The Future: Computing Toasters and Microwave Ovens for Search
August 24, 2012
After floundering around Denali National Park, I had a backlog of stories which Overflight flagged as “must reads.” One, which caught my attention, was “Fewer and Fewer People Want to Know about Computers, Says Google.” I took a look at the write up.
The first thing which hit me was that the article was pegged to Google Trends. If you are not familiar with this service, navigate to Google Trends. Type in your search terms and hit “Search Trends.” Google taps into some of its data to generate a chart which purports to show the number of queries for the terms over the timeline. I ran this query on August 23, 2012, tablet, notebook computer. Google happily displayed:
Despite the lousy Web log graphics, the flat red line represents search for notebook computers. The squiggly blue line shows queries for the word “tablet.” Now there is an issue with disambiguation of “tablet” but no degree in math is needed to see that the squiggly blue line alleged shows more queries for “tablets.” The chart tell a search engine optimization maven that buying the word “tablet” will get more traffic than the phrase “notebook computer.” An SEO expert will also figure out that the cost of the word tablet might be higher than buying the phrase “notebook computer.”
Yum. Information pizza. Filling and really good for your brain.
Now back to the write up and the phrase “Says Google.” Google is not saying anything. A person ran queries and received data. One never knows how comprehensive the data set available to Google Trends is. Furthermore, I am not sure I know how the data sets are generated.
The article reports what I already knew. Each time Dell or Hewlett Packard releases its financial reports, I am reminded that certain mainstay computing products are not selling like hot cakes. HP’s printer ink business was down. Dell’s hardware sales were down. Non Apple tablets are non-starters. Fancy Dan consultants generate massive reports about the shift to mobile devices. On a personal front, at meetings I see more iPads than 15 inch notebook computers. The small form factor netbooks have mostly disappeared from the circles in which I travel.
What about the phrase “Fewer People Want to Know about Computers”? I have worked in various technology centric businesses for more than 50 years. Guess what I learned on my first day at Halliburton Nuclear in 1972? I learned that at a subsidiary with more than 600 nuclear engineers, only a tiny fraction of the professionals wanted to learn about computers.
Flash forward 50 years. Most people don’t want to learn about computers. If you happen to work at a company which is steeped in computer hardware and software, the interest in computing technology is quite high. However, when one asks one of these experts to fix a dead laptop, does that person eagerly volunteer to disassemble your machine, replace a dead hard drive, and reinstall and operating system and applications? My experience is that modern assembly methods make today’s gizmos tough to fix.
I may know how to take apart an iMac, and iPhone, or a Toshiba laptop. But I don’t want to do it, never did. Even a trivial fix such as replacing a VGA port with a bent pin can be an exercise in frustration. I don’t want to go through the drill of locating a disassembly guide, finding my sets of electronics screwdrivers, getting my magnifying gizmo set up, and repairing the system. The components are tiny. I have other work to do. Do you really want to reinstall OSX or Windows on your mother’s PC? So consumerization is here.
The larger issue is, “What does this mean about understanding information access?”l
With folks just wanting a tablet or mobile phone to work, I believe that many people will accept what the provider or vendor delivers. With the gap between those who learn zip in high school and college, figuring out that information payloads are shaped will be impossible and possibly irrelevant any way. For those lucky dogs who are in the technology flow, I understand the opportunity to take advantage of those operating at a lower clock speed, with less RAM, and a flawed storage device.
Once I thought that a search should return objective, high value results. I have learned that search systems have to allow system administrators to boost certain content. The app revolution generates money when the app delivers an experience which is similar to a microwaved pizza. Some calories, lots of fat, and quickly and easy to cook.
I don’t need a Google Trend chart to make clear the business opportunities consumerization presents.
Stephen E Arnold, August 24, 2012
Sponsored by Augmentext
The Flaw in Cloud Search: No Connectivity, No Access
August 21, 2012
Sitting in Fairbanks, Alaska, I realized that the cloud does not work. I had my trusty laptop, an iPad, and my smartphone. The only device which allowed me to work was the laptop with its local storage. The wireless connections were unusable due to insufficient network capacity and latency. The iPad was a glorified book reader. The mobile phone simply did not work. My T Mobile hot spot said it was device 330336 and refused to do anything except run down its battery.
Unusual situation? For me, no. For the poobahs, mavens, and self-appointed wizards formerly known as “real” journalists? Yes. Impossible.
Let me assure you that the world contains many places which render mobile devices mostly useless. However, when I read such articles as “Will Google Fiber Waste $28 Billion”, I perceive a disconnect. Google is investing in a high speed demonstration network in Kansas City, a metropolis with what I consider adequate connectivity. WiFi works from Boingo.com hot spots. My mobile phone allows voice and data access. My iPad displays Pulse headlines.
A happy quack to http://athenspio.posterous.com/athens-co-is-under-a-severe-thunderstorm-warn
The New York centric Forbes’ article asserts:
At a societal level, Cioffi [an expert in telco matters] argues that the benefit of Google Fiber would be way below its costs. After all, if a billion phone lines were replaced by fiber, the cost would be $3 trillion. But DSL and shared WiFi — currently in use by 400 million subscribers according to research firm Point Topic — could boost the speed by a factor of two or three — to between 200 megabits/second (Mbps) and 400 Mbps. If Cioffi is right, it does not look likely that Google Fiber will reach the critical mass needed to get the additional advertising revenues from faster Internet access it would need to come close to justifying its enormous investment.
If Google cannot deploy high speed connections in Kansas City, who will be able to foot the bill for providing basic high speed connectivity in smaller communities.
So what?
First, with the shift to the promise of the cloud, individuals may find themselves like me without access to basic communications for considerable periods of time. The fact that those in New York City or Los Angeles have the resources and connectivity does not help those in underserved areas. Perhaps this is not a big deal because the real money comes from customers in densely populated areas. For those outside those areas, tough luck.
Second, as people become less dependent on local storage both magnetic and paper, access to information decreases. The yap about information overload is a problem for those with access and the money to pay for bandwidth. For those just relying on cloud services, a certain segment of the population may be information starved.
Third, the models for pricing such as the analysis summarized in the Forbes’ article don’t work where there are too few people or geographic locations which cannot be economically served with today’s technology. Forget the next generation technology, more primitive methods are not part of the equipment for living.
Little surprise, then, that there is investor panic setting in with regard to online services such as Facebook, Groupon, and even Google. When the models don’t work in densely populated areas, it does not take much thinking to realize that the shift to the cloud will deliver big bucks from the hinterlands.
I can’t search if I can’t connect. What’s this mean for cloud search? A potential hurdle?
Stephen E Arnold, August 22, 2012
Sponsored by Augmentext
The Pivot: Business Gold or Baloney
August 15, 2012
Let’s think about the belief that services will cure revenue problems. Straight away, services can be lucrative. Check out the revenues from McKinsey, BCG, or Bainie Mr. Romney.
The question is, “Can a company anchored in services become a hardware company?” And the flip side, “Can a hardware company become a services company?” These questions highlight the latest in business baloney: The pivot. The idea is that a company can go in a different direction, pay its debts, maintain its existing revenues, and generate large flows of new revenues. The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is a children’s book metaphor for this strategic vision.
Google is doing the pivot. First, there was the purchase price of $12 billion and change. Then there was the $200 million plus operating loss mentioned in the most recent Google quarterly report. Today (August 13, 2012) I read “Google to Cut 4,000 Motorola Mobility Jobs, Take $275 Million Charge.” The core of the news story is like the refrain of a sad Sinatra tune:
Motorola Mobility has lost money in fourteen of the last sixteen quarters and in its latest quarter reported an operating loss of $233 million on revenue of $1.25 billion. “These changes are designed to return Motorola’s mobile devices unit to profitability,” Google said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Google has “grand plans.” The task is to keep the ad revenues pumped up as the company invests in new revenue opportunities such as Motorola hardware, legal experts to deal with the copious supply of litigation, and tactical moves which seem to target Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and other companies with possible monopolistic business models.
Will firing people and the possible sale of deadwood make the pivot work?
Given enough money and time, my view is that Google may succeed. The race
is on for Google. The three reasons I have identified include:
The click pattern difference between desktop Google searching and mobile device Google searching. To sum up what I understand is the “new wisdom”, mobile clicks are growing but deliver less bang for the advertisers’ buck. Desktop searches are not growing as they once did. Advertisers get less bang for their buck. My simple conclusion is that Google will have to find ways to work around these revenue producing online behaviors. But isn’t down down?
Second, like Amazon, Google has a cost control problem. Google is making cuts in services, buying companies to get a jump start or head start in certain application spaces, and investing in gee whiz technology in hopes of getting operational costs to flatten. My view? Good luck with that. Companies like Amazon and Google need increased revenue to keep pace with technology costs. In my experience, technology costs just keep on going up no matter what a manager does to contain them. The solution is to cap the budget and fall behind or keep spending until the business model collapses. (Example: Convera.)
Third, the bets on the future are predicated on the fact that the Internet is nothing more than a communications and information utility. The ubiquity opens the door to a cuteness and convenience thermonuclear war. Witness the efforts of Facebook and Google to co-opt the other company’s territory. The problem is that when cuteness and convenience become important, the tech companies may find themselves at the mercy of the experts in these disciplines. Google is making nice with the entertainment industry. Facebook cooperates with US government agencies. The problem for Facebook and Google is that the specialists in cuteness and convenience have more monetization options that the technology companies. One buys a mobile phone or runs a Web search. A child nags to go to the new Disney movie, get the coloring book, and have the Mickey Mouse T shirt. Facebook and Google give these cute items away. Disney and other experts in cuteness and convenience sell them, year in, year out, generation after generation.
Read more
Power and Behavior: Amazon, Apple, eBay, Google, and Microsoft
August 11, 2012
I like the yip yap about choice. Search means Google for most of the 99 percent who know about online. Amazon means books. Sure, there is push back from publishers and Barnes & Nobile, but Amazon is the game. Too bad about the company’s inability to control its costs as it searches for world domination. eBay has been hanging in there. There is the wonderful PayPal service. I pay and maybe the Account information displays what I did. Well, maybe not. And there is adorable Microsoft. The IBM to the generations of computer users born after 1980.
Let’s take a quick look at the possible correlations between power and behavior.
Fights are simplified when there is one antagonist and one protagonist. Child-like in their simplicity.
First, navigate to the PCMag.com, a publication which does fewer product reviews and more “I wanna be a pundit” writing than when I worked at Ziff Communications, the outfit which owned the original PC Magazine. The story is “Microsoft’s Massive Metro Mistake.” The main idea is that Microsoft did not do a trademark search. The more interesting information in the write up is the allegation that Microsoft wants to shove the new pointy-and-clicky interface down the developers’, the users’ and the enterprise licensees’ throat. Got it. Power. Microsoft is a big outfit, a slightly updated version of IBM. Microsoft once was computing. The fear of losing market share, revenue, and clout seems to be the motivation behind the Draconian actions assigned to Microsoft. My view? Er, what’s new here?
Second, check out “The Bottom Line on Apple and YouTube.” A real journalist turned video management wizard asserts that Apple’s dumping of YouTube in the next Apple mobile operating system is a good thing. Yep, lemons become lemonade. My view is that Apple is throwing its considerable weight around. Neither Samsung nor Google intimidate the Infinity boys and girls. Apple pretty much has money and the idea that it can do what it wants. No problem. My view? Er, what’s new here?
Designing for the One Percent. Thinking for the 99 Percent.
August 5, 2012
I remember when my family moved back to America from Brazil, where we lived for a while. My teacher in the local Campinas school recommended a tutor. I was a “cabeça óssea” or stupid. No kidding. After three days in Brazil, I was unable to read or speak Portuguese. At age 11 or 12, I was a 99 percenter.
I went to special Portuguese lessons, picked up trash talk from the kids in the neighborhood, and supplemented the Estado de São Paulo schools with something called the Calvert Course. My Calvert Course “teacher” was a missionary of a fervent ilk.
As luck would have it, he stepped on a spider, became delirious, wandered into the scrub which in the 1950s surrounded Campinas, which is now a suburb of the city of São Paulo. “A selvla comeu” or something along those lines. So I missed those Calvert Course lessons. I think I missed a couple or three “traditional” US educational hurdles. When I returned to the US, I popped into the American school without having “taken” the classes my peers enjoyed. No problem. I was plonked into what was called then the “advanced class.” Instant one percenter. Magic.
I zoomed through college and graduate school. I was dragooned by Halliburton Nuclear and three years later, I was recruited by the blue chip consulting firm of Booz, Allen & Hamilton. The “old” BAH was different from the azure-chip outfits sporting the name today. I don’t recall brushing shoulders with the “real” 99 percent, but in Brazil I was not just one of the 99 percent. I was one of the stupider 99 percenters.
I learned one thing about being stupid: A log depends on context and point of view.
What’s happening in the digital world is that the one percent are making the world which they want. The problem is that the 99 percenters don’t have a clue about that world. There are some interesting examples of what I call “one percent think.”
ITEM: “Reversing the Decline in Big Ideas” explains that the Silicon Valley “thing” has eroded innovation. Here’s the passage I noted:
But now much of the transformational potential of the “pure information technology” possibility space has been exhausted to the point of terminal differentiation…Now I look around and see lost opportunities for collaboration everywhere.
ITEM: “The Naked and the TED” is a clever and coruscating (if the New York Times writing covering automobiles can use the word obdormition although I would prefer paresthesia, I can employ a form of coruscate). The write up by a one percenter tackles baloney from two other one percenters, Parag Khanna and Ayesha Khanna. The précis for the review of the Khanna monograph “Hybrid Reality: Thriving in the Emerging Human Technology Civilization”, only $2.99 is, “Baloney.” One percenters criticizing one percenters is probably not going to have much of an impact on those in the 99 percent.
ITEM: “The Linguistic Interface” explains why a command line interface is not such a bad thing. After all, the article says, “We live in a Kingdom of Nouns.” Here’s the ace quote:
There does come a time when all you want to do is pick up a pencil and draw a cat. But we must remember that we aren’t using an application in which one draws cats, we’re simply acknowledging that paper is a thing we can draw on. There is still no application harness set up to isolate us from the rest of the world, and the pencil is not inextricably bound to the paper. The terminal — a record of the conversation we’ve been having with the shell — happens to be one thing to look at, but even as we scribble over the page we can still talk to the shell, and it can do things to the drawing just as it can anything else. “Now add to this all the pictures I drew of kittens. All of them.”
I can see the folks at the bar in Harrod’s Creek arguing over this insight and not the University of Kentucky football scrimmage.
Research and Development Innovation: A New Study from a Search Vendor
August 3, 2012
I received message from LinkedIn about a news item called “What Are the Keys to Innovation in R&D?” I followed the links and learned that the “study” was sponsored by Coveo, a search vendor based in Canada. You can access similar information about the study by navigating to the blog post “New Study: The Keys to Innovation for R&D Organizations – Their Own, Unused Knowledge.” (You will also want to reference the news release about the study as well. It is on the Coveo News and Events page.
Engineers need access to the drawings and those data behind the component or subsystem manufactured by their employer. Text based search systems cannot handle this type of specialized data without some additional work or the use of third party systems. A happy quack to PRLog: http://www.prlog.org/10416296-mechanical-design-drawing-services.jpg
The main of the study, as I interpret it, is marketing Coveo as a tool to facilitate knowledge management. Even though I write a monthly column for the print and online publication KMWorld, I do not have a definition of knowledge management with which I am comfortable. The years I spent at Booz, Allen & Hamilton taught me that management is darned tough to define. Management as a practice is even more difficult to do well. Managing research and development is one of the more difficult tasks a CEO must handle. Not even Google has an answer. Google is now buying companies to have a future, not inventing its future with existing staff.
The unhappy state of many search and content processing companies is evidence that those with technological expertise may not be able to generate consistent and growing revenues. Innovation in search has become a matter of jazzing up interfaces and turning up the marketing volume. The $10 billion paid for Autonomy, the top dog in the search and content processing space, triggered grousing by Hewlett Packard’s top executives. Disappointing revenues may have contributed to the departure of some high profile Autonomy Corporation executives. Not even the HP way can make traditional search technology pay off as expected, hoped, and needed. Search vendors are having a tough time growing fast enough to stay ahead of spiking technical and support costs.
When I studied for a year at the Jesuit-run Duquesne University, I encountered Dr. Frances J. Chivers. The venerable PhD was an expert in epistemology with a deep appreciation for the lively St. Augustine and the comedian Johann Gottlieb Fichte. I was indexing medieval Latin sermons. I had to take “required” courses in “knowledge.” In the mid 1960s, there were not too many computer science departments in the text indexing game, so I assume that Duquesne’s administrators believed that sticking me in the epistemology track would improve the performance of my mainframe indexing software. Well, let me tell you: Knowledge is a tough nut to crack.
Now you can appreciate my consternation when the two words are juxtaposed and used by search vendors to sell indexing. Dr. Chivers did not have a clue about what I was doing and why. I tried to avoid getting involved in discussions that referenced existentialism, hermeneutics, and related subjects. Hey, I liked the indexing thing and the grant money. To this day, I avoid talking about knowledge.
Selected Findings
Back to the study. Coveo reports:
We recently polled R&D teams about how they use and share innovation across offices and departments, and the challenges they face in doing so. Because R&D is a primary creator and consumer of knowledge, these organizations should be a model for how to utilize and share it. However, as we’ve seen in the demand for our intelligent indexing technology, and as revealed in the study, we found that R&D teams are more apt to duplicate work, lose knowledge and operate in soloed, “tribal” environments where information isn’t shared and experts can’t be found. This creates a huge opportunity for those who get it right—to out-innovate and out-perform their competition.
The question I raised to myself was, “How were the responses from Twitter verified as coming from qualified respondents?” And, “How many engineers with professional licenses versus individuals who like Yahoo’s former president just arbitrarily awarded themselves a particular certification were in the study?” Also, “What statistical tests were applied to the results to validate the the data met textbook-recommended margins of error?”
I may have the answers to these questions in the source documents. I have written about “number shaping” at some of the firms with which I have worked, and I have addressed the issue more directly in my opt in, personal news service Honk. (Honk, a free weekly newsletter, is a no-holds-barred look at one hot topic in search and content processing. Those with a propensity to high blood pressure should not subscribe.)
News Corp., Paywalls, and Online Economics
August 1, 2012
Most businesses are simple. Buy low. Sell high. When I worked at Booz, Allen & Hamilton in the pre-azure chip days, a joke was popular. I jotted down its particulars and it resonated with me when I read “The Daily Lays Off a Third of Its Staff.” The Daily was one of those digital innovations which would pump much needed revenue into a real journalistic operation owned by the News Corp. I know should have a more open mind, but when I hear “News Corp.”, I associate the firm with allegedly inappropriate methods of information collection. I will work on becoming more open minded and understanding. Really, I promise situationally right this instant.
A happy quack to Image source: Tainted Pen at http://taintedpen.blogspot.com/2011/04/how-to-form-breadline.html
And the joke:
A graduate of an Ivy League MBA who worked as a manager at a financial services firm walked out of her building in Midtown. Waiting to cross Lexington, a chauffeur driven Rolls Royce pulled up. The window slid down. A voice said, “Remember me? We were in MBA school together.” The Ivy Leaguer said, “Yes, but you quit during the first semester. Nice car. What are you doing now?” The limo’s occupant said, “I buy those little paper cocktail umbrellas for one cent each in Shanghai and I sell them to bars worldwide for 10 cents each. That 10 percent mark up produces a lot of dough.” The window slid up and the limo took off.
Yep, pretty good income but not so good math. When something works, apologies and Excel speed skating don’t make much difference in my opinion.
The News Corp. story of the staff cutbacks at the News Corp.’s The Daily is an example of a company unable to generate income. Good math or bad, when a good idea produces lots of revenue, the exact math does not matter too much. When a business cannot generate revenue, then I watch cutbacks, fancy dancing, and ostrich-like maneuvers. Like my beloved boxer Tess. If she turns her head and cannot see me, she thinks I cannot see her.
Here’s the passage I noted in the “real” journalists write up about his employer company engaged in “real” journalism:
News Corp. officials have publicly defended The Daily, which News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch thought would serve as a template for newspapers’ transition to the tablet era. Murdoch’s team worked closely with Apple and its late CEO Steve Jobs to produce a publication initially tailored for the iPad. But while Daily executives say they now have more than 100,000 paying subscribers for its iOS and Android editions, the paper hasn’t been able to live up to Murdoch’s expectations, and the money-losing publication has been under scrutiny since launch.
Making Data Easy with Training Wheels? The Nielsen Dust Up
July 31, 2012
In the Honk newsletter, I have been plugging away at some of the flights of fancy that surround big data, next generation analytics, and all things predictive. I am nervous about “training wheels” on complex mathematical processes. Like the fill-in-the-blanks functions in Excel, a person without a foundation in math can fiddle around until the software spits out a number which “looks good.” In one of my jobs, my boss was a master at “the flow.” The idea was that numbers can be shaped to support a particular point. I recall his comment to me in 1974, “Most of our clients are not smart enough to work through the math. We have to generate outputs which flow.” The idea is one that troubled me. I moved on to greener and less slippery pastures and I kept that notion of “flow” squarely in mind. Numbers should not cause the person looking at a chart or a table to say, “Wow, that number looks weird.” Hence, flow allows the reasoning process to be guided.
I just read a story which I hope is not accurate. I want to document my coming across the item, however. I think it will be an interesting touchstone and search and content processing companies race to be come players in big data and analytics. The story appeared in the Hollywood Reporter, a publication about which I know little. The headline caught my attention because it resonates with advertising and advertising automatically evokes the Google logo for me. “Nielsen Sued for Billions over Allegedly Manipulated TV Ratings” carries a hard hitting subtitle too: “In a huge new lawsuit, the business of TV ratings is fingered for rampant corruption by India’s largest TV news network.” I know even less about India than the Hollywood Reporter.
Fancy math underlies the products and services of many analytics firms which offer products and services to licensees that make interacting with data a matter of pointing and clicking. A happy quack for the equation to http://goo.gl/lBlXV
Here’s the passage I noted:
In a 194-page lawsuit filed in New York court late last week, NDTV accuses Nielsen of violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act by manipulating viewership data in favor of channels that are willing to provide bribes to its officials. According to NDTV, rampant manipulation of viewership data has been going on for eight years, and when presented with evidence earlier this year, top executives at Nielsen pledged to make changes. But the Indian news giant says these promises have been false ones.
Like most litigation, the story will unfold slowly and perhaps not at all. The i2 Group Palantir litigation is a relatively recent example. Based on my experience with the boss who wanted numbers to flow, I can see how the possibility of tweaking could be useful to some companies. However, with the dismal state of math skills, how can I now of the problem was a result of human intent, human error, or a training wheels type system driven over rocky terrain. I can’t and I bet that most people thinking about this situation cannot either.
What is interesting to me, however, are these notions:
- How many other fancy math systems are open to similar allegations from their licensees?
- Will this type of legal action cause some of the vendors pitching fancy math and predictive systems to modify their marketing materials to include more caveats and real world anchors instead of bold assertions?
- How will the legal system deal with fancy math litigation? I don’t know many attorneys. The handful with which I have some experience have been quick to point out that math, engineering, and science were not their strengths. Logic and reasoning were their strong suits.
With many search and content processing companies embracing fancy math, sentiment analysis, smart indexing and other math-based functions, will a search vendor find itself in the hot seat? I hope not but the market wants to buy fancy math. Understanding the fancy math may drive demand for individuals who can figure out if the systems and methods do what the licensee believes they do.
Oh, I like the word “billions.” Big money adds to the drama of analytics risk management in my opinion.
Stephen E Arnold, July 31, 2012
IDC Open Source Search Reports Announced
July 23, 2012
IDC has released the first of a series of analyses of open source search vendors. The subject of the report is LucidWords Platform. Lucid Imagination has become one of the key open source search vendors. Data for the IDC “situation overview, future outlook, and essential guidance” is a result of a painstaking process. The IDC research team interviewed principals of Lucid Imagination, conducted a technical analysis of the Lucid technology platform, and used a range of data analysis methods to pinpoint key information from open source content. In addition to detailed, jargon-free information about the Lucid Lucene/Solr approach, the report provides an unvarnished analysis of the firm’s business model.
Order the full report at tp://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=236086.
One of the important facts uncovered in the course of the research is the strong uptake of Lucid technology in specific market sectors. Also, Lucid, unlike some proprietary and other open source search vendors, has strong venture backing, revenue growth, and a full-time professional open source search technology team. Each of these issues is explored in the IDC report number 236086. You can get additional information about the for-fee report from IDC’s “Get Doc” online service.
The team working on this project included Sue Feldman, who specializes in research on information access technologies including, including search engines, text analytics, categorization, unified access to structured and unstructured information, Big Data, visualization, and rich media search. Her research analyzes the trends and dynamics of the search and discovery software market and also quantifies the costs of information work to the organization. Ms. Feldman won IDC’s James Peacock Research award for her work on modeling and forecasting the search and retrieval technology markets, and an Innovation Award from IDC in 2007 for developing a new research program on the digital marketplace. She is a frequent speaker at industry events, and has won several national and international awards for her writing. She wrote the chapter on search engines for the 1999 volume of the Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science and was the first editor of the IEEE Computer Society’s Digital Library News. She is currently writing a book, The Answer Machine concerning the future of technology for information access. Before coming to IDC in 2000, Ms. Feldman was President for twenty years of Datasearch, an independent technology consulting firm, where she consulted on new retrieval technologies such as natural language processing, search engines, usability of online systems, and digital libraries.
Simplicity or Just Simple: Pundits Give Advice to Yahooliganette
July 19, 2012
I use Yahoo mail. Not much else now. The reason has to do with the interface, the annoying weird stuff which appears when I check my aging My Yahoo page, and the awkward 1995, Excite-style of portal clutter.
Yahoo has zoomed through CEOs, search strategies, open source plays, and acquisitions. I finally ignored the company. It was just an AOL with a different color scheme. Now like AOL, it has a Xoogler at the helm. I wish the new boss well in her job, her new life adventure, and her juggling mom stuff with Yahoo stuff.
A clueless adult provides inputs to a child. Poobahs and pundits embrace this approach to help Yahoo become a powerhouse again. How is that working out, I wonder? A happy quack to http://simplyshreya.blogspot.com/
I read two articles from hugely popular “real” journalistic wizards in big company management. I want to comment on each of the poobah’s insights and then wrap up with a few observations from Harrod’s Creek. If you are a fan of mavens and mystics, you should stop reading now. Why not license a predictive analytics system and get on with your life. That software stuff is going to take over the world anyway.
The write up is by Doug Gross of that business centric CNN. I saw the title and automatically converted it to “How Can CNN Be Saved?”, but I digress.
The main point of the CNN analysis struck me as the nugget in this passage:
By selecting Mayer over interim CEO Ross Levinsohn, Yahoo could be tipping its hand as to what users can expect. Levinsohn’s background is in content, such as Yahoo News and related offerings such as Yahoo Voices (formerly Associated Content, a publishing platform that’s been criticized as a low-quality “content farm.”) Mayer, meanwhile, comes from a product-development background. In her 13 years at Google she helped create the look of a number of services, from Gmail to Google Maps.
Now there are some amazing quotes in the write up. Let me highlight one which shows the laser like thinking that one brings to saving Yahoo:
“Yahoo!’s fundamental problem is that it has too many disparate products with no clear unifying thread that ties them all together,”analyst Shar VanBoskirk of Forrester Research wrote on the company’s blog this week. VanBoskirk, who has followed Yahoo closely, said Mayer must be open to killing the company’s lesser products as she seeks to move things in the right direction.
Yep, an azure chip consultant suggesting that Yahoo kill products. I had to sit down and catch my breath due to the intellectual stimulation.
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