Google and Italy: More Hassles
March 17, 2010
Short honk: “Italy Goes after Google over AdSense Payments” revealed that Google has more hassles in Italy. The story in SEO Roundtable pointed out:
Italy is “going after Google for how they pay Italian AdSense publishers.”
The issue is that Google does not provide much detail about how it figures payments. SEO Roundtable noted that there has not been much coverage of this dust up. Interesting? The addled goose’s has noted that his AdSense payments have traditionally drifted down when a quarter is closing. Now there appears to be other concerns about payment predictability. Could the effectiveness of online ads been decreasing and Google is just a barometer of the economic downturn? Could an algorithm be stumbling? No solid information at this time.
Stephen E Arnold, March 16, 2010
No one paid me to write this. Since it is an international post, I will report non payment to the Department of State.
Pew Documents What Some Info Vendors Will Learn the Hard Way
March 17, 2010
There are some tricks to learning. To memorize a list, put each item in a room of your house and walk the rooms, recalling each item by association. One of my classmates remembered the names of the Great Lakes with a mnemonic word. I prefer to look at survey data and let the numbers do the talking. The write up “Pew: Readers Prefer Ad Supported News to Pay Walls” provides me with some evidence that the dreams of traditional publishers to make yesterday’s revenue from gizmos like the iPad and the Nook might be just a figment of the imagination.
According to Pew, the oh-so-reliable research outfit, the article reports:
when it comes to online news, getting people to pay for content they otherwise value is “like trying to force butterflies back into their cocoons.
Yikes. People must not know this factoid which is pretty well understood among the savvy, but ageing commercial database publishing crowd.
I found this passage fascinating:
First things first: Pew notes that last year, online advertising saw its first decline since 2002. Numbers from eMarketer said that revenues fell by a total of $1 billion between 2008 and 2009. Still, a full 81 percent of Internet surfers say they’re cool with online ads if it means the content remains free, although “much of that is because they find them easy to ignore.” Further, 21 percent said they click on ads “at least sometimes”—much higher than we expected—and that number goes up when the user is more active. For example, among daily Internet surfers, 28 percent reported clicking on ads. For people who visit at least six sites per day, the click rate is as high as 37 percent.
Where’s the revenue going to originate? In my opinion, the former country club owners will be looking for regulatory help in the form of a “news tax” or some financial piece of the online revenue action from the new owners of the information country club. I caddied for peanuts and I don’t think the new country club proprietors will be too keen to give up too much cash to run “real news”.
Stephen E Arnold, March 16, 2010
Free, free as a goose. No one paid me to write this article. My reference to a goose reminded me of the Bethesda Country Club member who bludgeoned a swan to death decades ago to much fanfare. I will report my killing of this story to the new manager of that country club in suburban Washington.
Mainframe Cost: Migration Motive
March 16, 2010
You are babysitting a mainframe. The iPod listening 20 somethings don’t want to dig into the legacy code. You are reluctant to involve the IBM-savvy specialists and their new BMW work wagons. And for good reason. Navigate to “An Expert View on Mainframe Migration” at http://www.computing.co.uk/. The article provides a useful business case for dumping big iron. The source for the write up is DFA president Francis Feldman. He provides some useful factoids, including this gem:
“We expected to see a drop of between 30 and 70 per cent,” he said.
Particularly interesting was the list of the nine steps or checkpoints for migrating an application from the legacy system to a newer, much cheaper modern platform. I don’t want to recycle is list, but I can highlight three items and urge you to visit Computing UK for the full write up.
The three highlights of the write up I noted were:
First, the rework did require recoding and tweaking. The method involved recompiling into code that conformed to the ANSI standard.
Second, the legacy system and the new system were operated in parallel for a period of time. How many organizations bother with this step today?
Finally, the items on the checklist provide a solid anchoring in what one should consider. The first item is the key one in my opinion: “Asset catalogue and consistency assessment.”
I think this article is a download and save candidate. One question, “How much cheaper would a cloud solution be?” My view is that on premises installations are tomorrow’s mainframes. Just my opinion.
Stephen E Arnold, March 16, 2010
A freebie. No one paid me to write about mainframes. Because the subject is a mainframe, I will report non payment to the IRS.
CMS, Search, and Signal Flares
March 14, 2010
In my first Internet monograph—Internet 2000: The Path to the Total Network, published in 1994 by Infonortics Ltd., Tetbury, Glos—I discussed the challenges Web information posed. One of my points was:
The Internet is different from, print, video, or facsimile because it can incorporate elements of each medium in real time.
Content management systems focused on making HTML Web pages and making it possible for non programmers to create a page, ftp it to a server, and handle the various scripting issues that arose from the hackathon that HTML triggered. Since I wrote that sentence in 1994, the point-and-click browser model has supplanted other types of computer interfaces. The simplicity for the user insulates the user from the complexity beneath the surface. Even the phrase “code behind” baffles most Internet users with whom I speak.
Content management vendors have responded in one or more ways:
- Some have stuck to the “it’s really easy” method. When the customer discovers that CMS is not easy, the vendor moves on to a new town. This 19th century frontier entrepreneurship works as long as there is a “new” next town. But as Americans have learned, once one hits that Manifest Destiny barrier, life gets tougher.
- Some CMS wizards have tried to beef up their CMS to handle the increasingly complex features and functions. These systems work * when * the client has enough money, computing expertise, and stamina to see the job through. Not surprisingly, once a six or seven figure job is done, no one is too eager to reengineer the system to handle the “next big thing.” So the system just keeps doing what it is doing until the company does a rip-and-replace, which is another six or seven figure job. When these jobs go off the rails, then litigation often results.
- Some CMS vendors shift gears and become something that is more narrowly defined. Examples range from customer support content management to certain types of eDiscovery work. The idea is that replacing those glittering generalities with more narrowly defined functions makes it possible for the company to survive or successfully sell itself.
- Go open source and hope that the halo about “community” puts Neosporin on the infected wounds of what was originally code written for a single client and then boldly marketed as a “solution”.
- Mix and match.
When I read “Latest MySource Matrix Release Includes Funnelback Search Integration for Superior Search Capability”, I thought about the long journey that CMS vendors have traveled since making and managing Web pages became the equivalent of the Oklahoma Land Rush for some 19th century type entrepreneurs.
Funnelback is a search engine that is now part of Squiz, “a supported open source solutions company”. Funnelback is a search and retrieval system that was nurtured in an Australian university and research Petri dish.
The key point in the write up was:
MySource Matrix has been integrated with purpose-built Funnelback binaries incorporating powerful features for improving search results such as Contextual Navigation, Featured Pages, Type Formats and spelling suggestions. The Funnelback Search Page asset has been expanded to make it easy to implement these features. Scripts are available within the Funnelback package which can be configured to update the index, giving the administrator control over the frequency with which the indexer is run, according to the amount of content being indexed and its dynamic requirements.
My take on this is that the open source CMS created a situation in which some users were not able to locate content. The addition of search as a utility bolsters the CMS. My hunch is that CMS is morphing into a “portal” or “platform” play. Will this make users happy? I don’t know. The recent work we have done suggests that users cannot articulate what they want or need when it comes to content creation and management.
I am delighted that search is being added to a CMS. I am not confident that search alone can address the many hurdles that a CMS must jump over. Most people are not in the content producing business or are most CMS users programmers. Software that tries to facilitate both processes in a world that is shifting to rich media has a big job to tackle.
CMS is, in my opinion, increasingly a problem. Consultants are reinventing themselves. Roll ups are taking place. Open source solutions are proliferating. In short, CMS is and is likely to continue to be a black eye in the enterprise software sector.
Stephen E Arnold, March 14, 2010
No one paid me to write about content management systems. I will report non payment to the GSA, which has a heck of a content management system.
BA-Insight: New Angle on Lead Generation
March 13, 2010
The Microsoft Fast search road show was in New York this week. I stayed in rural Kentucky watching the acid run off trickle into my goose pond. I took time out from this strenuous activity to read “BA-Insight Announces New Direct Access to Free Information and Resources for SharePoint Search and Fast.”
BA-Insight develops software, including Longitude which “helps people find an analyze relevant information across the entire enterprise independently of format or location.” The firm’s Web site has been revamped and features “an enhanced support portal and new free resource library specially designed for enterprise evaluating SharePoint or Fast Search or engaging in SharePoint or Fast Search deployments, including Fast ESP.”
I took a look at the site. The splash page is below, but you will see different graphics because the rectangular area features a slide show of information.
Source: http://www.ba-insight.net/Pages/Home.aspx
You can download white papers, get inks to videos, and access the company’s Web logs. One of the documents is the Microsoft Enterprise Search 2010 Roadmap. When I clicked on that link, I saw another link and the icon labeled premium shown below.
In order to access that document, I was given an option to fill in a form with my name, title, organization, phone, email, and interests. The angle seems to be that to get this document, one must go through a vendor like BA-Insight.
One of the goslings filled in the form and the road map is a single page that explains Microsoft’s five search technologies and lists the capabilities, repository indexing, and manageability features of each product. Interesting stuff.
Here’s one snippet of the roadmap, which is more of a table than a map in my opinion:
Interesting stuff. Particularly with regard to scaling, I wonder if organizations will have the appetite for this type of hardware footprint on site. Will enterprise Fast ESP work from the cloud? © Microsoft 2010.
Several questions:
- Will more search vendors shift into education or missionary marketing mode to move their systems?
- In today’s financial climate, will the portal approach supplant the more traditional features-benefit type of marketing that characterizes some search vendors’ Web sites?
- Has the complexity of the product offering broken the back of the adage “KISS” for business oriented communications?
I will watch to see if other vendors embrace the educational portal approach to sales and lead generation. The addled goose just makes information available via a blog, assuming that content with an edge will generate inquiries. Perhaps once again I am wrong?
Stephen E Arnold, March 13, 2010
No one paid me to write this short article. Because of the references to Microsoft and its five search options, I will report non payment to the Department of Defense, an organization with an interest in Microsoft’s technology.
Lucid Hits $16 Million in Funding
March 13, 2010
Short honk: I saw an item in the San Jose business journal about Lucid Imagination’s Series B funding. The story “Open Source Search Startup Lucid Imagination Raises $10M” said:
[The] new investor Shasta Ventures of Menlo Park was joined by existing San Francisco-based investors Granite Ventures and Walden International.
Strong interest in open source search contributed to the funding I believe.
Stephen E Arnold, March 13, 2010
No one paid me to write this meaty, fact filled news item. Because I reference open source, I will report non payment for the article to the White House where “open” is a key notion.
Hewlett Packard Trim 7
March 12, 2010
Hewlett Packard, a company that I continue to associate with low cost printers and high cost ink, lit up my radar with its acquisition of Lexington, Kentucky-based Exstream Software two years ago. Exstream (now Enterprise Document Automation), like IBM Ricoh Infoprints and Streamserve, generates outputs like invoices with warranty reminders and auto payment bills with coupons for oil change discounts. I learned that in February 2010, HP stepped up its footprint in document management. One of the source documents I examined is “HPTrim 7… How We Got Here?”. The gray background and the dark blue highlights on text were a bit much for the addled goose’s eyes, however. For me, the most interesting segment in the history of Trim 7 was this passage:
Market consolidation meant that lots of little players were gobbled up, as the larger vendors strived to meet the ever challenging demands of the marketplace, picking up technology from these smaller companies and making them a part of their overall product line. Hewlett-Packard, one of the largest IT companies in the world, did the same, acquiring TOWER Software in 2008, but with one subtle difference. Rather than cannibalize the technology and abandon the product, they kept almost all of the staff from the TOWER acquisition and told them to build the next version of what is now known as HP TRIM. And – there were no other products that HP TRIM had to compete with internally unlike a lot of the other acquisitions: IBM/FileNet, OpenText/Hummingbird/Vignette, and utonomy/Zantaz/Interwoven/Meridio. HP wanted to concentrate on the product that was HP TRIM, and add the backing that only a company like HP can bring to a product. And so, HP TRIM 7 was born.
Digging through the text, HP bought an outfit called Tower and is rolling in other software to create the “new” document management business. You can locate the main page here. Three points jumped out:
First, I did not see any indication that HP’s dynamic document system integrates our “touches” the Trim 7 product. That’s strike me as an indication that HP is chasing revenues from silo sales, not integration.
Second, how does one find a document? I could not locate any information about the search and retrieval functions within Trim 7. I surmise that if I use Trim 7 for SharePoint, I in theory would be able to use the Microsoft Fast ESP system to search for content. That also seems to be quite a bit of work; that is, consulting revenue for HP or its partners. My query “search HP Trim” resulted in 10 hits but noting on point. One result was this page, which was heavy on marketing an light on locating information within the Trim 7 system. After a legal eagle drops a gift on a company named as a party in a legal matter, job one is answering the question, “What’s this about?” Trim 7 may not be able to answer that question.
Third, HP seems to be grabbing enterprise software companies that address really big information problems. With HP’s push into printers and ink, I saw a success that may have caught the firm’s hardware mavens by surprise. The trajectory in enterprise software is being driven from bit money acquisitions. I think that the surprise of printing consumables will be different from the surprise of acquisition-based growth. One was emergent; the latter is closer to MBA spreadsheet fever.
Big bets. Big win or big loss? I am leaning toward the loss option. Outlook: worth monitoring.
Stephen E Arnold, March 12, 2010
No one paid me to write this. Because HP derives significant revenue from ink, I think I have to report non payment to the US government’s printer, GPO.
Google, Data, and Owning the Golf Club
March 11, 2010
I remember when I first interviewed with Barry Bingham Jr., then the boss of the Courier Journal & Louisville Times Co. The newspaper was a monopoly and it had a document from a government official saying it was okay for us to own the morning and evening newspaper, the top TV station, the top AM and FM station, and to have other information related businesses such as high volume printing, door knob ad packet hanging, a ham company, and, oh, yes, an electronic information publishing company. That unit was also number one in revenue per record on the big commercial online systems.
One of my recollections of that interview was my question about revenue and profits. I spoke with him in 1980, so my memory of that meeting in his sunny office looking down Broadway in Louisville from the Courier Journal’s main building was along the lines: “Don’t worry. When people spend money for advertising in this area, we get most of it.” He went on to point out that he would subsidize my riding the bus to work because after working in New York and Washington DC, I was not an automobile buff. He also pointed out that I was expected to volunteer in various civic groups, which for me included helping with youth soccer and contributing to the Chamber of Commerce’s first “Advanced Technology Council.” Yep, 30 years ago I thought Louisville was an advanced technology center. Go figure.
After that initial meeting, Mr. Bingham and I became friends. When he had a computer problem, he would come over to my house and we would fix his Mac. After the sale of the Courier to Gannett, he and I would have lunch at least once a year. I had to make sure I had my wallet because Mr. Bingham would often arrive in his beat up Datsun without any money even though he worth was in the big money.
At one of those lunches, he made a comment about owning the country club. My memory locked on to this analogy, and I want to share it before I suggest you spend some time working through a Google presentation about newspapers and advertising. Here’s the country club story. His view was that newspapers were the owners of the country club. The newspapers decided what to emphasize and in the case of the Courier Journal what issues to push. The Courier Journal, when I joined as an officer of the company, was ranked on a couple of lists as among the Top 25 news papers * in the world *. The Courier Journal employee ID pass was a sure fire ticket to many events. When I wanted carpet samples from the now defunct Stewart’s Department Store, I showed my Courier Journal ID and was able to haul off a dozen carpet samples. The salesperson told me, “I will come by your house, answer questions, and pick up the samples.” Now that’s power. In New York, a carpet sample to go required a driver’s license, a credit card, and a one page form. In Louisville, the Courier Journal was the owner of the country club, employees were members, and the influence of the company, its employee practices, and its reputation in the community was remarkable. I joined the Courier Journal after a stint at Booz, Allen & Hamilton and (if you can believe this), the Courier Journal had a bigger stick that the venerable firm founded in 1917 by George Booz. Amazing. What’s become of the Courier Journal? It has been Gannettized, and I don’t recall the paper’s receiving any big writing awards. Most of the special sections are recycled wire service stories and photo essays showing people with shoes or Derby hats.
Now navigate to Scribd and download Google Newspaper Economics: Online and Offline by Google’s chief economist Hal Varian. After you work through the data, ask yourself these questions:
- Who owns the country club? Traditional newspapers or the “flat” world of Internet content?
- Who are the caddies in the age of the “digital Gutenberg”? Internet companies or newspaper publishers?
- What must newspapers to do to regain their revenue flows?
- What can newspapers do to regain their commanding position in the information food chain?
I have my answers. Please, post yours in the comments section of this Web log. I won’t grade your responses, but I will look at them and see if I have missed anything in Dr. Varian’s data centric description of a business sector struggling to find a revenue stream.
Stephen E Arnold, March 11, 2010
No one paid me to write this. Since the presentation was given for an FTC group, I will just say, “Freebie.”
Real Journalists May Have Lost Touch with IT Reality
March 9, 2010
Keep in mind that the addled goose’s Web log, which you are now reading, is a marketing vehicle. It contains on good days old news. On bad days, the addled goose recycles his own talks which he delivers for tacos and Pepsis. I am not a journalist and I don’t pretend to be one. I am not even a public relations person. As I approach 66, I entertain myself capturing information that I otherwise would forget and documenting my thoughts, which are subject to change. When was the last time, a 65 year old could remember where he or she put the keys to the automobile? See what I mean.
When I read the Cnet write up about a post I saw last week, I thought, “CBS’s real journalists are now thinking about themselves in a meta-way.” Navigate to “Has Business Press Lost Touch with the Tech Industry?” CBS is a real company and it does real news. Cnet is a real news outfit, if I understand set theory. The point is that an azure chip outfit called ITDatabase figured out that the real journalists are writing about topics that are popular. I think this is using humans the way Google uses popularity algorithms. I am sure the “real” journalists would disagree. That’s okay.
For me, the most interesting passage in the write up in Cnet was:
Enterprise IT is woefully underrepresented, despite being the cash-cow in the industry. “In the overall editorial agenda,” the report says, “enterprise IT is treated like consumer tech’s snaggletoothed twin. It barely even makes the family photo.”
Let’s think about this statement.
First, publicly traded companies are covered with a bit of fancy geometry by the investment analysts tracking these companies. The information is usually able to deliver a couple of nuggets. The reason is that most of the analysts talk to people * other than public relations * and * business development officers *. Most of the real journalists recycle familiar contacts, preferring to quote names the writer assumes the readers will recognize. So when the word “search” appears in a story the same handful of “experts’ get quoted. The result is that the stories really don’t change too much from article to article. Google is an advertising company. Bing is gaining share. Autonomy is the leader in enterprise search. The statements in the article are true because they are in the article. Tautology meets routine.
Second, figuring out what is going on in a technology field is tough for three reasons. [a] The jargon is impenetrable. A “real” journalist may not have the time to figure out what the words mean. Example: faceted search or taxonomy. [b] The sources are often running the game plan. Take a look at the comments by tech leaders. There are buzzwords and a jab or two at a windmill. Not much substance because the focus is the sound bite. [c] A tech company sells products that a really complex. The wizards at the company cannot be trusted to answer a question because the wizard might point out that a specific feature is different from the function described by the marketing person. Guess who gets in trouble? The tech person so there folks are shuttled away from the lights and the cameras.
Third, I heard that publishing companies are getting rid of staff. The numbers quoted at a conference last week struck me as pretty high. The person pointed out that newspapers were shedding jobs at the rate of 1,000 per month. Wow. What will be left? What’s left, if this number is accurate, are people who have to write from news releases, contacts who are warm and familiar, and topics that are listed on Tweetmeme.
When the money goes away, algorithms will do this work and, of course, folks with time on their hands like this addled goose. Just my opinion.
Stephen E Arnold, March 9, 2010
No one paid me to write about how I write this blog. Wait. If I buy myself lunch this afternoon, I will be getting paid. I will report the write-for-food angle to the FCC.
Surprise. Telcos Do Not Like Nexus One
March 8, 2010
Some chatter over the last two days suggests that Google plays favorites. Google does play favorites, but it does its head patting in subtle ways; that is, if you see the Nexus One roll out as a low key initiative. Navigate to the SP Trading Desk and the story “Google’s Nexus One Upsets Carriers.” You may have to do some work to see the story. The ads load slowly and then there is a weird pop over thing, but the content is still there.
The Financial Post said:
The launch of Google Inc.’s new Web-enabled smartphone, dubbed Nexus One, means the end of the Internet search giant’s Android software as we know it.
The insight comes from an analyst, Peter Misek.
The story points out that some telecommunications carriers are not jumping with joy over Google’s intrusion into yet another parcel of telco land. Google, the analyst and the telcos, now realize that:
Google is trying to circumvent their ownership of networks, spectrum and customers…Android is currently available on more than a 20 phones.
Now how can Google disadvantage competitors. My goodness, I am no Elizabeth Barrett Browning but let me count some of the ways:
- Applications. Some may not be available for non Google phones. This is the Apple approach and lots of other companies’ approach.
- Latency. Ah, more subtle. Google does prioritize certain network services. Maybe but some hard evidence is needed.
- Content delivery. My research indicates that Google’s CDN technology has some interesting technical capabilities. Even better, the CDN is smart and considers many factors which to one skilled in the art may be applied in other ways.
- Features. Ask Motorola about this angle.
- Metrics. Lots of metrics are available. The question is who gets what and when.
- Services. I can anticipate the real time translation service emerging as an interesting poker chip in the telco game.
Back to the gossip and rumors. Does Google advantage itself? Do Google employees use MOMA?
Stephen E Arnold, March 8, 2010
No one paid me to write this. I will report non payment to that most objective of US government entities, the FCC.
