The Duck Quacks 12 Million Queries
January 14, 2016
DuckDuckGo keeps waddling through its search queries and quacking that it will not track its users information. DuckDuckGo has remained a small search engine, but its privacy services are chipping away at Google and search engines’ user base. TechViral shares that “DuckDuckGo The Anti-Google Search Engine Just Reached A New Milestone” and it is reaching twelve million search queries in one day!
In 2015, DuckDuckGo received 3.25 billion search queries, showing a 74 percent increase compared to the 2014 data. While DuckDuckGo is a private oasis in a sea of tracking cookies, it still uses targeted ads. However, unlike Google DuckDuckGo only uses ads based on the immediate keywords used in a search query and doesn’t store user information. It wipes the search engine clean with each use.
DuckDuckGo’s increase of visitors has attracted partnerships with Mozilla and Apple. The private search engine is a for profit business, but it does have different goals than Google.
“Otherwise, it should be noted that although he refuses to have the same practices as Google, DuckDuckGo already making profits, yes that’s true. And the company’s CEO, Gabriel Weinberg, stop to think it is necessary to collect information about users to monetize a search engine: ‘You type car and you see an advertisement for a car, Google follows you on all these sites because it operates huge advertising networks and other properties. So they need these data for search engines to follow you.’ ”
DuckDuckGo offers a great service for privacy, while it is gaining more users it doesn’t offer the plethora of services Google does. DuckDuckGo, why not try private email, free office programs, and online data storage? Would you still be the same if you offered these services?
Whitney Grace, January 14, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Google: Autos and Virtual Reality. Search? Not So Important?
January 13, 2016
I read two stories about the new Alphabet Google thing and its foci for 2016.
The first report comes from McPaper in the story “Google Forms Virtual Reality Division As Facebook Rivalry Heats Up.” The main idea is that Facebook is pitching virtual reality and getting lots of media coverage. The response for the Alphabet Google thing has been to do a reorganization.
Now I don’t much about virtual reality and I know zippo about modern management theory. I do think that when a giant company with many interests outside of the firm’s core technology does a reorganization after the Consumer Electronic Show, that’s a signal of note.
Has Google pulled a “let’s buy Motorola” or a “let’s reorganize now” maneuver?
Sure, looks like a knee jerk.
Meanwhile the Google is showing some signs of promiscuity. I read “Google Self-Driving Car Boss to Automakers: ‘We Hope to Work with Many of You Guys’.” I presume that the Alphabet Google thing will answer phone calls from those who want to work with the GOOG. The write up points out that there is a new president of the “self driving car project.” Hmm. President of project. I thought the title for that type of work was “project manager.”
The new Alphabet Google thing seems to be batting its Jack Benny blue eyes at anyone who finds the cachet of the search vendor alluring.
Zebras can change their stripes one assumes.
And search. Er, what?
Stephen E Arnold, January 13, 2016
Weekly Watson: The Internet of Things
December 17, 2015
Yep, there is not a buzzword, trend, or wave which IBM’s public relations professionals ignore. I read “IBM Is Bringing Its Watson Supercomputer to IoT.” The headline puzzled me. I thought that Watson was:
- Open source software like Lucene
- Home brew scripts
- Acquired technology.
The hardware part is moving to the cloud. IBM is reveling in a US government supercomputing contract which may involve quantum computing.
But Watson runs on hardware. If Watson is a supercomputer, I see some parallels with the Google and Maxxcat search appliances.
The write up reports:
IBM has announced today it is bringing the power of its Watson supercomputer to the Internet of Things, in a bid to extend the power of cognitive computing to the billions of connected devices, sensors and systems that comprise the IoT.
Will the Watson Internet of Things be located in Manhattan? Nope. I learned:
the company announced that the new initiative, the Watson Internet of Things, will be headquartered in Munich, Germany. The facility will serve as the first European Watson innovation super centre, built to drive collaboration between IBM experts and clients. This will be complemented by eight Watson IoT Client Experience Centers spread across Europe, Asia and the Americas.
Why Germany? IBM has a partner, Siemens.
Will the IoT venture use the shared desk approach. According to EndicottAllilance.org Comment 12/10/15, this approach to work has some consequences:
I wouldn’t get too excited about the new “Agile Workspace” in RTP. Basically it is management forcing workers back to the office and into a tense, continuously monitored environment with no privacy. It will be loud, you’ll have no space of your own, and it will be difficult to think. Mood marbles? Better be sure you always choose the light-colored ones! And make sure your discussion card is always flipped to the green side. What humiliation! The environment will be great for loud-mouthed managers, terrible for workers who do all the work. Worse than cubicles.
From cookbooks to cancer, IBM Watson seems to be where the buzzwords are. I wonder if the Watson revenues will reverse the revenue downturns IBM has experienced for 14 consecutive quarters.
Stephen E Arnold, December 17, 2015
Management Observations about Yahoo from a Real Newspaper
December 16, 2015
I am fascinated when publishers offer management advice and opinions. The newspaper publishing sector has done a bang up job with digital in the last 30 years.
I read the UK newspaper written by “real” journalists online and spotted this article: “Don’t Blame Marissa Mayer: nobody Was Going to Save Yahoo.”
That’s a great headline from a newspaper. I think it also emphasizes the value a Xoogler has despite the somewhat tarnished performance of the company the Xoogler is “turning around.”
I highlighted a couple of passages as particularly interesting observations.
For example, I highlighted in Yahoo purple:
All of it [Yahoo’s management actions], sadly, has been pretty irrelevant.
I like the “all”. There is nothing quite like a categorical affirmative to add heft to an argument.
I noted:
It would be easy to blame Mayer for this [revenue malaise]; in several ways she has done herself few favors – hiring and firing a chief operating officer who earned $58m in 15 months, cancelling working from home while bringing her newborn son and a full-time nanny to the office, and overseeing an exodus of top executives.
Well, I am not sure that the assertion “it’s not clear that anybody could have saved Yahoo.”
Again a categorical, embracing lots of folks” does not provide much insight into the Yahoo we know and love.
Too bad for those who rely on generalizations to navigate the tough business climate for information, whether in print or online.
I wonder how newspapers are doing. I assume super peachy. These outfits, including the Telegraph, are paragons of management excellence, organic revenue growth, hefty profits, and keen thinking.
Thank goodness for “real” journalists. These outfits and their professionals will make bang up consultants.
Stephen E Arnold, December 16, 2015
UK Publisher Repositioning
December 15, 2015
I read “How Dennis Publishing Created a New Tech Media Brand.” I was looking forward to a how to, the nuts and bolts of converting a print and online operation into a zippy digital brand.
The write up explains what most folks involved in “real” journalism know: Publishing outfits are good at outputting content and maybe not so good at the organization of the overall operation.
I learned from the write up:
Dennis Publishing wants to be the top destination for technology-related content in the U.K. in the next two years, spurred by the quick success of its new digital brand, Alphr.
I remembered seeing Alphr on iTunes. A podcast about technology ran for a while and then disappeared in October 2015 with nary a peep. I noted the odd ball spelling, which I assume allows the company’s content to be located with a Google or Yandex search.
The write up said:
That decision seems to be paying off. Alphr attracted just under 600,000 unique visitors in the U.K. in November and 1.5 million globally, according to Google Analytics….Dennis claims that the latest data shows that it outstripped Wired U.K., Quartz and Tech Insider in November in terms of shares in U.K. visits across these categories.
So what was the “how”? The write up pointed out that the company:
- Centralized certain operations
- Implemented testing procedures for products
- Kept the same headcount
- Embraced the Ziff “network” ad sale model from the late 1980s.
In short, in 2015, Dennis took steps that other publishers have been forced to adopt for a number of years.
The one thing the new plan did not do was communicate that the podcast, one of those hippy dippy social media things, was not relevant to the firm.
Communication about podcasts, it seems, is not germane to the new digital brand.
Stephen E Arnold, December 15, 2015
Understanding Trolls, Spam, and Nasty Content
December 9, 2015
The Internet is full of junk. It is a cold hard fact and one that will never die as long as the Internet exists. The amount of trash content was only intensified with the introduction of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterst, and other social media platforms and it keeps pouring onto RSS feeds. The academic community is always up for new studies and capturing new data, so a researcher from the University of Arkansas decided to study mean content. “How ‘Deviant’ Messages Flood Social Media” from Science Daily is an interesting new idea that carries the following abstract:
“From terrorist propaganda distributed by organizations such as ISIS, to political activism, diverse voices now use social media as their major public platform. Organizations deploy bots — virtual, automated posters — as well as enormous paid “armies” of human posters or trolls, and hacking schemes to overwhelmingly infiltrate the public platform with their message. A professor of information science has been awarded a grant to continue his research that will provide an in-depth understanding of the major propagators of viral, insidious content and the methods that make them successful.”
Dr. Nitin Agarwal and will study what behavioral, social, and computational factors cause Internet content to go viral, especially if they have deviant theme. Deviant means along the lines something a troll would post. Agarwal’s research is part of a bigger investigation funded by the Office of Naval Research, Air Force Research, National Science Foundation, and Army Research Office. Agarwal will have a particular focus on how terrorist groups and extremist governments use social media platforms to spread their propaganda. He will also be studying bots that post online content as well.
Many top brass organizations do not have the faintest idea of even what some of the top social media platforms are, much less what their purpose is. A study like this will raise the blinders about them and teach researchers how social media actually works. I wonder if they will venture into 4chan.
Whitney Grace, December 9, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Yahoo: A Partial Catalog of Errors
December 8, 2015
I read “7 of Yahoo’s Biggest **** Ups.” Just seven? With the smell of blood in the air on Wall Street, the jibes on talking head TV, and the endless write ups about the Yahoo Board’s dithering, a catalog of Yahoo’s seven biggest failures seems timely.
What are the mistakes? Here you go:
- Not buying Google
- Not buying Facebook
- Not selling itself to Microsoft
- The Flickr flop
- Not thinking as a technology outfit
- The Tumblr tumble
- Disorganization in the reorganizations.
I have prepared several analyses of the Yahooligans over the years. I once had an illustration for a PowerPoint presentation which showed the Titanic and Terry Semel as the captain. I wish I could find that deck.
There are a couple of points in my list of purple vulnerabilities; for example, the settlement with the Google for the alleged, possible missteps regarding the GoTo, Overture, Yahoo advertising systems was an important milestone. I think that error in judgment was the action that turned on the flashing yellow lights for Yahoo. Yahoo settled a legal matter and took some money. Google then pranced toward its $60 plus billion in revenue dervived mostly from online advertising.
I also noted in my analyses the technical hubris at Yahoo. The company talked a good game and some of the Yahooligans published articles explaining whizzy technology type things. But the company fumbled not one or two technical opportunities. The company has been for a long time essentially a marketing yodler. Yodels are interesting, but yodels do not turn half baked ideas into revenue. The technology matters, not the wild notions.
Poor Yahoo. Its trajectory presages what will happen to a number of other outfits who take their eye off the technology-that-matters ball as it whizzes towards the batter’s head.
Stephen E Arnold, December 8, 2015
The Google Cultural Institute Is a Digital Museum
December 8, 2015
Museums are the cultural epicenters of the human race, because the house the highest achievements of art, science, history, and more. The best museums in the world are located in the populous cities and they house price works of art that represent the best of what humanity has to offer. The only problem about these museums is that they are in a stationary location and unless you have the luck to travel, you can’t see these fabulous works in person.
While books have often served as the gateway museums’ collection, it is not the same as seeing an object or exhibit in real life. The Internet with continuously evolving photographic and video technology have replicated museums’ collection as life like as possible without having to leave your home. The only problem with these digital collections are limited to what is within a museums’ archives, but what would happen if an organization collected all these artifacts in one place like a social networking Web site?
Google has done something extraordinary by creating the Google Cultural Institute. The Google Cultural Institute is part digital archive, part museum, part Pinterest, and part encyclopedia. It is described as:
“Discover exhibits and collections from museums and archives all around the world. Explore cultural treasures in extraordinary detail, from hidden gems to masterpieces.”
Users can browse collections of art, history, and science ranging from classical works to street art to the Holocaust and World War I. The Google Cultural Institute presents information via slideshows with captions. Collections are divided by subject and content as well as by the museum where the collections originate. Using Google Street View users can also view the very place where the collections are stored. Users can also make their own collections and share them like on Pinterest.
This is an amazing step towards bringing museums into the next step of their own evolution as well as allowing people who might not have the chance to access them see the collections. The only recommendation is that it would be nice if they put more advertising into the Google Cultural Institute so that people actually know it exists.
Whitney Grace, December 8, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Cybercrime to Come
December 2, 2015
Apparently, we haven’t seen anything yet. An article at Phys.org, “Kaspersky Boss Warns of Emerging Cybercrime Threats,” explain that personal devices and retail databases are just the beginning for cyber criminals. Their next focus has the potential to create more widespread chaos, according to comments from security expert Eugene Kaspersky. We learn:
“Russian online security specialist Eugene Kaspersky says cyber criminals will one day go for bigger targets than PCs and mobiles, sabotaging entire transport networks, electrical grids or financial systems. The online threat is growing fast with one in 20 computers running on Microsoft Windows already compromised, the founder and chief executive of security software company Kaspersky Lab told AFP this week on the sidelines of a cybersecurity conference in Monaco.”
The article also notes that hackers are constantly working to break every security advance, and that staying safe means more than installing the latest security software. Kaspersky noted:
“It’s like everyday life. If you just stay at home and if you don’t have visitors, you are quite safe. But if you like to walk around to any district of your city, you have to be aware of their street crimes. Same for the Internet.”
Kaspersky’s company, Kaspersky Lab, prides itself on its extensive knowledge of online security. Founded in 1997 and headquartered in Moscow, the company is one of the leading security firms in the world.
Cynthia Murrell, December 2, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
EHR Promises Yet to Be Realized
December 1, 2015
Electronic health records (EHRs) were to bring us reductions in cost and, just as importantly, seamless record-sharing between health-care providers. “Epic Fail” at Mother Jones explains why that has yet to happen. The short answer: despite government’s intentions, federation is simply not part of the Epic plan; vendor lock-in is too profitable to relinquish so easily.
Reporter Patrick Caldwell spends a lot of pixels discussing Epic Systems, the leading EHR vendor whose CEO sat on the Obama administration’s 2009 Health IT Policy Committee, where many EHR-related decisions were made. Epic, along with other EHR vendors, has received billions from the federal government to expand EHR systems. Caldwell writes:
“But instead of ushering in a new age of secure and easily accessible medical files, Epic has helped create a fragmented system that leaves doctors unable to trade information across practices or hospitals. That hurts patients who can’t be assured that their records—drug allergies, test results, X-rays—will be available to the doctors who need to see them. This is especially important for patients with lengthy and complicated health histories. But it also means we’re all missing out on the kind of system-wide savings that President Barack Obama predicted nearly seven years ago, when the federal government poured billions of dollars into digitizing the country’s medical records. ‘Within five years, all of America’s medical records are computerized,’ he announced in January 2009, when visiting Virginia’s George Mason University to unveil his stimulus plan. ‘This will cut waste, eliminate red tape, and reduce the need to repeat expensive medical tests.’ Unfortunately, in some ways, our medical records aren’t in any better shape today than they were before.”
Caldwell taps into his own medical saga to effectively illustrate how important interoperability is to patients with complicated medical histories. Epic seems to be experiencing push-back, both from the government and from the EHR industry. Though the company was widely expected to score the massive contract to modernize the Department of Defense’s health records, that contract went instead to competitor Cerner. Meanwhile, some of Epic’s competitors have formed the nonprofit CommonWell Health Alliance Partnership, tasked with setting standards for records exchange. Epic has not joined that partnership, choosing instead to facilitate interoperability between hospitals that use its own software. For a hefty fee, of course.
Perhaps this will all be straightened out down the line, and we will finally receive both our savings and our medical peace of mind. In the meantime, many patients and providers struggle with changes that appear to have only complicated the issue.
Cynthia Murrell, December 1, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
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