Another YAGG Gags the Google
May 19, 2009
ComputerWorld here reported another service outage for Googzilla, the world’s most widely used search system. The subhead is quite pointed: “Déjà vu all over again: Four days after widespread outage, Google News hiccups.’”
The author, Sharon Gaudin, who wrote:
Google confirmed this morning that its Google News news aggregation site went down between 8:35 a.m. EDT and 10 a.m. EDT today. Some users trying to pull up the site received a 503 Server Error message. It’s not clear how many users were affected or how wide a geographical area was affected.
Not much for the addled goose to add. Outages speak for themselves.
Stephen Arnold, May 19, 2009
Harvard Journalism Majors Unhappy with Job Prospects
May 19, 2009
The story in PaidContent.org did not ring true for me. You will have to judge for yourself. Read “Harvard Students Now Embarrassed to Say They Want to Go into Journalism” here. These future Web loggers and Tweet producers seem to feel uncomfortable at job fairs. I thought the Harvard seal of approval granted prompt employment regardless of major. The story originated with the Harvard Crimson, a publication that should know what’s up with journalism majors.
Stephen Arnold, May 19, 2009
Boye 09 Overflight Awards
May 19, 2009
The Overflight Award for Excellence, created by ArnoldIT.com and JBoye.com, was presented to Volker Grünauer, head of E-marketing at Wienerberger in Austria, at the JBoye Conference: Philadelphia 2009, http://jboye08.dk/]http://www.jboye.com/conferences/philadelphia09/, May 5-7, held at the Down Town Club in Philadelphis.
The award recognizes the best presentation at the conference on digital media, which featured more than 50 speakers from around the world.
Grünauer offered a relevant talk called “Developing a customer centric web strategy.” This presentation discussed smart web strategy for promoting real brick and mortar products, including how Wienerberger defines the four elements of web success and how customer behavior has become the trigger for every eMarketing decision. Slides of the presentation are available at http://jboye08.dk/downloads/download.php?file=1226063851.pdf. He was awarded an engraved Lucite trophy and 500 Euros.
Volker is responsible for the marketing strategy of all websites at Wienerberger, the world’s largest manufacturer of bricks, clay roof tiles and clay pavers. In this function he also developed a new brand and domain management strategy. Together with the IT department he managed the rollout of the CMS into new Wienerberger markets. See his profile athttp://www.jboye.com/conferences/philadelphia09/speakers/volker_grunauer.
An honorable mention went to Donna Spencer, a freelance information architect and interaction designer, a mentor, writer and trainer from Australia, who presented a discussion on the user experience track called “Getting Content Right.” She was awarded an engraved Lucite trophy. Her profile is at http://www.jboye.com/conferences/philadelphia09/speakers/donna_spencer.
Stephen E. Arnold and Janus Boye created the award to permit the community attending the conference to identify presentations that met the following criteria: information that would be useful to delegates upon returning to work; research supporting the presentatio; quality of the delivery and examples; and importance of the speakers’ topics at the time of the conference.
A panel of distinguished attendees and information practitioners had the task of assessing the presentations and determining the winners. The judges were Dana Hallman, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency; Karen Rosenzweig, Novartis;Peter Svensson, Lund University; and Troy Winfrey, University of Baltimore.
About ArnoldIT.com
Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his office in Kentucky. He works with colleagues worldwide on a wide range of online and content-related projects. The company’s Web site is http://arnoldit.com, and the Beyond Search blog is at http://arnoldit.com/wordpress/.
About JBoye.com
J. Boye, a digital media enterprise, is frequently contracted to help with strategy and governance, project planning, requirement specifications, vendor and software selection, project management and ROI optimization. They also produce industry reports and organize educational conferences. Contact the company at info@jboye.co.uk or info@jboye.dk.
Jessica Bratcher, May 19, 2009
Cloud Comparison – Amazon, Google, Microsoft
May 18, 2009
A happy quack to the reader who sent me this weekend a link to an article that appeared about a month ago here. The write up was “Amazon, Google, Microsoft – Big Three Cloud Providers Examined” by Brandon Watson. His approach was to describe the cloud services of these three Web powerhouses.
My reading of his article left me with the impression that Amazon is the big dog in this kennel of pit bulls. He wrote:
AMZN is, essentially, in the load management business. They are a low margin retail operator that is running a hugely expensive infrastructure for which they are seeking maximum utilization. They would like nothing more than to be noise in their own system. AMZN is relentlessly metrics driven. As such, they have a pretty good idea of how much money to expect off of traffic that walks through their front door. They know how much to expect from traffic ending up at one of their marketplace partners. With the addition of AWS, they have a new way to monetize their capacity, and with their predictable pricing model, they know exactly how much money they are going to make off of customers who deploy applications to their service.Traffic on their network makes them money. It may not make your app money, but it makes them money, so they are happy. It more than likely saves you money, so you are probably happy too.
The Google warrants some tough love. Mr. Watson expressed his love for Google “guys” and then offered:
Applications on GAE are mostly CRUD apps, storing structured data into big table. As a developer, building an application on GAE, you are essentially feeding the GOOG beast. While they have not yet released final pricing, allow me to put on my pointy tin foil hat and talk about what might come to pass. GOOG knows exactly how much it costs to run their infrastructure, and as such could hand developers a bill for the resources which they consume. However, GOOG doesn’t have AMZN’s problem. Their traffic is mostly linear, and going up and to the right. It’s probably logarithmic at this point, but who’s counting? In any event, since they have little variability in their traffic patterns, they don’t have to get into the load management business. By allowing developers to build applications on their infrastructure, they are incurring unnecessary costs. Their motivations, however, are driven by their business model. Each new app that is plugged into the infrastructure ads new data to their data set, and creates new opportunities for page monetization.
For the Redmond giant, Mr. Watson opined:
As for MSFT, there are plenty of things I could say, but let me simply state what I believe to be our motivations. We are a platform company. We very much believe that we are in the business of delivering the best platform and tools to developers to build great applications. Our on-premise stack has proven to be extremely successful over the last several decades. With the release of the Azure Services Platform, one of the core design tenets was that we would like to achieve parity between our on and off-premise stacks. The entirety of the Azure Services Platform is designed to enable experienced MSFT developers to be combat effective on day one.
I enjoyed the article. With Amazon the king of the cloud kennel, can it hang in there with Xen and the economical approach to next-generation computing.
Stephen Arnold, May 18, 2009
PR and High Tech
May 18, 2009
A happy quack to the reader who pointed me to this video and the text snippets from it. The video is an interview with Own Byrne, the fellow who allegedly coded the Digg.com site. You can find the write up here. For me the most interesting comment in the interview was:
It’s a bit of a myth that it’s all young coders. There actually lots of people in their late 30s and their 40s. I’ve been a programmer for 25 years and I’ve actually worked hard to keep up with new technology.
Yes, a vote for those who are getting long in the tooth.
Stephen Arnold, May 17, 2009
SEO Guru Reveals His Inner Self
May 18, 2009
I found the article “Dammit, I’m A Journalist, Not A Blogger: Time For Online Journalists To Unite?” here quite interesting. The reason? It makes clear that “real journalists” want more respect than a “real blogger” gets. The schism will ignite a firestorm of Tweet and probably lead to the formation of a not-for-profit organization, a certification program similar to that required of medical doctors and air craft pilots, a Web site, and maybe a movie deal.
The author of the “Dammit” essay is Dan Sullivan, who is the oft-quoted expert in search. The distinction between search as in marketing and search as in the enterprise is not usually made. I have seen Mr. Sullivan’ statements about Google, online marketing, and other aspects of the online world, I associate him with search engine marketing, conferences chock full of ad executives and stressed Web site managers, and newsletters that explain the intricacies of getting a Web page to be trim and fit for indexing.
You real digital journalists, fall in, hustle, hustle, hustle.
The “Dammit” essay turns on a different color spot light. Mr. Sullivan wrote:
Bloggers got bumpkiss. We have no lobbying group. We have no organization designed to help members learn the intricacies of uncovering government documents. We can’t get government agencies to call us back at all, at times (I know, been there and done that). And we’ve got a newspaper industry increasingly portraying us as part of an evil axis that’s killing them. Blogs steal their attention, and Google steals their visitors.
But the gravel in the craw is that existing associations are not doing what needs to be done to preserve the reputation, professionalism, and statute of digital journalists. He asserted:
I want online journalists to get organized. Yes, there’s the Online News Association, but that seems an extension of “traditional” journalists working in mainstream organizations with digital outlets. I think we need an “Online Journalists Association,” or a “United Bloggers” or whatever catchy name you come up with.
The author of “Dammit” then shifted into what struck me as “plea bargaining mode”. He wrote:
But while I love newspapers, came from them and hope they continue to find a place (more on their future later, short story, expect 4-5 “nationals” to survive), I’m begging them to stop seeing bloggers as enemies. Many bloggers are journalists, part of the news ecosystem, colleagues that are entitled to respect.
Yes, I shouted. Yes, bloggers deserve respect.
Respect, digital journalists deserve respect.
Well, some bloggers. There are the bloggers who write about their cats, personal tastes in breakfast food, long form bloggers, and the newer microbloggers. My thought is that bloggers have to be separated into the ones who are “digital journalists using the Web log form” and the run-of-the-mill millions who start a blog, quit, or rant and foam in a manner that often surprises me.
Browsys Twoogle
May 18, 2009
Curious about what the differences are between Googzilla’s search system and the pesky bird, Twitter. Twoogle makes it dead easy to compare results. Click here and enter the query “Wolfram Alpha”. You see a side by side display of search results from Twitter and Google.
The company said:
Twoogle aims to make easier for people to get the best of two worlds: The real-time web powered by Twitter and the most prominent sites, powered by Google. Twoogle also provides the “Tweet this search” functionality, making it easy for users to post their queries to Twitter with just one click. Twoogle is a free service, and is not responsible for the terms of service, privacy policies and practices of neither Twitter or Google.
How different are the services? Google’s results are more library like. The Twitter results have life. I fiddled with links on both services and found that there was an advantage to using both services. Here’s the result screen I saw on May 16, 2009:
Browsys Labs makes a number of products, including virtual folders here. My records suggest that Juan Sosa is the CEO.
Stephen Arnold, May 18, 2009
Google Cannot Fit through Some Information Doors
May 17, 2009
Is Google to chubby to fit through some information doors? That’s the question this article on the CNN.com Web site sparked in my mind. The story “New search engines aspire to supplement Google” here provided me with a chuckle whilst sitting on the marge of the duck pond in Harrod’s Creek. The writer, John D. Sutter, said:
We may be coming upon a new era for the Internet search.
Yep, Google defines search, but that’s not new. What’s new is the survival method for start ups in a Google-centric world. And the story scampers through some assumptions that warrant a bit of back up, but I don’t have the energy to point out that the four systems highlighted in this story are in varying stages of development. For example, I am not sure what the financial status of Twine, Hakia, and Searchme are at this time. Kosmix has, I heard last week in San Francisco, some cash in its ATM account. The others? I’m not sure. Scoopier is too new. TweetMeme is one of a large number of Twitter-centric tools, and I have tough time reading some logos because of the obligatory use of faded blue type.
There’s the obligatory paragraph about Wolfram Alpha, which one pundit described as a search system for resident of Niche Ville, not a search system for the masses living in Chicago or Houston.
But the home run comment for me was this one:
Google, of course, remains the search king. Recent efforts to revolutionize Web searching have failed to unseat the dominant California company, which captures nearly 64 percent of U.S. online searches, according to comScore.
In my opinion, this is a pretty important comment for these reasons:
- Google has an “as is” presence and market share; other search vendors must adapt to the Google ecosystem
- The notion of supplementing Google is the only way open for most search vendors. Google is the search environment, so “surfing on Google” is a survival strategy and one that some venture firms may believe possible
- Google can’t fit through some information doors because the information doors are often “within” the Google ecosystem. Facebook and Twitter to some extent are “outside” of the Google ecosystem, but the GOOG seems to be muddling forward to “wrap” services around these data bunions.
I knew there was a reason to get my news from multiple sources and not rely on CNN for what I need in the way of information about search and content processing. Honk.
Stephen Arnold, May 17, 2009
Autonomy Expands into Marketing
May 17, 2009
Attensity has been moving into marketing and marketing-related search applications. Autonomy has offered tools that provide insights into market behavior announced at the eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit a deal that indicates Autonomy is serious about this application of its search technology. Autonomy announced that the Optimost Adaptive Targeting is now powered by Autonomy’s Meaning Based Marketing engine. Autonomy is showing agility in its leveraging of its Interwoven acquisition. The company said here:
Optimost Adaptive Targeting mines all major types of customer attributes to create customer segments, including context (how the visitor arrives at the Website, e.g. search keyword), geography, time of day, and demographic, behavior, and account profile information. Once customer segments are created, multivariate tests are conducted on an unlimited number of copy ideas, offers, and layouts to determine the best solution for each audience segment. By adding the Meaning Based Computing capabilities of IDOL to Adaptive Targeting, marketers gain a unique ability to understand and effectively serve their customers. By leveraging IDOL, Optimost Adaptive Targeting now includes unique keyword clustering capabilities that automatically identifies
concepts and patterns as they are emerging on the web. For instance, an online pet store might discover that an unusually high number of “long-tail” searches relate to vacationing with pets. The solution could then automatically serve up more content and special offers around travel tote bags and kits.
The addled goose predicts that other vendors of search and content processing technology will increase their efforts to blend search and content processing with online and traditional marketing functions. Google is active in online marketing, and could increase its presence in this sector quickly and without warning. A stampede may be forming on the search prairie.
Stephen Arnold, May 17, 2009
Marketing Baloney: IBM Gets Social
May 17, 2009
A happy quack to the reader who sent me a link to DQ Week’s story “IBM Intros Networking and Collaboration Services” here. I don’t think too much about IBM unless it is in the context of a wizard who jumps from Big Blue into the paws of Googzilla. My tracking Ramanathan Guha of programmable search engine fame is one example of the IBM contribution to the GOOG. The passage that caught my attention was this segment of the news story:
“There has never been a better time to harness social technology and drive some of the world’s most important transformations-from energy to healthcare,” said Himanshu Goyal, Country Manager-Academic Initiative, Developer Works and Globalization, IBM India. “IBM is the only vendor that can bring collaboration technology and content together to help developers maximize their productivity and tackle new IT challenges by quickly establishing a worldwide network of peers.”
First, I am not sure the present economic climate is the “better time” for me to buy stuff from IBM. Second, I just think it is silly to assert that IBM is the “only vendor that can bring collaboration technology and content together”. Categorical affirmatives! Give me a break. Finally, “tackle new IT challenges?” How about resolving the old IT challenges.
At the Mark Logic user conference last week I overhead a conversation about the inability of one large customer in the publishing world to shake free quickly and economically from the shackles of its IBM mainframe past. IBM jumps from trend to trend in an effort to use consulting firm hot insight type marketing with the slogging of services, software, and hardware. The big companies used to gulp this concoction down without a thought.
Now, I am not so sure. As a result, IBM turns up the hyperbole generator. The one thing that this quote tells me is that search is not number one. Collaboration is. Gee, I wonder if IBM remembers Lotus Notes? What about those forms that allow me to input content into a DB2 data system? I thought I saw an annotation feature running on the Omnifind search system last year as well? Those “innovations” apparently don’t sell today as well as “transformation”.
Stephen Arnold, May 17, 2009
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