The Internet Is a Serial Killer
September 5, 2009
I enjoy British newspaper writing. I hope the traditional publishers stick around. Where else would I find an article with the enticing title “50 Things That Are Being Killed by the Internet”. I did not know that the two high speed connections coming into my goose pond could kill. I learned something new from the Daily Telegraph’s Matthew Moore. I scanned the list of “things” that the Internet is killing. One of the most interesting was item number 34, “Mainstream media.” Only number 34. I would have put those outfits at the top of the list. Mildly amusing, certainly not Onion grade.
Stephen Arnold, September 6, 2009
A French Publisher Now Understands the Disruptive Force of eBooks
September 2, 2009
This Web log does not do news. I have hinted that publishers are in a flow that leads over Niagara Falls. Happily a “real journalist” has published a “real” article on this situation. “Book Publisher: e-Books Will Be Our Downfall”. Jordan Golsan is recycling some information, but that is the way in which information moves around the datasphere. For me, the most interesting comment in the write up was:
Regardless, Nourry [French publishing executive] has a point. He claims that retailers like Amazon are paying more than $9.99 for each e-book, thus selling them at a loss. He goes on: “That cannot last…Amazon is not in the business of losing money. So, one day, they are going to come to the publishers and say: By the way, we are cutting the price we pay. If that happens, after paying the authors, there will be nothing left for the publishers.” It’s not clear if that is true or not, but we do know that Amazon takes 70 percent of newspaper and blog subscriptions on the Kindle, with only 30 percent going to the content maker. Further, is it really a bad thing if the publisher is left out in the cold? Reading the rejection letters of hit authors makes one wonder what need there is for publishing houses at all, in the age of the Internet. That’s what Mr. Nourry is so worried about. He is terrified that authors (and Amazon) will realize that they don’t really need his industry to get things done.
In my opinion, the river of red ink is rushing forward. I wonder what global company offers a full service “digital Gutenberg” for authors to use—no traditional publisher required, of course?
Stephen Arnold, September 2, 2009
What Annoys Europe about Google Books
August 31, 2009
Short honk: The Financial Times’s “Europe’s Digital Library Stuck in the Slow Lane” contains an interesting comment:
…what really annoys the European book industry about Google’s ambitious digital library project is that only US internet users will be allowed to browse in it.
Forces in the US are lining up to derail Google Books. Several observations:
- If the service is stopped, who in the US will pick up the ball? Libraries, the Library of Congress, outfits like Elsevier, Thomson Reuters, or Wolters Kluwer?
- What if Google stops, then shifts its focus to scanning books in more friendly climes? Looking forward, the knowledge value of the collection may put the US in the Europe pickle barrel. No access.
- What if Google builds a book data center and anchors it outside the three mile limit? With a partner in Europe, the legal eagles will have a fine time figuring out which book, what jurisdiction, what copyright, and where the digital instance “is”.
- What if students and researchers decide to publish their books using Google’s various “digital Gutenberg” systems? With “new” books flowing directly into the Google, what happens to publishers who need compliant authors to keep the pipeline filled?
I don’t have answers, but I raise the questions and provide examples in Google: The Digital Gutenberg?
Stephen Arnold, August 31, 2009
Vivisimo on Reddit
August 29, 2009
We check Reddit.com every few days. An interesting post plugging Vivisimo’s Clusty.com metasearch system hit our radar on August 26, 2009. “Get Clusty” enjoined me to kick the Google and Bing habit. What I found interesting about the post was the implementation of the popup preview.
This was a first in our experience reading about search engines.
Stephen Arnold, August 28, 2009
Useful List of Search Systems
August 29, 2009
A happy quack to the reader who alerted me to Daum.net’s list of search engines. The list includes most of the companies I track. A few of the listings are not current, but the list provides a useful way to jump directly to a vendor’s Web site to get more information. Worth a link in your bookmarks because the links are grouped by type; for example, human search, legal, open source, etc. Omissions include Bing.com and Lucid Imagination to name two. Nevertheless, I found the page useful.
Stephen Arnold, August 29, 2009
Confused Database Publishers and Libraries
August 28, 2009
A happy quack to the ArnoldIT.com team member who sent me a link to a story in The LIS Kid’s Web log. I must say I was taken aback, annoyed, and saddened. Three emotions do not roil the calm of the addled goose. Navigate to The LiS Kid for August 24, 2009, and look at the advertisement snippet from West, a vendor of content to the libraries worldwide. Now look at the text, which I will reproduce here:
Are you on a first name basis with the librarian? If so, chances are, you’re spending too much time at the library. What you need is fast, reliable research you can access right in your office. And all it takes is West®.
Let me quote from the LiS Kid’s commentary, then add my observations:
This brilliant piece of marketing was sent out by the electronic database and news giant Reuters/Thomson/West. Hubris is one word that comes to mind after looking this over. Essentially they are saying, “hey, you don’t need the library, West has it all!” Any bit of information or data that you need can be obtained from West … despite the fact that much of the information on West can be found for free on Government websites or in a book. Asking a librarian would make it harder for West to turn you upside down and shake the change out of your pockets. And, thanks for the added stereotype- the glasses really capture the essence of all things librarian.
You may also find the comments in the Law Librarian Blog on point as well. This write up is called “Another Boner from West: Hi, My First Name is Joe and I’m a Law Librarian.”
My observations and these are my opinions to which I am entitled:
- I do not think that senior management at Thomson Reuters knows much about the library world. I would ask, “Does Thomson Reuters management or does the company as a whole care about the profession?” In my opinion, the T/R emphasis is upon generating revenue. As a result, the sensitivity of the firm is tuned to shareholders, government agencies, and the machinations among publishing units. These units are trying to avoid following in the footsteps of the newspaper and magazine publishers on a walk down the path next to Red Ink Creek. I ask, “Does a ‘library waste time’?” My son is in the information business. I had access to online when he was in the second grade and so did he. With that whizzy technology easily available in 1980, I ** made it my business ** to take him to real libraries. I introduced him to real librarians like Glenda Neely at the University of Louisville Ekstrom Library. I showed him research tricks I had learned to facilitate combining serendipity with the grunt work of info digging. I explained and demonstrated microfilm. I showed him how traditional card catalogs were set up and then how this metaphor transferred to OPACs. I bought airplane tickets and arranged for him to meet and spend time with superstar librarians like Marydee Ojala, Ulla de Stricker, and Barbara Quint. I wanted him to learn about information from the best librarians / information experts in the world. I think his success in online at Adhere Solutions — Google’s focal point for the US government — is due in part to his having a physical, fungible knowledge of how information is organized, accessed, and manipulated in a range of media in libraries. If anything, I fault myself for not creating situation for him in which he had to spend more time in libraries. In my opinion, one cannot spend too much time in libraries. Online is one information method. A physical library is an multidimensional immersion in information. I have 13 computers within three feet of me as I write this. None has the tactile and intellectual impact of a library.
- The marketer who wrote T/R’s possibly insensitive if not insulting, possibly demeaning copy is equally unaware of what makes a library work, how the professionals staffing libraries teach and facilitate information navigation, deliver information consulting to customers of diverse backgrounds, and create information programs that attract people to the wonders of information. T/R’s and other commercial information vendors’ insensitivity is evident across the commercial database world. Most of the senior managers at these firms are accountants or lawyers concerned about making money and maximizing revenues. A library is a standing order, not an organism of knowledge. The increasing likelihood of outright failure for today’s commercial database companies stems from a disconnect or indifference to the craft of information where humans interact.
- When I worked at the database unit of the Courier Journal (ABI / INFORM, Business Dateline, General Periodical Index, and other databases), we employed librarians to work on our products, to run our training programs, and to keep management in tune with the needs, challenges, and opportunities in the world of law, sci tech, public, academic, medical, and other important segments of the broader world of librarianship. When you called our 800 number, you had a 90 percent chance of speaking to a senior manager or a librarian. We were not perfect, but we darn well tried to treat our customers and their profession with respect. Call one of the big information companies today like Thomson Reuters or LexisNexis or Ebsco, and you may have a menu of options, not an expert on the line. Call the next day and you will probably have a different menu choice and, if you are clever, maybe a new hire to read you text from a customer support database updated a year ago. I don’t call for customer service because I don’t have time to teach most of those with whom I speak about their systems and my particular angle of attack. The big companies prefer self service customer support. It’s cheaper. When I answered phones at the CJ’s database company, I sometimes got an earful when a librarian pointed out an indexing error. I listened. I wrote down the problem. I put it on the fix list. I gave the librarian’s name to Betty Unruh or Dena Gordon to follow up. I wanted that librarian to know we were making an effort to listen and give the criticism serious attention. Get those bonuses might well be the motto for information company managers, not listen to the customer and take action.
To close, the addled goose even today must deal with the librarians who work on his projects. Most of the librarians with whom I work have known me for decades. When Ulla de Stricker or Marydee Ojala complains, I listen as I did in 1980. My resident legal information expert is Constance Ard, and she has picked up Ulla’s best habit: informing me when I am not in touch with what librarians and information professionals want. I have been grinding away at digital information for decades, and I don’t know much more than it pays to attend to librarians’ ideas and suggestions. At a meeting last night, I learned that two companies – ProQuest and Ebsco – are engaging in a price war and marketing shoot out to win an account in Kentucky. One of those involved said that he was confused by the claims, counter claims, and caveats. Obviously these vendors’ behavior communicates a message quite different from that sent by the CJ team when we were licensing ABI / INFORM and our other databases in 1981.
Would it benefit the commercial database publishers to deliver quality products at a published, fully disclosed price with full details of coverage scope? With that type of information, library decision makers would be able to use their professional judgment to determine which database best suited the needs of a particular library. I think most commercial database marketing distorts and confuses. I think much of the marketing reveals a shallowness that makes clear that a new era in commercial databases has begun. How the ear of quality commercial information products has taken a new turn. Not good.
Stephen Arnold, August 28, 2009
Google Behind in Cloud Plays
August 27, 2009
I am sitting in my government influenced hotel room in Washington, DC. I don’t have access to my research material. I do remember analyzing an invention disclosed by Google sometime in 2004 or 2005 that offered some interesting functions. A client could use a computer running some Google software could hook into the Google infrastructure to perform some work. I am going to refresh my memory when I return to the saner world of the goose pond in rural Kentucky.
In the meantime, two news items caused me to wonder, “Has Google fallen further behind in the race to cloud computing?” Let me highlight the two news items and then capture the tickle at the back of my addled goose brain.
First, the world’s smartest man has engineered another cloud move that seems to leave Google flat pawed. Amazon has announced a veepeesee in its Web log. You can dig into some of the details in “Introducing Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)”. As I understand the announcement, Amazon wants to make its multiple cloud services enterprise satisfying. That translates to control. This development reminds me of some Google technology.
Source: Amazon.com
What I find interesting is that Amazon seems to be in the mind space of Google. And more importantly, Amazon seems able to move more quickly than the Google. Speed and agility are often important in the high stakes world which Amazon inhabits. Has Google become to large and burdened to move like a lithe Amazonian?
Second, Salesforce.com has announced a reseller program. You will want to read “Deals & More” by Anthony Ha in Venture Beat. The announcement reminded me that Salesforce.com, a company that Google has supported with some cheerleading, now seems to be moving on its own trajectory. I thought that a tie up between Google and Salesforce.com might have had some charm a couple of years ago. Now I have a working hypothesis that Google perceives a different view of the future. Salesforce.com was among the first companies to get traction with cloud services for the enterprise. I ask myself, “What does Google see as its future in cloud centric enterprise services?” The reseller deal seems to put Salesforce.com at an acute angle with regard to Google. Does Google “get” the Salesforce.com model? How many cloud resellers will want to jump on the Salesforce.com bandwagon? Will some Google partners jump ship? No answers from the addled goose at this time.
Is Salesforce.com becoming the shadow warrior in sales as Amazon has become a ninja in cloud computing technology?
One can interpret these two events in several ways:
- Amazon and Salesforce.com are uninterested in Google. Each company moves independently of Google. Each is doing quite well as Google disrupts other business sectors. In short, Google has no material impact on either of these firms.
- Amazon and Salesforce.com have figured out that each can move more quickly than the sluggish Google. The telcos might see Google as a race car but Amazon and Salesforce.com have found ways to move more quickly than Google, thus neutralizing Google’s potential in certain “spaces”.
- Amazon and Salesforce.com are working in the “here and now”. Google either operates in another space time dimension or perceives the “here and now” markets as uninteresting. If this is accurate, the question becomes, “What is Google’s broader play in the cloud market?”
The addled goose has no answers. Just questions.
Stephen Arnold, August 27, 2009
Data Warehouse Leader to Reinvent Data Warehousing
August 26, 2009
“IBM Announces ‘Smart Analytics System’ Aimed at Reinventing Data Warehousing” reminded me of Einstein’s discomfort with some of the implications of his theory of relativity. Invent one thing, then scramble to find a way to deal with problems that won’t go away. IBM, one might assert, invented data warehousing. It was an IBM researcher who developed our old friend the relational database. The Codd approach has been the big dog in data management for a long time. Options are now becoming more widely available, but when one says, “Data warehousing”, I think IBM. That’s why I am an addled goose I suppose.
Mr. Data Warehouse. Image source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_F._Codd
This article-interview makes clear that something is not right in IBM land. For me, the most suggestive comment in the Intelligent Enterprise write up was this passage:
Though IBM is promising better performance, a big part of the appeal seems to be targeted at executives who would favor contract simplicity and a single “throat to choke” over enterprising, but potentially riskier, in-house development, integration and innovation.
The “reinvention” seems to be to be little more than fixing responsibility for a mission critical system on a company big enough to take to court if the data warehouse has a leaking roof. In my experience these traditional data warehouses have more problems than a fast-build Shanghai apartment building.
My thought is to take a hard look at the assumptions about data warehousing, then poke into some options. Dare I suggest Aster Data? What about a Perfect Search enabled system?
Stephen Arnold, August 26, 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
Is Search the Answer to Short Attention Spans
August 25, 2009
I thought about the essay I read that danced around the subject of Google making me more stupid. The current variation on this theme appeared in the UK Daily Mail. The story that caught my attention was “Digital Overload Is Making Us More Easily Distracted.” The premise struck me as odd. Someone digital plumbing is altering how a human concentrates. Hmmm. I thought humans made choices about concentration. For example, I decide to read a book. I decide to read and focus my concentration of the act of reading. Ask the goslings. When I concentrate, a person can walk up to me and touch my shoulder. I will jump and sometimes let out a yelp. I concentrate. Digital inputs don’t mean anything to me when I focus. I blot out distractions.
Not for the Daily Mail’s writer David Derbyshire. He wrote:
Some neuroscientists argue that the brain is geared to handle one thing at a time. When asked to juggle several things at once, it is forced to flick frantically between them, like a performer spinning plates. This puts the brain under stress and means it doesn’t perform as well, it is claimed.
Ah, the Daily Mail is not talking about individuals who can concentrate. The Daily Mail is talking about researchers who have studied a sample composed of people who cannot concentrate because these individuals ** choose ** to put themselves in situations where distractions are the norm.
I buy that. The young driver I saw run over a bicycle was not paying attention. I thought I saw a cell phone or an MP3 player. No one was hurt, but that bicycle cannot provides its side of the story. What’s the fix? None. If people ** choose ** to create an environment flush with distractions, those folks will have a tough time concentrating.
I don’t need a university researcher to “prove” that. Obviously the Daily Mail and its editors did.
I had hoped the article would talk about the role of search. It did not. At least the author of the Google-is-making-me-stupid essay challenged my thinking. The Daily Mail’s article did not in my opinion.
What can top this study? How about USA Today’s write up about social networks making students dip into self love?
Stephen Arnold, August 25, 2009
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
