Commercial Online at Crunch Time
August 17, 2009
Einstein would be confused about the meaning of “time” in the search and content processing sector.
In the early days of online, commercial database producers controlled information that was accessible online. The impetus for electronic information was the US government. Some of the giants of the early online world were beneficiaries of government contracts and other government support for the technology that promised to make information findable.
I recall hearing when my father worked in Washington, DC in the 1950s that there was “government time.” The idea, as I recall, is that when a government entity issues a contract or support, the time lines in that deal stated start and stop dates, but not how fast the work had to be completed. I learned when but a youth that “government time” could be worked so that the contract could be extended. As a result, government time had a notional dimension known to insiders. Outsiders would have another view of time.
Source: http://focus.aps.org/files/focus/v23/st18/time_tunnel_big.jpg
When the first commercial online systems became available, time gained another nuance. Added to the idea of “government time” was the idea that computing infrastructure required time to process information. Programmers needed time to write code and debug programs. Systems engineers needed time to figure out how to expand a system. More time was needed to procure the equipment and time was necessary to get the hardware like DASDs (direct access storage devices) deliver and online.
One word—”time”—was used to refer to these many different nuances and notions of time. Again the outsider was essentially clueless when it came to understanding the meaning of “time” when applied to any activity related to electronic information.
Fast forward to 1993 and the availability of the graphic browser to make the Internet usable to average folks. The idea that a click could display a page in front of the user in very little time was compelling. The user received information quickly and formed an impression that the time required to access information via the Internet was different from the time required to schlep to a library to get information. Time became distorted with another load of meaning: work processes.
Now think about the meaning of “time” today. Vendors are no longer content with describing a system as fast and responsive. The word time has been turbo charged with the addition of the adjectival phrase “real time”.
What is real time? What is real time search? If you think about the meaning of time itself in the online world, you may conclude as I have that when an online vendor says “time”, you don’t have a firm understanding of what the heck the vendor means. When a vendor says “real time” or “near real time”, we are further into the fog.
Google Pushes over the Book Shelves
August 17, 2009
If there is one thing I admire about Google, it is the company’s craftiness. Craftiness is not a negative. I refer to the art of execution, a skill in doing what is needed to advance the company’s interests and achieving its goals with little effort. A good example is “Bringing the Power of Creative Commons to Google Books.” If I were a traditional publisher, the Google announcement will not make much sense. “Real” authors have agents and understand the New York publishing game. However, the individuals who want to create material and get it distributed by the Google now have a way to achieve this goal. I explain some of the tools Google has at its disposal in my Google: The Digital Gutenberg. You can find a link in the ad at the top of this Web log’s splash page. I heard about this program and I comment about Google’s platform as a new type of text and rich media “River Rouge”. What will interest me is watching to see which publishers understand that the math club has put a cow on top of the building where the writing and journalism faculties have their offices. How will publishers top creative commons content available via the Google with few financial burdens placed on authors, students, or Internet users with an interest in longer form content? The third quarter is now beginning. Google kicks off. Publishers receive.
Stephen Arnold, August 14, 2009
Microsoft Gets an F from Professor Google for Scale Paper
August 16, 2009
I wrote a short post here about Microsoft’s suggestion that Google has gone off track with its engineering for petascale computing. Since I have two or three readers, no one really paid much attention to my observations. I was surprised to learn from Tom Krazit in his article “Google’s Varian” Search Scale Is Bogus” that Google disagrees with Microsoft. Dr. Varian is a Google wizard, and he teaches at Berkeley. His comments, as I understand them from Mr. Krazit’s article, amount to Microsoft’s getting an F. Yikes. Academic probation and probably a meeting with the dean.
For me the most interesting comment in the article was a comment by Dr. Varian:
So in all of this stuff, the scale arguments are pretty bogus in our view because it’s not the quantity or quality of the ingredients that make a difference, it’s the recipes. We think we’re where we are today because we’ve got better recipes and we have better recipes because we spent 10 years working on search improving the performance of the algorithm. Maybe I’m pushing this metaphor farther than it should go, but I also think we have a better kitchen. We’ve put a lot of effort into building a really powerful infrastructure at Google, the development environment at Google is very good.
Microsoft now has to repeat a class and prove that it can generate revenue from its Web search business. Oh, Microsoft also has to repay prior investment plus interest to make the numbers satisfy this addled goose’s penchant for counting pennies.
Stephen Arnold, August 15, 2009
Content Wins in the Traffic Game
August 16, 2009
One of my clients was excited to learn that his original content was pulling more hits than content pulled from RSS sources. I agreed. Original content, about a specific topic, frequently updated, and correctly tagged acts like a magnet. This “secret” was revealed by Hitwise in a report by Robin Goad’s write up “Hitwise Intelligence.” This discovery and chart will get quite a bit of attention in the traditoinal publishing sector. My take, however, is that the horse is out of the barn and it has been converted to a bed and breakfast. Web sites with original content will be the winners. Traditoinal publishers have not solved the business model challenges that makes Web publishing such a difficult undertaking and one that returns less cash than some organizations expect.
Stephen Arnold, August 16, 2009
InQuira Steps Up Its Marketing
August 16, 2009
InQuira landed a deal with Blue Coat. Blue Coat is an application delivery network company. InQuira natural language search system will support the Blue Coat Application Delivery Network. The article “Blue Coat Deploys InQuira’s Knowledge Solution” reported:
“Web self service is rapidly becoming the new channel of focus for customer support, especially given the current economic climate. We are seeing a lot of companies struggling with disparate platform technologies to try and deliver the right content, while agents still have cheat sheets pinned to their monitors and cubicles,” said Mike Murphy, CEO of InQuira.
A happy quack to InQuira.
Stephen Arnold, August 16, 2009
AP Craves Wikipedia Allure
August 15, 2009
For some reason the Nieman Lab write ups keep plopping into my RSS reader. Today’s story is “How The Associated Press Will Try to Rival Wikipedia in Search Results”. I have a tough time figuring out if the writer (Zachary M. Seward) is for the AP’s plans or against them. What I found most interesting was this statement:
Google juice goes in, swishes around, doesn’t come out.”
I don’t know what this means, but Mr. Seward has worked long and hard on his articles. The addled goose will sit on the sidelines and wait to see what happens to the AP’s revenues. With traffic, the AP gets revenue if it plays its AdSense cards correctly. Without traffic, the AP will have to find another way to generate the type of money that it enjoyed during the salad days of the newspaper, radio, and TV businesses. Wikipedia? Honk.
Stephen Arnold, August 15, 2009
Tweets Are Mostly Pointless Babble
August 15, 2009
I enjoy Mashable. The articles come at topics in a way that is youthful, enthusiastic even. I noted Jennifer Van Grove’s “40% of Tweets Are Pointless Babble.” I was surprised that * only * 40 percent of the message traffic was pointless. However, I think Ms. Van Grove reveals that she has not spent much time in monitoring traffic for intelligence and law enforcement entities. With that experience in her bag of tricks, she might reach a different conclusion about the “noise” in the Twitterstream. “Pointless” to one person might be evidence to another. Youth has its advantages but understanding the value of filtering traffic may not be apparent to an avid sender of Tweets.
Stephen Arnold, August 14, 2009
Visualization and Confusion
August 15, 2009
Visualization of search results or other data is a must-have for presentations in the Department of Defense. What’s a good presentation? One that has killer visualizations of complex data. The problem is that sizzle in one colonel’s graphics triggers a graphics escalation. This is a briefing room version of Mixed Martial Arts. The problem, based on my limited experience in this type of content, is that most of the graphics don’t make much sense. In fact, when I see a graphic I usually have zero idea about where the data originated, the mathematical methods used to generate the visual, or what Photoshop wizardry may have been employed to make that data point explode in my perceptual field. Your mileage may differ, but I find that visualization is useful in small doses.
To prove that what I prefer is out of date and that my views are road kill on the information superhighway, you will want to explore “15 Stunning Examples of Data Visualization”. Stunning is an appropriate word. After looking at these examples, I am not sure what is being communicated in some of these graphics. Example: Big fluctuations.
If you want to add zing to your briefings, you will definitely get some ideas from this article. If I am in the audience, expect questions from the addled goose. Know your data thoroughly because I am not sure some of these examples communicate on the addled goose wave length.
Stephen Arnold, August 14, 2009
Coveo Discloses Client Wins in Q209
August 14, 2009
Coveo is a technology company with some interesting products. I learned about the firm when I poked into the origins of the desktop search system called Copernic. The firm flashed on my radar with a snap in solution for SharePoint. I saw a demonstration of email search that provided features I had heard other vendors describe. Coveo implemented them; for example, maintaining a complete email archive for the user’s desktop computer so if he or she lost a mobile device, the mail was recoverable.
Getting information out of Coveo has not been easy for me. I received a link to a Marketwire article that provided me with some useful information, and I wanted to snag it before the data gets buried in the digital avalanche that cascades into the goose pond each day.
Coveo disclosed several interesting customer wins:
- Goodrich Corporation, a Fortune 500 company
- Odyssey America, an insurance firm
- The Doctor’s Company, an insurer of physicians and surgeon.
Coveo also formed alliances with New Idea Engineering and a number of other integrators around the world.
A happy quack to Coveo and a wing flap to the person at Coveo who provided this information.
Stephen Arnold, August 14, 2009
PageSuite and Its Digital Newspaper
August 14, 2009
PageSuite Ltd., http://www.pagesuite.com, is powering the new http://mydigitalnewspaper.com, the “world’s first” digital newspaper aggregator and search suite. Now you can search for and read stories from online papers from all over the world, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and more. A marketing e-mail from PageSuite alerting us to the service highlighted the search function. It can be segmented by country, publication, date and even the type of title in publications ranging from daily, weekly, monthly, free and paid for newspapers. The site is fairly simple and easy to use. It’s a great idea, although the newspaper industry is still torn on digital access issues, which led to this problem we ran into that was mentioned above: A simple story link to guardian.co.uk was blocked, requiring site registration.
Jessica Bratcher, August 14, 2009
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