The Nook Hook: Not Knowing What You Do Not Know
December 28, 2009
Short honk: I don’t have a Nook. I read Engadget’s “Nook Fails to Communicate, Download Purchased eBooks”. If true, this Barnes & Noble adventure is another example of folks not knowing what they don’t know. Barnes & Noble runs gift shops with some books in them in Louisville, Kentucky. The idea that a retail outfit can manufacture a consumer device is an example of the “lateral thinking” that Edward DeBono advocated in1970 when technology was different in its reach and scope among book store management. Clicking a hyperlink in a browser makes information technology child’s play. Live and learn that information technology is complicated. I will not include a reference to Google’s investment in technology to permit scaling. I will not toss in a comment about Amazon’s and Microsoft’s investments to achieve a similar end. I will just ask that you read the Engadget post and think about those book lights, notebooks, and greeting cards where books once filled shelves. I am looking forward to other dedicated reading devices from other outfits into the consumer electronics market.
Stephen E. Arnold, December 27, 2009
Okay, I want to be upfront. I was not paid to write this news item. I will report this fact to the Government Printing Office, an outfit still in the paper business and on top of publishing innovations.
What Did Google Learn from Dodgeball?
December 27, 2009
Short honk: Google tried to interest Yahoo in a game tie up four or five years ago I heard. Then Google bought Dodgeball and watched the deal get lost in MOMA’s big tummy. So what did Google learn from its dalliances? Time to invest in SCVNGR? Will this play work out? It is an arm’s length deal. It uses geolocation? It seems to mesh with the broader Android apps play. More information appears in “SCVNGR Raises $4 Million from Google Ventures.” Games is one area where Google has not had much success. The Google keeps trying. If you want to see some of Google’s game thinking, read US7460863.
Stephen E. Arnold, December 27, 2009
Oyez, oyez, no one paid me to write about Google’s game missteps. I must report this to the Bureau of Reclamation. Just keep reclaiming old land. Something may grow or develop… like Google games.
Social Search Misses a Top 10 Spot by a Country Mile
December 26, 2009
To see how far search has fallen, read Mashable’s “10 News Media Content Trends to Watch in 2010.” Lots of social stuff but no reference to search. What’s that mean? In my opinion, the focus on content represents a shift in how the up and comers view information. The implication is that if you are part of the in crowd, you can get your pals to tell you where information you need is or what to accept as high value information. In this world, content is king. Search may be nothing? We’ll see.
Stephen E. Arnold, December 26, 2009
Wow, I am baffled. I don’t know which high powered oversight entity cares about social content. Maybe I will spam any contacts I have at Health and Human Services Department (HHS).
Mr. Google Woos State Governments
December 26, 2009
If you have been watching the Google waltz with the Obama administration, you have missed the action in the cloak room. Mr. Google has been quite successful out of the public eye. Mr. Google has been making new friends and I for one have not noticed. I found “Our Google Government” interesting indeed. The main point of the article is that 60 percent of US state governments have fallen in love with Google. Of course there are degrees of love. Some states love Mr; Google quite a bit. Others are simply in lust with Google. What’s remarkable is this comment:
In other words, according to Google, United States state governments have literally handed over our public data to be held and managed by a private company which has well-publicized partnerships with other governments such as China. The data is physically stored in Google’s buildings, on Google’s servers, managed by Google’s employees. This means Google now controls our government’s access to its own data.
I don’t know if this statement is spot on. The article includes a list of states that have gone Google.
Alaska
Connecticut
Washington, DC
Illinois
Iowa
Kentucky
Louisiana
Maine
Michigan
Montana
North Dakota
Nebraska
New Hampshire
Ohio
Oklahoma
Minnesota
Pennsylvania
South Dakota
Utah
Wisconsin
Strong stuff. And there’s more in the source document.
Stephen E. Arnold, December 26, 2009
What a conundrum? This is a freebie, and it is about the US government. I have to disclose that I am working for zip to a Federal watchdog. To which cracker jack agency? Oh, I remember—the Migratory Bird Conservation Commission. IBM, Oracle, and Unisys contacts may be flying from states after Googzilla arrives.
Usage Trends for Late 2009
December 25, 2009
I receive an email from ClickZ every week. On December 21, 2009, the email pointed me to the “Most visited Web Site and Most Search Term in 2009?” I assumed that the terms were the sanitized lists that proliferate at year’s end. I did focus on the following table from the Web page with the helpful name 3635954:
Several observations came to my addled goose brain.
First, MySpace.com under the stewardship of ace monetizer Rupert Murdoch seems to have lost the map to King Midas’ treasure room. The site dropped a couple of spots in the midst of a boom in social network usage. Facebook.com, like a field runner with stamina for the long race, moved to the number three spot. MySpace.com, if these data are accurate, may have to rethink its approach or the service will follow in the footsteps of Web sites that had oomph once and then lost when challenged.
Second, the Google is number one. No big surprise to me. What is interesting is that YouTube.com has moved from the tenth spot to number six. When combined, Mr. Google seems to be doing quite well in the traffic department. That’s in sharp contrast to both Microsoft and Yahoo. Despite the hype, Microsoft and Yahoo have not made significant inroads in the all-important Web search sector. It is encouraging that Yahoo Mail holds down the number two spot, but more is going to be needed in 2010.
Finally. Poor eBay.com. Looks like the company continues to flounder. Has Amazon figured out how to hobble eBay or is eBay just a victim of digital arteriosclerosis?
Interesting table at lunch with the goslings today (December 24, 2009). We don’t do holidays. Honk.
Stephen E. Arnold, December 25, 2009
Oyez, oyez, a freebie. I have to report this to the Legal Services Corporation. Those legal types don’t take holidays when there are billable hours to be had. Oops. This is a quasi-governmental outfit. Holiday! Sorry. I will report after the 25th of December. Silly goose that I am. I thought humans worked on the 25th of December.
Social Search Degrades Productivity
December 24, 2009
The article “Social Networking Sites a Drag on Productivity” struck me as one of those obvious professional journalist write ups. I did find the data in the article potentially useful. I think most of the social network hype is the shock wave of the present economic crisis. Let’s face it. Social networking for professionals often means a job hunt or a search-and-capture campaign to land a contract for services. In the personal realm, most of the social networking is an extension of normal human interaction. I think I know what that means for an old timer like me: making it to the doctor without driving into a culvert. For the younger set, I think there may be more frisky goals.
For me the key passage in this write up was:
“Close to 12.5% of productivity of human resource in corporate sector is misappropriated each day since a vast majority of them while away their time accessing social networking sites during office hours,” industry body Assocham said in a survey. Almost each day, on an average, a corporate employee spends an hour, glued to various social networking sites such as Orkut, Facebook, Myspace “for romancing or otherwise driving some satisfaction out of it,” the chamber said.
The time spent on Facebook and similar sites may be fun or rewarding in some specific way. I pay someone to be me on Twitter and other social sites. I wonder who I am. I suppose I could look but that would not be particularly productive in my opinion.
Stephen E. Arnold, December 23, 2009
Oyez, oyez, Bureau of Labor Statistics, I was not paid to write this short item. I have to be productive; otherwise, this goose would not eat. In fact, another of those goose eating holidays is approaching. Scary. Post that on Facebook.
It Is Marketing, Not Content?
December 23, 2009
I read with interest “Why Marketing Is Crucial for Publishers.” I have been under the impression that marketing supported sales. Sales produces revenue. Therefore, I thought, marketing has to make money. The publisher makes information too. I wonder what the relationship of marketing to information is. Probably money.
After reading the article, I am not sure. I keep coming back to the marketing – money hook up, but I think another angle lurks behind the words. Read the article. Verify my impression.
One idea that caught my attention was:
To best monetize a site, the ad sales team must harness the audience insight of the marketing team at a detailed level and align ad sales with generating more traffic.
The idea that sales and marketing are going to fall in love and get married strikes me as a Hatfield and McCoy problem. Sales makes sales, earn a commission, and head to the golf course. Marketing does “stuff” that is tough to tie to direct revenue. Sure, marketers can trot out traffic analysis, but the person who lands the sales is the hero. Apple had a brief marriage to a Pepsi marketer, and the company needed to bring the founder back to survive.
One passage that I noted was:
Here’s a simple example: The marketer knows his/her site has 20% of their visitors playing online games, where these visitors stay for between 15 and 30 minutes. Are the ad slots on those pages not worth more because the visitor watches the ad for so long? You bet! But the ad sales team can’t take advantage of it. Here’s another: The ad sales team knows it can sell its “health section” at a $20 cpm. What if the marketing team could buy search terms to generate traffic at less than $20? The marketer would reach its goal of more traffic and the ad sales would generate more revenue. From a technology perspective, the tracking of user behaviour already exists from both an ad perspective and a marketer perspective. Combining these two data sets is what will unlock significant value for both parties.
With automated ad systems, why have a sales person? The reason is that certain types of ads require a human to seal the deal. Inefficient and non-Googley for sure. But for most information companies, the notion of relying on semi autonomous agents is like a jigger of cod liver oil followed by a chunk of Limburger cheese. The idea of having a sales person and an AdWords program in order to “generate traffic at less than $20” strikes me as an expensive proposition.
Publishing, online or not, have some other tough math problems to solve. Online won’t do the job. The reality is that online cannot support the chubby overheads that were possible in the good old days of traditional publishing. Talking about getting sales and marketing to spend the rest of their lives together is far fetched in my opinion. One of the functions, maybe both, must be moved to software. Fire the humans. When that happens, the information companies may have a chance to generate sustainable income.
Tough love is needed for tough times. Fantasies of sales and marketing becoming soul mates is an idea that might have taken flight in the 1970s. A different approach is needed for publishers, online or traditional, in these uncertain times. I thought that information companies had to produce compelling, high value content to generate traffic and earn money. Guess I was wrong. I guess a great product and magnetic information are no longer important.
Stephen E. Arnold, December 23, 2009
Oyez, oyez, this is an uncompensated write up. No sales people or marketing pros involved. For that reason, I wish to report this miserable state of affairs to the National Drug Intelligence Center, which I hope is open during the snow storm in DC.
Search Lemma Two
December 23, 2009
Another lemma for the search and content processing crowd:
Search generally delivers data. Search may deliver information. Search never delivers knowledge.
Stephen E. Arnold, December 22, 2009
A freebie. Who’s on first today? Oh, yes, I must report this to Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Medical online information is an excellent way to test this lemma.
VSAT Is Back
December 22, 2009
The Houston Chronicle reported a story that is mostly a news release pick up. I noticed this because it mentions the VSAT broadband technology. If this does not rev your engine, you can get some basic information of the very small aperture terminal technology by reading the Wikipedia entry for “Very Small Aperture Terminal”. You may find the Crystal Communications write up “About VSAT” helpful as well. VSAT is one of those technologies that made certain government agencies drool years ago. An outfit called Equatorial Communications was / is / shall be the cat’s pajamas.
“KVH’s Mini-VSAT Broadband Service Officially Approved by US Government” includes several comments I found interesting:
- “The system enables the highest data rate, widest global coverage, and lowest service cost of any maritime satellite communications service.”
- [The VSAT technology] “brings the economic and operational benefits of VSAT service to large new markets of commercial and leisure vessels.”
- “Our network spreads the signal over a wider bandwidth, thereby reducing interference issues, supporting multiple simultaneous users, allowing us to offer an antenna 75% lighter and 85% smaller by volume, and reducing costs as we use the same transponder for inbound and outbound signals.”
This may be important to certain organizations in the online information business. I won’t connect the dots, but there are some quite interesting Google inventions in the wireless sector.
Stephen E. Anrold, December 22, 2009
A freebie. No one paid me to write about the information in the Houston Chronicle’s recycled news section. The agency monitoring blog posts with regard to the recycling is the Environmental Protection Agency. I herewith report another free post.
Google Sends Signals to Telco Poobahs
December 21, 2009
I enjoyed “Verizon Snuffs Google for Microsoft Search.” The Register summarizes Google’s dalliance with Verizon. Then Verizon hugged Microsoft and slipped Bing.com into its mobile browser. Apparently some Verizon customers were annoyed. For me, the most important part of the write up was:
Verizon has unilaterally updated user Storm 2 BlackBerries and other smartphones so that their browser search boxes can only be used with Microsoft Bing. The move is part of the five-year search and advertising deal Verizon signed with Microsoft in January for a rumored $500m.
When I read this, I thought about Microsoft’s other attempts to buy traffic for the Bing.com search system. Like AT&T, Verizon is off balance. Google is no longer the clumsy Web search outfit. Google is a key player in the telephony market worldwide.
In my opinion, AT&T and Verizon have a bit of a problem on their hands. Google does not have to hurry. Furthermore, Google continues to nibble away at different chunks of the communications market. My research suggests that Verizon, like Microsoft, will have to find a better way to compete with Google. Depriving customers of choice and buying traffic are great tactics. Too bad Google is playing a different game with different rules.
Three blind spots for Verizon exist in my opinion:
- Verizon has to accept the reality that Google has better plumbing. That technology edge is going to put Verizon in some weird yoga positions.
- Verizon perceives itself as a giant company. It is giant. It is focused on the US market. Google, on the other hand, has a global vision. Thus, Verizon has a perception problem.
- Google has engineered solutions to some long standing telco bottlenecks. Right now, telcos do not understand Google’s many initiatives. This failure to see the different small communications actions like messaging in Google Calendar as part of a larger fabric. The Google engineers have outflanked and jumped over Verizon.
Telcos face start choices. Ignore Google. Cozy up to Google. Fight Google. None will work. Verizon will make decisions that I perceive as questionable because Google has nipped at Verizon. Like an angry bull in a bullfight in Madrid, the bull does not make good decisions. In the end, the bull becomes a quarter pounder with cheese. Through these cartwheels, Google is messing with the minds of telco executives. Most recent distraction: Nexus. I can hear it now, “Google can’t make handsets and sell them.” Maybe, maybe not. Distraction.
Stephen E. Arnold, December 19, 2009
Disclosure time: Freebie. I hasten to report this fact to the Bankruptcy Courts. Some telcos may end up in those fine institutions.
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