Twitting Ain’t Search and Google Used to Suck
March 6, 2009
I am an addled goose, an OLD addled goose. I liked some of the points in “Twitter Ain’t Search” but I had some qualms about accepting the assertion that Twitter is not search. You must read the article here. For me the most interesting comment in the write up was:
I kind of view Twitter as dead simple blog platform for the masses (hence the adoption of it by the masses). Blog platforms like the one for this blog (Movable Type) can be complicated – especially for the mainstream folks who don’t know/ want to learn html commands.
My view is that Twitter is indeed micro blogging. But the significance of Twitter is in the information flows and the access thereto. Here’s why:
I have learned that electronic information generates enough paradoxes to give Epimenides a headache. Example: online information gave way to CD ROMs. The commercial online giants said, “CDs suck. Too small.” Yep, CDs then changed some unexpected sectors of the information industry and this was in the 1983 to 1985 time period. Then Lycos came along and people said, “Lycos sucks. No updates.” AltaVista.com came along, figured out the update thing and HP said, “AltaVista.com sucks.” So Google.com came online. Some people said, “Google sucks. It’s not a portal.” On and on.
Twitter is an example of the type of information opportunity that occurs when a sufficient number of users generate information flows. Who cares whether an individual Twitter message is “right” or “wrong”? Who cares if Twitter crashes and burns or whether it is bought by Verizon and turned into a subscriber only service. The US is not where the action is in information flows in case you haven’t heard.
Twitter is important because it represents a model of what one or more companies can use as an example. Google cracked Web search, but the real time SMS flows are new territory, and if you don’t understand that where information flows, money exists. Quick example: you are a law enforcement professional. You are dealing with a person of interest aged 17 in Rio de Janeiro. The person of interest coordinates a group of eight to 10 year olds. The “pack of kids” distracts a tourist, probably a complacent American pundit. Whilst engaged, the kids take the passport, billfold, and camera and scamper off. The whole deal is organized by text messages sent on disposable mobile phones thoughtfully provided by the person of interest. A system that permits searching of these SMS messages or Tweets in Twitter speak * could * be helpful to law enforcement. The messages could be baloney. But a search takes a short amount of time. If useful info0rmation becomes available, that’s a plus. If none becomes available, the law enforcement professional has learned something useful about the person of interest. I am sure one can think of other examples of the benefit of real time information flows generated by the technically hip, the permanently young, and middle school to college people who just see Twitter as another part of the everyday dataspace.
I am coming around to the view that Twitter-type systems are important and are likely to reshape the notion of real time search.
Stephen Arnold, March 6, 2009
Google Latitude: Warrant Needed
March 6, 2009
eWeek’s “Google Promises Memory Loss for Latitude” here asserted that Google will respond to concerns about privacy with its Latitude service. Latitude, as you may know, shows your “friends” where you are in almost real time. Google’s service, like Loopt, will require a warrant before providing location based data to law enforcement agency. That is good news because it means that Google will cooperate when appropriate documents are in place. Law enforcement officials are overwhelmed, understaffed, and asked to do more with fewer resources. The hassle that some online services make when legitimate requests for information are thwarted does not, in my opinion, do much more than clog an already overburdened system. This addled goose is perfectly okay with rapid innovation in geospatial services. The addled goose is quite happy that a warrant will provide data that can be used by law enforcement.
Stephen Arnold, March 6, 2009
Vyre: Software, Services, Search, and More
March 6, 2009
A happy quack to the reader who sent me a link to Vyre, whose catchphrase is “dissolving complexity.” The last time I looked at the company, I had pigeon holed it as a consulting and content management firm. The news release my reader sent me pointed out that the company has a mid market enterprise search solution that is now at version 4.x. I am getting old, or at least too sluggish to keep pace with content management companies that offer search solutions. My recollection is that Crown Point moved in this direction. I have a rather grim view of CMS because software cannot help organizations create high quality content or at least what I think is high quality content.
The Wikipedia description of Vyre matches up with the information in my archive:
VYRE, now based in the UK, is a software development company. The firm uses the catchphrase “Enterprise 2.0” to describe its enterprise solutions for business.The firm’s core product is Unify. The Web based services allows users to build applications and content management. The company has technology that manages digital assets. The firm’s clients in 2006 included Diageo, Sony, Virgin, and Lowe and Partners. The company has reinvented itself several times since the late 1990s doing business as NCD (Northern Communication and Design), Salt, and then Vyre.
You can read Wikipedia summary here. You can read a 2006 Butler Group analysis here. My old link worked this evening (March 5, 2009), but click quickly. In my files I had a link to a Vyre presentation but it was not about search. Dated 2008, you may find the information useful. The Vyre presentations are here. The link worked for me on March 5, 2009. The only name I have in my archive is Dragan Jotic. Other names of people linked to the company are here. Basic information about the company’s Web site is here. Traffic, if these data are correct, seem to be trending down. I don’t have current interface examples. The wiki for the CMS service is here. (Note: the company does not use its own CMS for the wiki. The wiki system is from MediaWiki. No problem for me, but I was curious about this decision because the company offers its own CMS system. You can get a taste of the system here.
Administrative Vyre screen.
After a bit of poking around, it appears that Vyre has turned up the heat on its public relations activities. The Seybold Report here presented a news story / news release about the search system here. I scanned the release and noted this passage as interesting for my work:
…version 4.4 introduces powerful new capabilities for performing facetted and federated searching across the enterprise. Facetted search provides immediate feedback on the breakdown of search results and allows users to quickly and accurately drill down within search results. Federated search enables users to eradicate content silos by allowing users to search multiple content repositories.
Vyre includes a taxonomy management function with its search system, if I read the Seybold article correctly. I gravitate to the taxonomy solution available from Access Innovations, a company run by my friend and colleagues Marje Hlava and Jay Ven Eman. Their system generates ANSI standard thesauri and word lists, which is the sort of stuff that revs my engine.
Endeca has been the pioneer in the enterprise sector for “guided navigation” which is a synonym in my mind for faceted search. Federated search gets into the functions that I associated with Bright Planet, Deep Web Technologies, and Vivisimo, among others. I know that shoving large volumes of data through systems that both facetize content and federated it are computationally intensive. Consequently, some organizations are not able to put the plumbing in place to make these computationally intensive systems hum like my grandmother’s sewing machine.
If you are in the market for a CMS and asset management company’s enterprise search solution, give the company’s product a test drive. You can buy a report from UK Data about this company here. I don’t have solid pricing data. My notes to myself record the phrase, “Sensible pricing.” I noted that the typical cost for the system begins at about $25,000. Check with the company for current license fees.
Stephen Arnold, March 6, 2009
Google Twitter: Miscommunication
March 5, 2009
Henry Blodget’s “Google’s Schmidt: I Didn’t Diss Twitter” made me laugh. When I saw the blogosphere lightning strikes about an alleged remark by Google’s top wizard, I wondered if the reporters heard correctly. I don’t do hard news. I point to stories I find interesting. Mr. Blodget wrote on March 4, 2009, a story that allegedly set the record straight. You can read it here.
Which interstellar object is growing? Which is dying? Which is the winner? Which will become a charcoal briquette in a manner of speaking?
Please, navigate to Silicon Valley Insider because the good stuff is in capital letters with some words tinted red in anger. For me, the most interesting comment was:
In context if you read what I said, I was talking about the fact that communication systems are not going to be separate. They’re all going to become intermixed in various ways.
Several comments:
- The quote sounds like something I heard George Gilder say years ago. (For the record, the fellow who paid Mr. Gilder and me for advice sided with me about convergence. I prefer the term “blended”, and I still do.) Think a digital Jamba cooler.
- Google’s top Googler comes across as more politically sensitive. In Washington, DC, saying nothing whilst saying something that seems coherent is an art form. Mr. Schmidt is carrying a tinge of Potomac fever in my opinion.,
- The Twitter “thing” is clearly on Mr. Schmidt’s mind. My conclusion after reading the capital letters and red type is that Twitter has become a wisdom tooth ache. The pain is deep and it is getting worse.
No one is more interested in real time search than sentiment miners, intelligence professionals, and some judicially oriented researchers. The more the Twitter and real time search gains traction, the older and slower Google looks. In case you missed my post here, is this another sign of a generation gap between Google’s “old style” indexing and Twitter’s here and now flow? Note: Facebook.com is getting with the program too. eWeek has an interesting article here.
In my opinion we have a fuzzy line taking shape like those areas between galaxies that NASA distributes to show the wonders of the universe.
Endeca: Push into Education and Training
March 5, 2009
Endeca, http://www.endeca.com, is expanding its information access software business by connecting education and training customers with more specialized solutions. You can read the press release here. Solutions from Endeca Education Services here, include customized training curriculum served on site or online. The goal is to get pre-packaged, flexible solutions that speed up business performance to their customers in these trying economic times. Part of the attraction of Endeca’s expanded offerings is the ability to pre-purchase training at a discounted rate. There are a lot of information access companies in this industry, and education services are particularly dependent on critical technology. It’s a really good move on Endeca’s part to expand in that venue to tap so much opportunity. On the other hand, the shadows of Apple and Google have begun to creep into the education market. Excitement ahead in a large business sector perhaps?
Jessica W. Bratcher, March 5, 2009
MapReduce in a Browser: A Glimpse of the Google in 2011
March 4, 2009
I have no idea who is behind Igvita, but I will pay closer attention. You will want to read “Collaborative Map-Reduce in the Browser” here. When I read the write up and scanned the code, I thought, “Yep, this is the angle the Google is taking with Chrome, containers, and a bunch of other Googley patent documents’ “inventions”. I won’t spoil your fun. For me, the most important information in the write up is the diagram. A happy quack to Igvita. Heck, have two quacks.
Stephen Arnold, March 4, 2009
Mysteries of Online 9: Time
March 3, 2009
Electronic information has an interesting property: time distortion. The distortion has a significant effect on how users of electronic information participate in various knowledge processes. Information carries humans along much as a stream whisks a twig in the direction of the flow. Information, unlike water, moves in multiple directions, often colliding, sometimes reinforcing, and at others in paradoxical ways that leave a knowledge worked dazed, confused, and conflicted. The analogy of information as a tidal wave connotes only a partial truth. Waves come and go. Information flow for many people and systems is constant. Calm is tough to locate.
Vector fields. Source: http://www.theverymany.net/uploaded_images/070110_VectorField_test012_a-789439.jpg
In the good old days of cuneiform tablets, writing down the amount of wheat Eknar owed the king required specific steps. First, you had to have access to suitable clay, water, and a clay kneading specialist. Second, you needed to have a stylus of wood, bone, or maybe the fibula of an enemy removed in a timely manner. Third, you had to have your data ducks in a row. Dallying meant that the clay tablet would harden and make life more miserable than it already was. Once the document was created, the sun or kiln had to cooperate. Once the clay tablet was firm enough to handle without deleting a mark for a specified amount of wheat, the tablet was stacked in a pile inside a hut. Forth, the access the information, the knowledge worker had to locate the correct hut, find the right pile, and then inspect the tablets without breaking one, a potentially bad move if the king had a short temper or needed money for a war or a new wife.
In the scriptorium in the 9th century, information flow wasn’t much better. The clay tablets had been replaced with organic materials like plant matter or for really important documents, the scraped skin of sheep. Keep in mind that other animals were used. Yep, human skin worked too. Again time intensive processes were required to create the material on which a person would copy or scribe information. The cost of the materials made it possible to get patrons to spit out additional money to illustrate or illuminate the pages. Literacy was not widespread in the 9th century and there were a number of incentives to get sufficient person power to convert foul papers to fair copies and then to compendia. Not just anyone could afford a book. Buying a book or similar document did not mean the owner could read. The time required to produce hand copies was somewhat better than the clay tablet method or the chiseled inscriptions or brass castings used by various monarchs.
Yep, I will have it done in 11 months, our special rush service.
With the invention of printing in Europe, the world rediscovered what the Chinese had known for 800, maybe a thousand years. No matter. The time required to create information remained the same. What changed was that once a master set of printing plates had been created. A printer with enough capital to buy paper (cheaper than the skin and more long lasting than untreated plant fiber and less ink hungry than linen based materials) could manufacture multiple copies of a manuscript. The out of work scribes had to find a new future, but the impact of printing was significant. Everyone knows about the benefits of literacy, books, and knowledge. What’s overlooked is that the existence of books altered the time required to move information from point A to point B. Once time barriers fell, distance compressed as well. The world became smaller if one were educated. Ideas migrated. Information moved around and had impact, which I discussed in another Mysteries of Online essay. Revolutions followed after a couple hundred years, but the mindless history classes usually ignore the impact of information on time.
If we flash forward to the telegraph, time accelerated. Information no longer required a horse back ride, walk, or train ride from New York to Baltimore to close a real estate transaction. Once the new fangled electricity fell in love with information, the speed of information increased with each new innovation. In fact, more change in information speed has occurred since the telegraph than in previous human history. The telephone gave birth to the modem. The modem morphed into a wireless USB 727 device along with other gizmos that make possible real time information creation and distribution.
Time Earns Money
I dug out notes I made to myself sometime in the 1982 – 1983 time period. The implications of time and electronic information caught my attention for one reason. I noted that the revenue derived from a database with weekly updates was roughly 30 percent greater than information derived from the same database on a monthly update cycle. So, four updates yielded a $1.30, not $1.00. I wrote down, “Daily updates will generate an equal or greater increase.” I did not believe that the increase was infinite. The rough math I did 25 years ago suggested that with daily updates the database would yield about 1.6 percent more revenue than the same database with a monthly update cycle. In 1982 it was difficult to update a commercial database more than once a day. The cost of data transmission and service charges would gobble up the extra money, leaving none for my bonus.
In the financial information world, speed and churn are mutually reinforcing. New information makes it possible to generate commissions.
Time, therefore, not only accelerated the flow of information. Time could accelerate earnings from online information. Simply by u9pdating a database, the database would generate more money. Update the database less frequently, the database would generate less money. Time had value to the users.
I found this an interesting learning, and I jotted it down in my notebook. Each of the commercial database in which I played a role were designed for daily updates and later multiple updates throughout the day. To this day, the Web log in which this old information appears is updated on a daily basis and several times a week, it is updated multiple times during the day. Each update carries and explicit time stamp. This is not for you, gentle and patient reader. The time stamp is for me. I want to know when I had an idea. Time marks are important as the speed of information increases.
Implications
The implications of my probably third-hand insight included:
- The speed up in dissemination means that information impact is broader, wider, and deeper with each acceleration.
- Going faster translates to value for some users who are willing and eager to pay for speed. The idea is that knowing something (anything) first is an advantage.
- Fast is not enough. Customers addicted to information speed want to know what’s coming. The inclusion of predictive data adds another layer of value to online services.
- Individuals who understand the value of information speed have a difficult time understanding why more online systems and services cannot deliver what is needed; that is, data about what will happen with a probability attached to the prediction. Knowing that something has a 70 chance of taking place is useful in information sensitive contexts.
Let me close with one example of the problem speed presents. The Federal government has a number of specialized information systems for law enforcement and criminal justice professionals. These systems have some powerful, albeit complex, functions. The problem is that when a violation or crime occurs, the law enforcement professionals have to act quickly. The longer the reaction time, the greater the chance that the bad egg will tougher to apprehend increases. Delay is harmful. The systems, however, require that an individual enter a query, retrieve information, process it and then use another two or three systems in order to get the reasonably complete picture of the available information related to the matter under investigation.
The systems have a bottleneck. The human. Law enforcement personnel, on the other hand, have to move quickly. As a result, the fancy online systems operate in one time environment and the law enforcement professionals operate in another. The opportunity to create systems that bring both time universes together is significant. Giving a law enforcement team mobile comms for real time talk is good, but without the same speedy and fluid access to the data in the larger information systems, the time problem becomes a barrier.
Opportunity in online and search, therefore, is significant. Vendors who pitch another fancy search algorithm are missing the train in law enforcement, financial services, competitive intelligence, and medical research. Going fast is no longer a way to add value. Merging different time frameworks is a more interesting area to me.
Stephen Arnold, February 26, 2009
YAGG Update: PageRank Tweak or Bug
March 2, 2009
If you are mesmerized by things Google, you will want to navigate to Search Engine Roundtable and read “Google March 2009 PageRank Update or Glitch?” here. The article provides links to a couple of posts that identify what may be a potential glitch or goof as in “yet another Google goof” or YAGG. I know the acronym annoys Alex, a potential Googlephile. The article quotes a Googler who uses the phrase “some kind of glitch”, which may be old news if you were bitten by the Gfail issue a few days ago.
Stephen Arnold, March 2, 2009
Register Reports Microsoft Cloud Database Plan
February 28, 2009
SQL Server comes with a search function. SQL Server also is the muscle behind some of SharePoint’s magic. With the move to the cloud, Microsoft’s database plans have been a bit of a mystery to me. The Register provided some useful information and commentary about SQL Server in “Microsoft Cloud to Get ‘Full’ SQL Server Soon?” here. The Register reported that Microsoft may offer two different data storage options. Details are murky but Microsoft seems content to offer multiple versions of Vista. SharePoint comes in different flavors. Microsoft offers a number of search options. I find it difficult to figure out what’s available and what features are available in these splinter products. If the Register was right, then the same consumer product strategy used for shampoo and soup may be coming to the cloud. I find multiple variants of one product confusing, but I am definitely an old goose, somewhat uncomfortable in the hip new world of branding and product segmentation.
Stephen Arnold, February 28, 2009
When Search Bites Your Ankle
February 27, 2009
Search means Google. I suppose one can be generous and include Live.com and Yahoo.com search in the basket even though search is, for most people, Google. When I read “Malware Tricking Search Engines, and You Too” here, I auto inserted Google whether or not the author wanted me to. The point of the write up is that bad nerds figured out a way to spoof Facebook users, for example. This is a bit like snookering the seven year old neighbor’s kid at Halloween in my opinion. The idea is that
if you Googled “Error Check System” you were pushed links to malware-infested sites. The recent GMail outage produced a similar problem; Googling “Gmail Down” got you lots of malware.
My question is, “Where does the responsibility rest?” Is the operating system outfit responsible? Is the search vendor responsible? Is the Web site responsible? For me, the most interesting comment in the story was this stunner:
the end result was to push rogue anti-malware to the user. This really does seem to the star of the malware world in that it directly brings in money.
Two comments: Maybe the author would like to have a malware Oscar like award for this “star of the malware world.” And, yep, make the user responsible. Most computing device users really know what’s what with their systems. Great idea. The buck stops where? At my 84 year old father. Right. He’s able to spot malware just fine. I bet he does this as well as your mother and father do.
Stephen Arnold, February 27, 2009
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