Spector in ComputerWorld is interesting for what it says and what it omits. You can find the article “The Grill: Google’s Alfred Spector on the Hot Seat” here. This is a three part interview. Mr. Spector is billed as Google’s vice president of research. For me, the most interesting comment was:
Do you have plans to go after that huge body of information on the Internet that is not currently searched? There is stuff on the Web, the so-called Deep Web, that is only “materialized” when a particular query is given by filling fields in a form. Since crawlers only follow HTML links, they cannot get to that “hidden” content. We have developed technologies to enable the Google crawler to get content behind forms and therefore expose it to our users. In general, this kind of Deep Web tends to be tabular in nature. It covers a very broad set of topics. It’s a challenge, but we’ve made progress.
I would hope so. Google has Drs. Guha and Halevy chugging away or had them chugging away on this problem. Furthermore, Google bought Transformics, a company that most of the Google pundits have paid scant attention to. Yep, Googzilla is making progress. Just plonking along with the fellow who worked on the semantic Web standards and the chap who invented the information manifold. I enjoy Google understatement.
Stephen Arnold, March 24, 2009
Google Slowing Down, Sitting on the Sidelines
March 24, 2009
IDC has been showing some zip. Two articles caught my attention because both point out vulnerabilities in this formidable company. You must read both of these articles. They were:
- The ComputerWorld story “Pentaho and Amazon.com Deliver BI to the Cloud” here. The story reported that Amazon, the cloud computing retailer, hooked up with Pentaho. The goal is to deliver business intelligence. How is this germane to Google? In my opinion, Google is not in this game. The company’s failure to respond to Amazon’s cloud computing challenge underscores the fact that Google is not as nimble as Google. I was hoping that Eric Lai would have pointed out that Google is simply not at this dance.
- The IDG news service story “Google Apps Missing Enterprise Social-Networking Revolution” here. This story was distributed by Reuters and it pointed out that Google’s Orkut is not hooked into Google Apps.”
Is Google falling behind? In my view, Google is the cat’s meow. To some Google watchers, I think one can make a case that the GOOG is not able to keep pace with some of its more nimble rivals. IDC seems to be on top of this issue.
Stephen Arnold, March 24, 2009
Search in the Cloud… Get a Snack, Take a Nap
March 23, 2009
Very interesting table of content delivery network latency here. There are some surprises in Mudy’s Blog. For example, the two fastest CDNs were Akamai and AOL. Yep, AOL. Amazon, in the middle of the pack, aced Google’s Home Page, Google’s Ajax Library, and Google’s App Engine. No data for Azure, Microsoft’s cloud beta. What’s this mean for search enabled applications? My hunch is that latency will boost snack sales and reduce users’ sleep deficit.
Stephen Arnold, March 25, 2009
Entitlement Generation Wins
March 20, 2009
Sarah Perez has an interesting write up in ReadWriteWeb.com. Her story “Why Gen Y Is Going to Change the Web” here explains why Google is a big threat to companies who don’t see Google as much more than a Web search company peddling ads. On the surface, her story is about 13 to 31 year-olds. I am plagued by these folks but that’s normal. Old age home candidates face a big hurdle when understanding those a half century younger. I don’t want to summarize the characteristics of this cohort. Read her list first hand.
My view is that Google and Googley things are part of the this cohort’s environment. This means that it makes no difference what I and those like me have as information behaviors. The Googley groups are going to make social computing, cloud computing, pervasive computing, and other types of computing the norm. Companies that think Google, Twitter and similar services are not in their business or mildly disruptive are going to be in for a jolt. Big changes coming. And fast.
Stephen Arnold, March 20, 2009
A Darker Shade of Azure
March 19, 2009
Joe Panettieri’s “Microsoft’s Windows Azure Cloud: Dark for a Day” summarized the outage for Microsoft’s cloud service. You can read the article here. The most interesting comment in the write up was:
But 22 hours of darkness doesn’t inspire peace of mind in cloud systems. And I’m starting to think that Amazon.com — backed by loads of open source applications — is the cloud to beat.
Google has converted Gmail into Gfail. Now Microsoft has stumbled. Maybe Mr. Panettieri’s analysis is dead on?
Stephen Arnold, March 20, 2009
AWS and the Coming Search Price Wars
March 18, 2009
Amazon Web Services is not about search. AWS is about “sucking the air out of the room”. Translating this phrase used by the world’s smartest man (Jeff Bezos) is beyond the addled goose. I think it means buying the market so competitors will die from lack of revenue. You can read an interesting discussion of price changes at AWS here. The article is “AWS “Sucks the Air Out of the Room.” Cuts EC2 Costs by 50%” by Jonathan Siegal. There are some interesting tables, which suggest that moving certain services to the cloud make sense, save money, and minimize the need for expensive in house systems professionals. Mr. Siegal correctly points out that AWS is not for every organization. I agree.
Stephen Arnold, March 17, 2009
Google OS: Nightmare in Redmond
March 16, 2009
ComputerWorld’s Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols reported here “Google OS Will Be on Netbooks by Year’s End”. Google has insisted that it does not have a Google operating system. I believed what I was told and used the phrase “Google operating environment.” Now it seems that I was dead wrong, if Mr. Vaughan-Nichols’ report is accurate. He wrote:
I predict that by December [2009], we’ll see not only Asus selling Android-based netbooks, but at least a half-dozen other vendors doing so as well. In bad times, businesses have to be smart, and Android on netbooks is a smart move indeed.
Google, of course, remains inscrutable. The company provides the Lego blocks. Google lets others in the playroom build whatever they want. A Google OS would add to Microsoft’s revenue concerns. If this ComputerWorld report is on the money, a nightmare in Redmond may await–low cost, search, contextualized ads, and good enough software with the cloud as a big fluffy cushion.
Stephen Arnold, March 15, 2009
Searching Microblog Content
March 16, 2009
The disruptive force of the flakey Twitter service continues. In case you have been hanging out with the goslings in Harrod’s Creek, Kentucky, Twitter is the somewhat unstable, rapidly growing, money losing micro blogging service. A micro blog is a text message that is short, less than 140 character if my addled goose memory is working this morning. Who cares about Twitter? Young people and the young at heart have tons of fun firing out text bullets in real time to anyone with a Twitter account. Unlike email which in theory is sort of a one to one communication, Twitter is spam fortified. Any post gets blasted to anyone with a Twitter account. To filter the stuff, one can “follow” a Twitter user. Dozens of utilities ranging from the silly to the stalker inspired are available.
I found the March 13, 2009, article “Microblogging Will Marginalize Corporate Email” here quite interesting. The idea is that microblogging is a disruptive technology. Over time, its utility will increase, particularly for “notifications” and certain types of marketing functions. I don’t disagree. If you are a Twitter watcher, you will want to save a copy of “I’m Not Actually a Geek’s” article. Ignoring Twitter as a source of useful intelligence is an oversight. The challenge of searching and generating knowledge from a Twitter stream remains an interesting challenge. I don’t think Twitter has a solution. Further, I don’t think any of the vendors whose software I monitor has a solution. Big opportunities in my opinion.
Stephen Arnold, March 15, 2009
Google and World Domination
March 13, 2009
Ryan Singel’s “Google Voice Speaks of World Domination” here gave me a wake up call. Google’s prowess in telephony has been a topic that I long ago accepted. The company has had telephony and communications on its agenda from 1998. When we ran around the country in 2007 doing briefings about Google’s communications systems and methods, the attendees were eager to deny the Googlers’ cleverness in voice search (a Brin subspecialty) to cute ways to replicate a wireless infrastructure with low cost, low power gizmos and lots of innovation in between.
To be frank, slapping chat, SMS, and Skype-type comms into a Google “container” or service is not rocket science for Google. Sure, the company has to make sure that dependencies don’t befuddle its system or a line of code ruin a Googler’s lunch hour. The work is not invention; these are slipstreaming type features.
The title of the article–“Google Voice Speaks of World Domination”–was striking. The author Ryan Singel did a good job of explaining Google Voice, the “new” service that has the Twitterworld aflame. For me, the most important comment in the article after the title was:
Google Voice also threatens to disrupt voice-to-text startups like SpinBox, with built-in support for turning your voicemail messages into searchable text. Voice-to-text is one of the cornerstones of Google’s drive into mobile search. Google already uses the same technology to power GOOG-411 and the voice-activated search app for the iPhone. Getting even more samples — from messages left for users — will only help tune the algorithms for more lucrative ventures.
This paragraph makes clear the integration of the Google comms service and its disruptive potential, not just for smaller firms but for the big, telco dinosaurs. I say this with some affection since I was a Bell Labs’s contractor, worked on the Bellcore billing system for baby Bell charge backs, and also the USWest Yellow Pages service. Google is not a telco. Telco is just an application running on the Google infrastructure, what I call the Google infrastructure or Googleplex in honor of the buildings off Shoreline Drive.
Should you care? Yes, if you want to reduce for the short term your telecom hassles. Should the telcos caer? No, in my opinions telcos missed the train, and I don’t know when another will drop by Bell Head Station again. Should regulators care? Maybe. But regulators have a tough time understanding cable versus satellite TV so there’s a knowledge gap to fill. Should the blogosphere care? Absoltutely. Those who get it will carry Google type services to the future as the “obvious way” to perform certain functions.
Is this world domination? Not by Google in my opinion. The “legacy” of Google is that it shows the way cloud based services will supplant more widespread methods. Google’s legacy is that the company is a trail blazer. Others will follow and then go further. If this sounds like an interesting premise for a book, check out my 2005 The Google Legacy. This is the story I followed between 2002 and 2004 when I did my primary research. Old stuff to the addled goose. Just not world domination. That’s a reach in my view.
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