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Microsoft Live: $560 Million Loss in 12 Months or $64,000 and Hour

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

Two Additions to Euro Search Vendor List

Readers have continued to shoot buckshot at my list of European search vendors. I appreciate the input and I am adding two vendors to the list.

The first is Exorbyte. The second is Silobreaker.

Exorbyte, founded in 2000, is a privately-held company. The firm is based in Switzerland, not far from Zurich. The firm says that its search technology is focused on “high-performance approximate search and data matching solutions for online ecommerce, directories and data quality applications.” The company offers Web extraction functions as part of its technology suite. The search function complements the firm’s navigation features to support database, directory, and catalog search. More information is available from the firm’s Web site.

Silobreaker, a company I have written about in my studies and in this Web log, continues to gain features and functions. The firm’s search system is speedy, but what sets the company apart is its ability to generate relationship maps, display data on topics in actionable reports, and widgets that make it easy to add specific Silobreaker functions to third –party applications or customized implementations of the Silobreaker system. The company told me:

Silobreaker is a search service for news and current affairs that aims to provide more relevant results to the user than what traditional search and aggregation engines have been offering so far. Instead of returning just lists of articles matching a search query, Silobreaker finds people, companies, organizations, topics, places and keywords; understands how they relate to each other in the news flow, and puts them in context through graphical results in its intuitive user interface.

More information is available from the Silobreaker Web site.

The vendor table addition rows are:

Let me know of other vendors to include on this list.

Stephen Arnold, September 22, 2009

European Search Vendor Full List Update

Updated on October 1, 2009. Exorbyte is in Germany. SurfRay is worth a close look.

Instead of updating the table in the original WordPress article, I have updated the table and reproduced it below. Please, locate the most recent table by using the Blossom.com search function on the Beyond Search Web log. I will post this list on the ArnoldIT.com Web site once the list seems to stabilize. I am reevaluating several vendors at this time. Watch for an update on SurfRay. The company provided one of my colleagues with some fresh information.

Any company on this list can sponsor a profile which I will put on the ArnoldIT.com Web site with a link from the entry in this table. For details, check the About link at the top of any page of this Web log. This Web log is not journalism, it is for marketing and my observations. PR people. Be aware. I am not your mother’s Web logger.

Stephen Arnold, September 21, 2009

Google and Newspapers: Misclassifying Google Is Risky

I enjoy most of the GigaOM information. I found the write up “Google’s Plan to Become The Media Company” thought provoking but off the mark. My view is that classifying Google as a media company is one of those confident assertions that seem accurate but are only partially correct. In fact, the error is akin to classifying a tiger cub as a house pet. Sure, the young cub might learn some manners, but as Roy and Siegfried learned, the tiger often has a different idea about what it is; namely, a wild animal capable of ruining an act and a life. If you don’t remember, Roy and Siegfried, here is a useful reminder of the consequences of an erroneous classification. (Warning: not for the faint of heart.)

Google is an application platform, a point I made in my 2005 monograph, The Google Legacy. That research study is germane today. I amplified my analysis of Google’s technology in two subsequent studies, pointing out that Google’s technical open source information supported my assertion that Google was a disruptive force in such business sectors as enterprise software, financial services, and commercial publishing, among three or four other business sectors. The importance of this point was mocked openly by telecommunications executives when one of the consulting firms for which I work as an advisor trotted me around to review Google’s telephone inventions in 2006. I wonder how many of those executives are laughing now? Google is not just a disruptive force in the telco space, the company is in a position to give Apple a run for its money in the broader mobile device sector. This idea is probably not too amusing for Apple. In fact, Google teamed up with Sony to get some steroids in its distribution and content arm for the coming dust up.

Wild animal or pet? Source: http://www.wamajama.com/wamajama/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/siegfried_roy_tiger_1_r.jpg

Now back to the GigaOM write up.

Here’s the problem. I agree that Google will have even greater disruptive impacts on the media sector. But media is just one business sector that Google will jostle. The author believes that defining Google as a media company sums up that wild and crazy bunch of physicists, mathematicians, computer scientists, and smart folks. That’s a very big mistake. The reason is that a media company draws a ring around Google  and says, “Here  be the dragon.” Wrong. The circle identifies one of Google’s dragronettes. Seeing Google as a dragonette leads to the misperception of Google as a dragonette breeder. A person involved in online retail could take the media company definition to heart. That person might then overlook what the Google is doing with its financial back office system. Sure, Checkout is visible, but it’s a weak sister compared to eBay’s PayPal or the Amazon machine. Or, is it? Kevin Kelleher, like those telco executives, would not ask the question, “What is Google?” Heck, Google is a media company, maybe a next generation outfit like Hanna Barbera Studios or the Peoria Journal Star.

Get that classification wrong and you may — no, strike that – will be blindsided as Google uses its platform to probe, disrupt, and exploit a broader range of market sectors. In short, those who misclassify run the risk of seeing the tiger up close and personal as Roy and Siegfried did. The results may not be for the squeamish.

Stephen Arnold, September 22, 2009

Visual View of Search History

A happy quack to the team of readers who sent me a link to the Firefox add in, History Tree 1.1. Now these are sharp readers who know that my honks about visualization make clear that gratuitous interface elements ruffle my feathers. I loaded the History Tree and found that it provided a quick and easy way to locate specific Web pages I had visited.

The Firefox add in is available from the Firefox splash page for the software. You can get more information and a one click install button from Normansolomon.org. Useful, not gratuitous, and evidence that there is a better way to deal with history files. I also like it when two bright people tag team what I cover in this Web log. I bet both are pretty good at finding information and keeping addled geese like me in formation.

Stephen Arnold, September 21, 2009

Former Intel Operative Tackles Real Time Search

I had a long talk with Robert Steele, OSS.net, the other day. He is going to deliver a hard hitting talk at the upcoming ‘Change 2010 Responding to Real Time Information, Open Systems and the Obama IT Vision’ seminar in Washington, DC, on September 23, 2009. As I understood his point of view, he wants to make clear the value of the flows of open source information that are now available. The challenge is to pipe some of this content into government agencies so that decision making is more informed. I don’t want to let the cat out of the bag, but he wants to reference some important innovations from Europe that are not widely known in the US.

The venue for the program is the National Press Club. Other speakers on the program, sponsored by Somat Engineering (an 8A firm based in Detroit, Michigan) is the sponsor of the program. Somat’s Arpan Patel will talk about bridging the gap between government infrastructure and external information and services. He will showcase the Ripply software tool. The other speaker on the program is Jim Orris, one of the managing partners of Adhere Solutions. Adhere is a focal point for Google’s US government initiatives. Mr. Orris will talk about how the Google technology can be used as a mechanism to process real time content.

Representatives of the Executive Branch, Department of Defense, other government agencies, and consulting firms supporting government agencies will be in attendance. For more information, navigate to the registration page here. Members of the media may register by writing Pacific Dialogue.

Stephen Arnold, September 21, 2009

Open Source Costs: A Contrarian View

I am skeptical about broad generalizations about “costs” and even more doubtful about “cheap”. My radar lights up when I see these terms applied to software and systems. If you don’t know how to get into your child’s Facebook.com account, the cost of hacking into the system can be pretty high, especially if you have to hire a person with a particular technical capability to accomplish what seems to be a trivial objective. There is a non linearity in software costs that most people don’t want to know about. Unfortunately when these “costs” become visible, the ensuing excitement can lead to staff turnover or big problems for the organization who found “a certain blindness” more desirable that clear sightedness.

When I read “Open Source Is the Freedom of Choice, Not Necessarily the Cheaper Option,” my microwave detector beeped. For me, the key point in the write up seemed to be:

Admittedly Open Source can be cheaper if you think of the code itself not costing anything. However nothing is free, time and therefore money will have been spent creating and modifying that code. To have adequate technical support and installation businesses should be prepared to value the product and the support provided. With Open Source you have the freedom of choice. You can choose to look at the online documentation and the wealth of technical books out there to implement what you need, you can also choose to support the Open Source Product. Or you can choose to hire an experienced professional (or even pay for training in house) to implement and support the product for you. Saying a product is cheaper can be interpreted that the product is somehow lesser than the competition. I do not feel that this is always the case, superior products can develop from close contact between developers and their clients. This is the value add that Open Source can bring to the table.

The author is not a coder, so if he / she were involved in either a proprietary or open source project, the “cost” of getting the system to work depends on the time and the billing rate of the people involved, the cost of lost opportunity, and the expense of any infrastructure or gizmos required to make the system work in a way somewhat proximate to the system specification.

Open source eliminates a license fee. The problem is that license fees for some mainstream systems in search are declining. One big software company has included an industrial strength search system with other software products. In effect, the licensing fee for the search and content processing system is zero because it is buried in other elements on the invoice.

My view is that the folks with technical expertise can save some money on both open source and proprietary software. The clueless—regardless of whether the software is open source or proprietary—will pay almost the same to get their system running, customizing it, and optimizing it for the organization’s specific needs. Just my opinion. The key drivers in cost boils down the capabilities of the individuals involved in a project.

Stephen Arnold, September 20, 2009

x

Connotate Tag Line

A reader sent me a link to a Web site because it contained the phrase “beyond search”. We checked. The Beyond Search’s goslings were delighted to find the Connotate logo and its tag line, which was new to us. the screenshot below presents the logo in context. The tag line is “Beyond Search”.

Here’s a larger snap of the logo and the tag line:

My recollection is that Connotate’s use of the phrase “beyond search” is nothing new. But at our Saturday morning meeting (yes, I know, Saturday morning, sigh), some lively honking took place about the “ownership” of this phrase. Since my use of the phrase is a marketing ploy, I can’t get too excited. One of the goslings did quack at me about this. Boring.

I know that I did not think up the phrase “beyond search”. My recollection is that someone reviewing the draft of the study I wrote for the Gilbane Group suggested the phrase to me. My hunch is that the idea came from Ulla de Stricker, my long time wonderful colleague and unrelenting critic in Toronto. Anyway, the title “Beyond Search” appeared on my January 2009 monograph. The full title of that study is “Beyond Search: What to do When Your Enterprise Search System Doesn’t Work”. Believe me, quite a few enterprise search systems do not work. Licensees have limited options to get out of the swamp. Buy the book to find a route to safety. You can get information about the analysis of a couple dozen vendors’ next-generation search systems on the Gilbane Group Web site.

Prior to the publication of the book in 2008, I decided to use the phrase “Beyond Search” for this Web log, diary, and digest of my opinions / thoughts about search, content processing, and related subjects. I am delighted with the persona of the addled goose, the feathered friend whose voice dominates the more than 3,000 Web log posts.

In fact, I wrote a profile Connotate in my Beyond Search study. I found the firm’s system potentially useful, but the company had a low profile and was, in my opinion, navigating in the rough waters of real time business intelligence, a Bermuda triangle for some firms. That particular segment is a tough one. Within the last month, two services I used—TechFuga.com and Doggdot.us—seem to have sunk. The quality of the hits in other systems I monitor has begun to be affected by the increasing noise in the real time streams.

If you run the query “beyond search” on Google as I did a moment ago, you will find that this Web log is the top hit. I canned the listings on the first two pages of results and did not see a link to Connotate. My hunch is  that the Connotate Web site is going to have to beef up its SEO attractiveness. Their site does not appear high in the Google results listing for this particular query.

The goslings checked out the Connotate Web site and noticed a blog and a podcast. The most recent posting was interesting because it touched upon Twitter. The content, however, focused on using Twitter as a tool, not as a content or intelligence source. This puzzled me. Connotate is in the business of processing streams to extract information. My hope was to read a blog post about how Connotate could make the Tweet stream immediately and directly useful in business intelligence.

That’s how one moves beyond search in my opinion. A company’s technology needs to wrestle the streams of content to the ground and put them in a Rear Naked Choke.

One cannot win in the information processing wars by writing about uses of streams; one wins by converting the streams to actionable intelligence at a low cost, in near real time, across multiple languages. That’s how one moves “beyond search” in my opinion.

Stephen Arnold, September 20, 2009

European Search Vendor Table Update 1

I received a number of emails this morning, and I want to update the European search vendor league table. Omissions obviously are my fault. I will try to make adjustments going forward, putting the updates into the base table in my Web log. I have added the following entries to the table that appears at this location in Beyond Search. This series is in reverse alphabetical order as a consequence of my cutting and pasting from the master table.

Of this group, I want to point out that I was favorably impressed with the FLAX system. I arranged with Incisive, the owner of the December international online show, to get Lemur Consulting on the program of this year’s show. The talk will be an important one, and if you are attending the show in December 2009, be sure to catch the Lemur Consulting session. The company is profitable and growing using an open source business model.

Interse is another player in the very crowded SharePoint metatagging sector. What’s interesting is that Copenhagen is home to two companies which offer products that, on the surface, share some similarities: Interse and the puzzling SurfRay. It will be interesting to see which Danish horse wins the Copenhagen SharePoint Derby. I met the management team of Interse several years ago, and that group struck me as quite adept and gifted with a laser focus. I have a contact now with InfoFinder, and I will endeavor to get more information.

One person who contacted me wanted me to include Google’s European research centers. Another wanted me to list Israeli companies. For my purposes, Hungary is about as far east as I want to go with this first list.

If a reader knows of any other systems I have inadvertently overlooked, please, write me at seaky2000 at yahoo dot com or use the comments section of this Web log. If a reader or readers want to work with me to build a more extensive list of European search and content processing vendors, please, contact me. I will post the master list in the Web log so we have a single place to see what is underway outside the myopic vision of the azure chip consulting crowd in the US.

Stephen Arnold, September 16, 2009

Forbes Taps Belief Networks for Semantics

Their are a number of what I would call publisher-centric information services. Examples range from Relegence.com (a unit of AOL, formerly Time Warner) to DayLife.com (funded in part by the New York Times Co.). Another outfit is Belief Networks. The Beyond Search team learned last week that Forbes.com will be using technology from Belief Networks, which specializes in semantic intelligence and predictive analytics, to power advanced search on its Web site. Belief Networks packages set up a semantic search that returns relevant advertising and content listings, including real-time social network entries and Twitter conversations. Forbes says it’s trying to “enrich” the web site experience and “engage” its readers. People go to Forbes.com looking for up-to-date or even before-the-date money- and business-focused topic matter. That’s why Forbes is looking to upgrade reader access to real time discovery and tracking of both structured and unstructured content. The Belief Networks’ method reminded us of the original Oingo service (which changed its name to Applied Semantics). Google acquired Oingo / Applied Semantics and made good use of the technology in a number of Google services. Perhaps Forbes will enjoy a similar Googley success?

Jessica Bratcher, September 15, 2009

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  Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.

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