Microsoft Live: $560 Million Loss in 12 Months or $64,000 and Hour
September 23, 2009
TechFlash reported an interesting article called “Windows Live Lost $560 Million in FY2009”. With revenues of $520, the loss chewed through $64,000 an hour or $2,663 a minute 24×7 for 365 days. With Microsoft’s revenue in the $58 billion range, a $560 million is not such a big deal. In my opinion, profligate spending might work in the short term, but I wonder if the tactic will work over a longer haul on the information highway.
Stephen Arnold, September 23, 2009
Explaining the Difference between Fast ESP and MOSS 2007 Again
September 7, 2009
When a company offers multiple software products to perform a similar function, I get confused. For example, I have a difficult time explaining to my 88 year old father the differences among Notepad, WordPad, Microsoft Works’ word processing, Microsoft Word word processing, and the Microsoft Live Writer he watched me use to create this Web log post. I think it is an approach like the one the genius at Ragu spaghetti sauce used to boost sales of that condiment. When my wife sends me to the store to get a jar of Ragu spaghetti sauce, I have to invest many minutes figuring out what the heck is the one I need. Am I the only male who cannot differentiate between Sweet Tomato Basic and Margherita? I think Microsoft has taken a different angle of attack because when I acquired a Toshiba netbook, the machine had installed Notepad, WordPad, and Microsoft Works. I added a version of Office and also the Live Writer blog tool. Some of these were “free” and others products came with my MSDN subscription.
Now the same problem has surfaced with basic search. I read “FAST ESP versus MOSS 2007 / Microsoft Search Server” with interest. Frankly I could not recall if I had read this material before, but quit a bit seemed repetitive. I suppose when trying to explain the differences among word processors, the listener hears a lot of redundant information as well.
The write up begins:
It took me some time but i figured out some differences between Microsoft Search Server / MOSS 2007 and Microsoft FAST ESP. These differences are not coming from Microsoft or the FAST company. But it came to my notice that Microsoft and FAST will announce a complete and correct list with these differences between the two products at the conference in Las Vegas next week.These differences will help me and you to make the right decisions at our customers for implementing search and are based on business requirements.
Ah, what’s different is that this is a preview of the “real” list of differences. Given the fact that the search systems available for SharePoint choke and gasp when the magic number of 50 million documents is reached, I hope that the Fast ESP system can handle the volume of information objects that many organizations have on their systems at this time.
The list in the Bloggix post numbers 14. Three interested me:
- Scalability
- Faceted navigation
- Advanced federation.
Several observations:
First, scalability is an issue with most search systems. Some companies have made significant technical breakthroughs to make adding gizmos painless and reasonably economical. Other companies have made the process expensive, time consuming, and impossible for the average IT manager to perform. I heard about EMC’s purchase of Kazeon. I thought I heard that someone familiar with the matter pointed to problems with the Fast ESP architecture as one challenge for EMC. In order to address the issue, EMC bought Kazeon. I hope the words about “scalability” are backed up with the plumbing required to deliver. Scaling search is a tough problem, and throwing hardware at hot spots is, at best, a very costly dab of Neosporin.
Second, faceted navigation exists within existing MOSS implementations. I think I included screenshots of faceted navigation in the last edition of the Enterprise Search Report I wrote in 2006 and 2007. There was a blue interface and a green interface. Both of these made it possible to slice and dice results by clicking on an “expert” identified by counting the number of documents a person wrote with a certain word in them. There were other facets available as well, although most we more sophisticated that the “expert” function. I hope that the “new” Fast ESP implements a more useful approach for users of Fast ESP. Of course, identifying, tagging, and linking facets across processed content requires appropriate computing resources. That brings us back to scaling, doesn’t it? Sorry.
Third, federation is a buzz word that means many different things because vendors define the term in quite distinctive ways. For example, Vivisimo federates, and it is or was at one time a metasearch system. The query went to different indexing services, brought back the results, deduplicated them, put the results in folders on the fly, and generated a results list. Another type of federation surfaces in the descriptions of business intelligence systems offered by SAS. The system blends structured and unstructured data within the SAP “environment”. Others are floating around as well, including the repository solutions from TeraText which federates disparate content into one XML repository. What I find interesting is that Microsoft is not delivering “federation” which is undefined. Microsoft is, according to the Bloggix post, on the trail of “advanced federation”. What the heck does that mean. The explanation is:
FAST ESP supports advanced federation including sending queries to various web search APIs, mixing results, and shallow navigation. MOSS only supports federation without mixing of results from different sources and navigation components, but showing them separately.
Okay, Vivisimo and SAP style for Fast ESP; basic tagging for MOSS. Hmm.
To close, I think that the Fast ESP product is going to add a dose of complexity to the SharePoint environment. Despite Google’s clumsy marketing, the Google Search Appliance continues to gain traction in many organizations. Google’s solution is not cheap. People want it. I think Fast ESP is going to find itself in a tough battle for three reasons:
- Google is a hot brand, even within SharePoint shops
- Microsoft certified search solutions are better than Fast ESP based on my testing of search systems over the past decade
- The cost savings pitch is only going to go so far. CFOs eventually will see the bills for staff time, consulting services, upgrades, and search related scaling. In a lousy financial environment, money will be a weak point.
I look forward to the official announcement about Fast ESP, the $1.2 billion Microsoft spent for this company is now going to have to deliver. I find it unfortunate that the police investigation of alleged impropriety at Fast Search & Transfer has not been resolved. If a product is so good as Fast ESP was advertised to be, what went wrong with the company, its technology, and its customer relations prior to the Microsoft buy out? I guess I have to wait for more information on these matters. When you have a lot of different products with overlapping and similar services, the message I get is more like the Ragu marketing model, not the solving of customer problems in a clear, straightforward way. Sigh. Marketing, not technology, fuels enterprise search these days I fear.
Stephen Arnold, September 7, 2009
Silobreaker Update
August 25, 2009
I was exploring usage patterns via Alexa. I wanted to see how Silobreaker, a service developed by some savvy Scandinavians, was performing against the brand name business intelligence companies. Silobreaker is one of the next generation information services that processes a range of content, automatically indexing and filtering the stream, and making the information available in “dossiers”. A number of companies have attempted to deliver usable “at a glance” services. Silobreaker has been one of the systems I have relied upon for a number of client engagements.
I compared the daily reach of LexisNexis (a unit of the Anglo Dutch outfit Reed Elsevier), Factiva (originally a Reuters Dow Jones “joint” effort in content and value added indexing now rolled back into the Dow Jones mothership), Ebsco (the online arm of the EB Stevens Co. subscription agency), and Dialog (a unit of the privately held database roll up company Cambridge Scientific Abstracts / ProQuest and some investors). Keep in mind that Silobreaker is a next generation system and I was comparing it to the online equivalent of the Smithsonian’s computer exhibit with the Univac and IBM key punch machine sitting side by side:
Silobreaker is the blue line which is chugging right along despite the challenging financial climate. I ran the same query on Compete.com, and that data showed LexisNexis showing a growth uptick and more traffic in June 2009. You mileage may vary. These types of traffic estimates are indicative, not definitive. But Silobreaker is performing and growing. One could ask, “Why aren’t the big names showing stronger buzz?”
A better question may be, “Why haven’t the museum pieces performed?” I think there are three reasons. First, the commercial online services have not been able to bridge the gap between their older technical roots and the new technologies. When I poked under the hood in Silobreaker’s UK facility, I was impressed with the company’s use of next generation Web services technology. I challenged the R&D team regarding performance, and I was shown a clever architecture that delivers better performance than the museum piece services against which Silobreaker competes. I am quick to admit that performance and scaling remain problems for most online content processing companies, but I came away convinced that Silobreaker’s engineering was among the best I had examined in the real time content sector.
Second, I think the museum pieces – I could mention any of the services against which I compared Silobreaker – have yet to figure out how to deal with the gap between the old business model for online and the newer business models that exist. My hunch is that the museum pieces are reluctant to move quickly to embrace some new approaches because of the fear of [a] cannibalization of their for fee revenues from a handful of deep pocket customers like law firms and government agencies and [b] looking silly when their next generation efforts are compared to newer, slicker services from Yfrog.com, Collecta.com, Surchur.com, and, of course, Silobreaker.com.
Third, I think the established content processing companies are not in step with what users want. For example, when I visit the Dialog Web site here, I don’t have a way to get a relationship map. I like nifty methods of providing me with an overview of information. Who has the time or patience to handcraft a Boolean query and then paying money whether the dataset contains useful information or not. I just won’t play that “pay us to learn there is a null set” game any more. Here’s the Dialog splash page. Not too useful to me because it is brochureware, almost a 1998 approach to an online service. The search function only returns hits from the site itself. There is not compelling reason for me to dig deeper into this service. I don’t want a dialog; I want answers. What’s a ProQuest? Even the name leaves me puzzled.
I wanted to make sure that I was not too harsh on the established “players” in the commercial content processing sector. I tracked down Mats Bjore, one of the founders of Silobreaker. I interviewed him as part of my Search Wizards Speak series in 2008, and you may find that information helpful in understanding the new concepts in the Silobreaker service.
What are some of the changes that have taken place since we spoke in June 2008?
Mats Bjore: There are several news things and plenty more in the pipeline. The layout and design of Silobreaker.com have been redesigned to improve usability; we have added an Energy section to provide a more vertically focused service around both fossil fuels and alternative energy; we have released Widgets and an API that enable anyone to embed Silobreaker functionality in their own web sites; and we have improved our enterprise software to offer corporate and government customers “local” customizable Silobreaker installations, as well a technical platform for publishers who’d like to “silobreak” their existing or new offerings with our technology. Industry-wise,the recent statements by media moguls like Rupert Murdoch make it clear that the big guys want to monetize their information. The problem is that charging for information does not solve the problem of a professional already drowning in information. This is like trying to charge a man who has fallen overboard for water instead of offering a life jacket. Wrong solution. The marginal loss of losing a few news sources is really minimal for the reader, as there are thousands to choose from anyways, so unless you are a “must-have” publication, I think you’ll find out very quickly that reader loyalty can be fickle or short-lived or both. Add to that that news reporting itself has changed dramatically. Blogs and other types of social media are already favoured before many newspapers and we saw Twitters role during the election demonstrations in Iran. Citizen journalism of that kind; immediate, straight from the action and free is extremely powerful. But whether old or new media, Silobreaker remains focused on providing sense-making tools.
What is it going to be, free information or for fee information?
Mats Bjore: I think there will be free, for fee, and blended information just like Starbuck’s coffee.·The differentiators will be “smart software” like Silobreaker and some of the Google technology I have heard you describe. However, the future is not just lots of results. The services that generate value for the user will have multiple ways to make money. License fees, customization, and special processing services—to name just three—will differentiate what I can find on your Web log and what I can get from a Silobreaker “report”.
What can the museum pieces like Dialog and Ebsco do to get out of their present financial swamp?
Mats Bjore: That is a tough question. I also run a management consultancy, so let me put on my consultant hat for a moment. If I were Reed Elsevier, Dow Jones/Factiva, Dialog, Ebsco or owned a large publishing house, I must realize that I have to think out of the box. It is clear that these organizations define technology in a way that is different from many of the hot new information companies. Big information companies still define technology in terms of printing, publishing or other traditional processes. The newer companies define technology in terms of solving a user’s problem. The quick fix, therefore, ought to be to start working with new technology firms and see how they can add value for these big dragons today, not tomorrow.
What does Silobreaker offer a museum piece company?
Mats Bjore: The Silobreaker platform delivers access and answers without traditional searching. Users can spot what is hot and relevant. I would seriously look at solutions such as Silobreaker as a front to create a better reach to new customers, capture revenues from the ads sponsored free and reach a wider audience an click for premium content – ( most of us are unaware of the premium content that is out there, since the legacy contractual types only reach big companies and organizations. I am surprised that Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo have not moved more aggressively to deliver more than a laundry list of results with some pictures.
Is the US intelligence community moving more purposefully with access and analysis?
The interest in open source is rising. However, there is quite a bit of inertia when it comes to having one set of smart software pull information from multiple sources. I think there is a significant opportunity to improve the use of information with smart software like Silobreaker’s.
Stephen Arnold, August 25, 2009
Social Search: Nay Sayers Eat Twitter Pie
May 27, 2009
My comments will be carried along on the flow of Twitter commentary today. This post is to remind me that at the end of May 2009, the Google era (lots of older Web content) has ended and the Twitter or real time search era has arrived. Granted, the monetization, stability, maturity, and consumerization has not yet climbed on the real time search bandwagon. But I think these fellow travelers are stumbling toward the rocket pad.
Two articles mark this search shift. Sure, I know I need more data, but I want to outline some ideas here. I am not (in case you haven’t noticed) a real journalist. Save the carping for the folks who used to have jobs and are now trying to make a living with Web logs.
The first article is Michael Arrington’s “Topy Search Launches: Retweets Are the New Currency of the Web” here. The key point for me was not the particular service. What hooked me were these two comments in the article:
- “Topsy is just a search engine. That has a fundamentally new way of finding good results: Twitter users.” This is a very prescient statement.
- “Influence is gained when others retweet links you’ve sent out. And when you retweet others, you lose a little Influence. So the more people retweet you, the more Influence you gain. So, yes, retweets are the new currency on the Web.”
My thoughts on these two statements are:
- Topsy may not be the winner in this sector. The idea, however, is very good.
- The time interval between major shifts in determining relevance are now likely to decrease. Since Google’s entrance, there hasn’t been much competition for the Mountain View crowd. The GOOG will have to adapt of face the prospect of becoming another Microsoft or Yahoo.
- Now that Topsy is available, others will grab this notion and apply it to various content domains. Think federated retweeting across a range of services. The federated search systems have to raise the level of their game.
The second article was Steve Rubel’s “Visits to Twitter Search Soar, Indicating Social Search Has Arrived” here. I don’t have much to add to Mr. Rubel’s write up. The key point for me was:
I think there’s something fundamentally new that’s going on here: more technically savvy users (and one would assume this includes journalists) are searching Twitter for information. Presumably this is in a tiny way eroding searches from Google. Mark Cuban, for example, is one who is getting more traffic to his blog from Twitter and Facebook than Google.
For the purposes of this addled goose, the era of Googzilla seems to be in danger of drawing to a close. The Googlers will be out in force at their developers’ conference this week. I will be interested to see if the company will have an answer to the social search and real time search activity. With Google’s billions, it might be easier for the company to just buy tomorrow’s winners in real time search. Honk.
Stephen Arnold, May 27, 2009
Perfect Search and Adhere Solutions: Google Extender
May 12, 2009
I learned from my son (founder of Adhere Solutions) that his team and Perfect Search have a new product available, OBX. I was impressed with the OBX and the way in which the two companies explained their innovation.
The One Box Extender (OBX) allows users to search databases quickly and cost-effectively within the Google Search Appliance.
The One Box Extender (OBX), this product will extend the Google Search Appliance to enable organizations to search their database content with blistering query speeds – all delivered seamlessly though the Google Search Appliance’s OneBox interface.
Presently, Google Search Appliance users search their database content by sending the query through the OneBox Connector to retrieve results from different systems. This approach places query load on the database(s), and slows down the speed of the search for the end users. The Perfect Search One Box Extender (OBX) for the Google Search Appliance enables rapid search of Oracle, Microsoft SQL, DB2, MySQL, and any other SQL compliant database without placing any additional load on these systems. The OBX integrates within the same Search Engine Results Page for database search through the Google Search Appliance’s OneBox API.
Perfect Search and Adhere Solutions… enabling hyper federation.
Traditionally, enterprise search solutions are expensive and can be challenging to implement. The Google Search Appliance with the Perfect Search OBX provides a cost effective, appliance-based solution to index valuable database content. Many current Google Search Appliance users leverage Google’s OneBox connectors as a way to avoid indexing database content purely for cost reasons. Now, these organizations can index their database content, increase speed and relevancy, remove load from their database for a low cost.
Features of the One Box Extender include:
- Integrates the power of database search with the Google Search Appliance OneBox
- Provides connectivity to Oracle, Microsoft, DB2, MySQL, and other JDBC databases
- Can be used to search Microsoft Exchange email records
- Can index millions, or even billions of database records at a fixed cost
- Removes load on existing database systems
- Provides better results than traditional SQL queries
- Results appear within the Google Search Engine Result Page instantly
- Much lower cost than traditional enterprise search software approaches
- Complies with database security policies
- Customizable database displays.
“Adhere Solutions was founded by a team of search industry veterans with the vision of extending the capabilities of the Google Search Appliance and meeting the demand for associated professional services. We provide Google Enterprise customers with support throughout installation and configuration as well as applications built exclusively for the Google Search Appliance,” said Erik Arnold, director, Adhere Solutions. “Through the partnership with Perfect Search we will be able to offer Google Search Appliance customers the ability to search indexed databases without a massive spike in costs.”
“We are thrilled to be able to partner with such an outstanding organization as Adhere Solutions,” states Tim Stay, CEO of Perfect Search Corporation. “They have deep expertise providing robust solutions utilizing Google’s applications for the enterprise. With their guidance, we have been able to integrate the speed and capacity of the Perfect Search indexing and search engine to the breadth and functionality of the Google Search Appliance.”
“The OBX extends the functionality of Google’s strong suite of enterprise applications to large content repositories such as massive databases and email archives,” states George Watanabe, VP of Business Development at Perfect Search. “Historically, searching these very large data sets have been very expensive, but today, Perfect Search and Adhere Solutions are providing a cost-effective search solution that works seamlessly through the Google OneBox interface.”
Adhere Solutions is a Google Enterprise Partner providing products and services that help organizations accelerate their adoption of Google technologies and cloud computing. Adhere Solutions’ team of consultants help customers leverage Google’s Enterprise Search products, Google Maps, and Google Apps to improve access to information, productivity, and collaboration.
Perfect Search Corporation is a software innovation company that specializes in development of search solutions, focusing on speed, scalability, stability, and savings. A total of eight patents have been applied for around the developing technology. The suite of search products at is available on multiple platforms, from small mobile devices, to single servers, to large server farms. For more information, contact Perfect Search at www.perfectsearchcorp.com or +1.801.437.1100.
When I spoke with Perfect Search and got a description of the OBX, I concluded that Perfect Search and Adhere had moved beyond basic mash up and into a new territory. The phrase that was used to describe this product was “hyper federation.” This was the first time I heard this description, and I think that Perfect Search and Adhere have broken new ground and have a way to explain what their engineers have accomplished.
Stephen Arnold, May 12, 2009
Composite Software
April 12, 2009
I was asked about data virtualization last week. As I worked on a short report for the client, I reminded myself about Composite Software, a company with “data virtualization” as a tagline on on its Web site. You can read about the company here. Quick take: the firm’s technology performs federation. Instead of duplicating data in a repository, Composite Software “uses data where it lives.” If you are a Cognos or BMS customer, you may have some Composite technology chugging away within those business intelligence systems. The company opened for business in 2002 and has found a customer base in financial services, military systems, and pharmaceuticals.
The angle that Composite Software takes is “four times faster and one quarter the cost.” The “faster” refers to getting data where it resides and as those data are refreshed. Repository approaches introduce latency. Keep in mind that no system is latency free, but Composite’s approach minimizes latency associated with more traditional approaches. The “cost” refers to the money saved by eliminating the administrative and storage costs of a replication approach.
The technology makes use of a server that handles querying and federating. The user interacts with the Composite server and sees a single-view of the available data. The system can operate as an enabling process for other enterprise applications, or it can be used as a business intelligence system. In my files, I located this diagram that shows a high level view of Composite’s technology acting as a data services layer:
A more detailed system schematic appears in the companies datasheet “Composite Information Server 4.6” The here. A 2009 explanation of the Composite virtualization process is also available from the same page as the information server document.
The system includes a visual programming tool. The interface makes it easy to point and click through SQL query build up. I found the graphic touch for joins useful but a bit small for my aging eyeballs.
If you are a fan of mashups, Composite makes it possible to juxtapose analyzed data from diverse sources. The company makes available a white paper, written by Bloor Research, that provides a useful round up of some of the key players in the data discovery and data federation sector. You have to register before you can download the document. Start the registration process here.
Keep in mind that this sector does not include search and content processing companies. Nevertheless, Composite offers a proven method for pulling scattered, structured data together into one view.
Stephen Arnold, April 12, 2009
Journalists Struggle with Web Logs
March 30, 2009
Gina M. Chen asked, “What do you think?” at the foot of her essay “Is Blogging Journalism”. You can read her write up here. My answer is, “Nope. Web logs are a variant of plain old communications.” Before I defend my assertion, let’s look at the guts of her essay is that “fear of change” creates the challenge. She asserted that blogging is a medium.
Web logs are not causing traditional media companies to collapse. Other, more substantive factors are eroding their foundations. Forget fear. Think data termites.
Okay, I can’t push back too much on these points, which strike me as tame and somewhat obvious. I also understand the fear part mostly because my brushes with traditional publishers continue to leave them puzzled and me clueless.
The issue to me is mostly fueled by money. Here’s why:
Harry Collier, Infonortics, Exclusive Interview
March 2, 2009
Editor’s Note: I spoke with Harry Collier on February 27, 2009, about the Boston Search Engine Meeting. The conference, more than a decade into in-depth explorations of search and content processing, is one of the most substantive search and content processing programs. The speakers have come from a range of information retrieval disciplines. The conference organizing committee has attracted speakers from the commercial and research sectors. Sales pitches and recycled product reviews are discouraged. Substantive presentations remain the backbone of the program. Conferences about search, search engine optimization, and Intranet search have proliferated in the last decade. Some of these shows focus on the “soft” topics in search and wrap the talks with golf outings and buzzwords. The attendee learns about “platinum sponsors” and can choose from sales pitches disguised as substantive presentations. The Infonortics search conference has remained sharply focused and content centric. One attendee told me last year, “I have to think about what I have learned. A number of speakers were quite happy to include equations in their talks.” Yep, equations. Facts. Thought provoking presentations. I still recall the tough questions posed to Larry Page (Google) after his talk in at the 1999 conference. He argued that truncation was not necessary and several in attendance did not agree with him. Google has since implemented truncation. Financial pressures have forced some organizers to cancel some of their 2009 information centric shows; for example, Gartner, Magazine Publishers Association., and Newspaper Publishers Association. to name three. Infonortics continues to thrive with its reputation for delivering content plus an opportunity to meet some of the most influential individuals in the information retrieval business. You can learn more about Infonortics here. The full text of the interview with Mr. Collier, who resides in the Cotswolds with an office in Tetbury, Glou., appears below:
Why did you start the Search Engine Meeting? How does it different from other search and SEO conferences?
The Search Engine Meeting grew out of a successful ASIDIC meeting held in Albuquerque in March 1994. The program was organized by Everett Brenner and, to everyone’s surprise, that meeting attracted record numbers of attendees. Ev was enthusiastic about continuing the meeting idea, and when Ev was enthusiastic he soon had you on board. So Infonortics agreed to take up the Search Engine Meeting concept and we did two meetings in Bath in England in 1997 and 1998, then moved thereafter to Boston (with an excursion to San Francisco in 2002 and to The Netherlands in 2004). Ev set the tone of the meetings: we wanted serious talks on serious search domain challenges. The first meeting in Bath already featured top speakers from organizations such as WebCrawler, Lycos, InfoSeek, IBM, PLS, Autonomy, Semio, Excalibur, NIST/TREC and Claritech. And ever since we have tried to avoid areas such as SEO and product puffs and to keep to the path of meaty, research talks for either search engine developers, or those in an enterprise environment charged with implementing search technology. The meetings tread a line between academic research meetings (lots of equations) and popular search engine optimization meetings (lots of commercial exhibits).
Pictured from the left: Anne Girard, Harry Collier, and Joan Brenner, wife of Ev Brenner. Each year the best presentation at the conference is recognized with the Evvie, an award named in honor of her husband, and chair of the first conference in 1997.
There’s a great deal of confusion about the meaning of the word “search”, what’s the scope of the definition for this year’s program?
Yes, “Search” is a meaty term. When you step back, searching, looking for things, seeking, hoping to find, hunting, etc are basic activities for human beings — be it seeking peace, searching for true love, trying to find an appropriate carburetor for an old vehicle, or whatever. We tend now to have a fairly catholic definition of what we include in a Search Engine Meeting. Search — and the problems of search — remains central, but we are also interested in areas such as data or text mining (extracting sense from masses of data) as well as visualization and analysis (making search results understandable and useful). We feel the center of attention is moving away from “can I retrieve all the data?” to that of “how can I find help in making sense out of all the data I am retrieving?”
Over the years, your conference has featured big companies like Autonomy, start ups like Google in 1999, and experts from very specialized fields such as Dr. David Evans and Dr. Liz Liddy. What pulls speakers to this conference?
We tend to get some of the good speakers, and most past and current luminaries have mounted the speakers’ podium of the Search Engine Meeting at one time or another. These people see us as a serious meeting where they will meet high quality professional search people. It’s a meeting without too much razzmatazz; we only have a small, informal exhibition, no real sponsorship, and we try to downplay the commercialized side of the search world. So we attract a certain class of person, and these people like finding each other at a smaller, more boutique-type meeting. We select good-quality venues (which is one reason we have stayed with the Fairmont Copley Plaza in Boston for many years), we finance and offer good lunches and a mixer cocktail, and we select meeting rooms that are ideal for an event of 150 or so people. It all helps networking and making contacts.
What people should attend this conference? Is it for scientists, entrepreneurs, marketing people?
Our attendees usually break down into around 50% people working in the search engine field, and 50 percent those charged with implementing enterprise search. Because of Infonortics international background, we have a pretty high international attendance compared with most meetings in the United States: many Europeans, Koreans and Asians. I’ve already used the word “serious”, but this is how I would characterize our typical attendee. They take lots of notes; they listen; they ask interesting questions. We don’t get many academics; Ev Brenner was always scandalized that not one person from MIT had ever attended the meeting in Boston. (That has not changed up until now).
You have the reputation for delivering a content rich program. Who assisted you with the program this year? What are the credentials of these advisor colleagues?
I like to work with people I know, with people who have a good track record. So ever since the first Infonortics Search Engine Meeting in 1997 we have relied upon the advice of people such as you, David Evans (who spoke at the very first Bath meeting), Liz Liddy (Syracuse University) and Susan Feldman (IDC). And over the past nine years or so my close associate, Anne Girard, has provided non-stop research and intelligence as to what is topical, who is up-and-coming, who can talk on what.These five people are steeped in the past, present and future of the whole world of search and information retrieval and bring a welcome sense of perspective to what we do. And, until his much lamented death in January 2006, Ev Brenner was a pillar of strength, tough-minded and with a 45 year track record in the information retrieval area.
Where can readers get more information about the conference?
The Infonortics Web site (www.infonortics.eu) provides one-click access to the Search Engine Meeting section, with details of the current program, access to pdf versions of presentations from previous years, conference booking form and details, the hotel booking form, etc.
Stephen Arnold, March 2, 2009
US Government’s Federation Challenge
February 1, 2009
I don’t think too much about the US government’s information technology challenges. Been there. Done that. I read Wired Magazine’s “Every Military Net Accessed at Once Thanks to OB1” here. US central command has 14 networks. Instead of running one query one the individual systems, now an authorized war fighter can look to a day when a single computer can provide results from more than a dozen separate systems. Quite progressive. OB1 stands for one box, one wire. No word when the system will be available. Oh, don’t tell anyone at central command that the Science.gov has been delivering federated search for more than five years. Also, keep it a secret that USA.gov (formerly FirstGov.gov) has been delivering federated search for even longer. Too much information could overload the warfighters. Zip those lips.
Stephen Arnold, February 1, 2009
Melzoo: Googzilla Killer or Googzilla Snack
January 13, 2009
A happy quack to the reader who sent me the link to the Melzoo.com Web search site. I poked around and located on VNUnet an article providing an overview of the service. You can read “MelZoo Takes on Google with Split Screen Search here. The system is a metasearch engine like Ixquick.com and Vivisimo’s Clusty.com. The metasearch technology is not the hook for Melzoo. The company generates an image of the Web site. I first saw this type of preview when I reviewed Girafa.com for my column in Information World Review five, maybe six years ago. Melzoo asserts here:
This preview feature has an enormous impact on the ‘quality of traffic’ delivered to advertisers: the traditional search engines are offering typically only text as a teaser. Chances are that users who enjoy the luxury of a detailed thumbnail preview, will be a lot more selective in visiting the sites they are interested in. This results in a higher effectiveness of use. The chances of “conversion” (i.e. from hit to buy) is currently estimated 5 times higher than with traditional search engines.
I think the vertical metasearch available from Deb Web Technologies is more useful for my work. You can see one of the DWT vertical federated search systems here.
The VNU write up made me sit up and take notice with its inclusion of this assertion in its write up of Melzoo.com:
“MelZoo has improved the experience of browsing the Internet in a totally different way. For years people have used an old technique – text only – to browse the web. MelZoo has revolutionized the way users will browse the web,” said MelZoo chief executive Alex De Backer. “In addition MelZoo is a welcome novelty for the advertisers, as it offers higher quality visitors at a lower cost.”
There are some issues associated with metasearch. These include latency, being blocked, or having to pay the source of the hits for the privilege of using its results. I will keep my eye on Melzoo.com.
Stephen Arnold, January 12, 2009
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