The Microsoft Enterprise Search Vision
April 27, 2009
I read Fran Foo’s “Microsoft Chooses R&D over Buyouts” here. What fascinated me was this statement in the AustraliaIT.news.com.au report of a top Microsoft executive’s view of preparing for the future. Kevin Turner, Microsoft’s global COO, allegedly said:
“In the consumer area we aren’t the market leader but we’re investing in search, MSN, Windows Live and Office Live to become a world-class digital advertising company,” he said. “The landscape is fluid and you have to keep innovating and growing faster than your competition or you’re going to become obsolete.”
Acquisitions can pump up revenue. R&D is often less certain. Google has relied on formal and personal innovation tactics, along with fast cycle live-die cycles, and acquisitions. Balance seems important to the GOOG. Furthermore, applied research can be difficult to make work in certain technical contexts. A good case example is Yahoo’s Panama ad system. In fact, R&D dollars can be blown away with an unexpected twitch in the datasphere.
Ms. Foo wrote,
“Globally, Microsoft registered a 32 per cent drop in profit and the first decline in quarterly revenue in its 23-year history as a publicly listed company.”
What I found interesting was that I scanned Ms. Foo’s article during a “game plan” keynote by Bjorn Olstad, a senior executive in the Microsoft enterprise search unit. At the Boston Search Engine Meeting, Mr. Olstad focused on the future and few tech specifics about enterprise search. The future described by Microsoft reminded me of a Steve Jobs‘s presentation a couple of years ago just without fungible products. I was impressed with iPhone like mobile devices and large touch screen surfaces in Mr. Olstad’s PowerPoint. Even more interesting was the vocabulary he used to Microsoft’s vision of the future in enterprise search; for example:
- On-the-fly computing
- Algorithmic orchestration of the user experience
- Consumption enhanced modes of discovery.
Now Microsoft has to take Mr. Turner’s R&D money and Mr. Olstad’s description of the future and deliver products and services. I hasten to add that that the enterprise search products ideally will be stable, scalable, documented, compatible, feature complete, and affordable by organizations under the same revenue pressure as Microsoft itself. I think that is an interesting task with an uncertain timeline and an unknowable payoff. Oracle sees acquisition, although risky, as a path that may yield more concrete benefits. Shares in the value stock category may need more performance-oriented tactics for stakeholders. R&D or strategic acquisition? Time will tell.
Stephen Arnold, April 27, 2009
Holographic Storage from GE
April 27, 2009
The New York Times’s Steve Lohr wrote “G.E.’s Breakthrough Can Put 100 DVDs on a Disc” here. The technology, said Mr. Lohr, is holography:
an optical process that stores not only three-dimensional images like the ones placed on many credit cards for security purposes, but the 1’s and 0’s of digital data as well.
The GE innovation increases the amount of information that can be stored in a medium that extends the capacity of the traditional optical disc.
In the late 1980s, I was given a tour of a Bell Labs research facility and saw a demonstration of an early holographic storage experiment. The device was a cubic object that was impressively small yet capable of holding a large amount of data compared to magnetic media. I asked the researcher, “When will holographic storage be available?” The Bell Lab whiz said, pushing aside a curtain to reveal a 10 foot x 10 foot array of equipment, “When we can miniaturized the hardware.”
Now it seems that GE has made strides in miniaturization, power consumption, hardware, and compatibility. I think the innovation is promising but magnetic storage density continues to increase and the high capacity solid state discs the goslings and I have tested suggest that SSD technology may have an advantage at this time and for the foreseeable future in seek, read, and write speeds; cost; and size.
The early laser disc technology rolled out by RCA promised similar benefits to GE’s holographic innovation. Will super dense holographic storage gain traction? It’s too soon to tell, of course, but the idea is interesting. I wonder how long it will take a movie executive’s child to burn a holo of 100 motion pictures?
Storage has long been the wallflower at the high technology prom. Is this the year that optical density becomes the queen?
Stephen Arnold, April 27, 2009
Twitter: The No Fear System
April 27, 2009
I like Twitter, and I like to read what others says about the system. I even enjoy looking at the different applications built around Twitter. Unless a challenger enters the list soon, Twitter.com may become a winner due to a lack of competition, indifference, or relevance to those in the know. The article “Twitter’s Real Edge: It’s Not Scary” here. I have to admit that I have not been frightened of online services. I may have to take a different point of view since the alleged Craigslist.com stalker has emerged from the Internet underworld. I think “scary” as used by the TechCrunch writer Sarah Lacy connotes “easy” or “not technical”. I agree. Pervasive computing flows on operations that can be handled without much effort or thought. Call home. Push a button. The more users Twitter.com attracts, the more difficult it will be to get a hooked sender of Tweets to try another system. Google is easy and the company, until recently, hid much of its rocket science technology. Google’s approach was to give the user training wheels with his or her searches. Twitter.com does much the same thing for text broadcasting. For me, the most interesting part of Ms. Lacy’s write up was this passage:
But that’s only part of it. I think the key to Twitter’s mainstream celeb success has been the asynchronous, non-committal nature of the site. As Facebook and MySpace grew, we all experienced that social pressure akin to seeing someone on the street that you know, but don’t want to talk to and wondering how you can politely avoid them. Most people who indiscriminately add “friends” just because they asked don’t wind up really using Facebook to connect with actual friends, because they don’t want to over-share photos, contact information, or videos with “friends” who are essentially strangers.
Now Twitter is easy and an intelligence resource.
Stephen Arnold, April 27, 2009
Twitter Power
April 27, 2009
I was going to ignore the article “The Beginner’s Guide to Twitter” but I thought, “I may as well take a look.” The story appeared in TechRadar.com here. the article provides the reader with the basics of signing up and sending Tweets. But deep in the write up was a gem. For me, the most interesting comment about Twitter’s horsepower was this passage:
Google’s recent outage is a good example of this. For about an hour back in January, its malware detector started claiming that every website ‘may harm your computer’. Before Google had a chance to respond, before blogs had a chance to write posts, Twitter users had already done the important investigation – that yes, it was a problem on Google’s end, that no, it wasn’t spyware at fault – and broadcast it.
I found this a good example of the importance of real time messaging.
Stephen Arnold, April 26, 2009
Repositioning Looms for Microsoft Web Search
April 27, 2009
I think Microsoft’s approach to Web search is intriguing. The company has been working to close the gap between its Web search system and Google’s. The effort has been underway for a number of years. The article “Microsoft Preparing to Launch Kumo on June 2nd?” here suggested a major repositioning is coming down the trail. The article said:
Despite the fact that we still don’t know what the actual rebrand name is going to be, there is going to be something big happening on June 2nd at SMX Advanced 2009 in Seattle. One of our forum members recently visited Microsoft’s campus and noted that there were LCD TV’s displaying a countdown with a preview of codename Kumo. From what we’ve calculated the countdown is right on target with the keynote session at SMX Advanced 2009 featuring Microsoft’s Online Services Division, Dr. Qi Lu. This is the first time that Dr. Qi Lu has given a presentation to the search marketing community since joining Microsoft, and given the fact that Microsoft is counting down to his keynote there is surely going to be a big announcement.
My poking around revealed that a change is indeed coming. The information I have seen suggested that the new approach is * away * from Web search toward the more challenging delivery of an * experience *. I am not sure what this means, but my thought is that if you can’t win at Web search, just reposition your service, declare a victory, and move on.
Stephen Arnold, April 27, 2009
SharePoint SDK Updates
April 26, 2009
Andrew Connell informed me here that Microsoft released Microsoft has released “the April 2009 refresh (v1.5) of the downloadable version (CHM files) of the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 & Office SharePoint Server 2007 SDKs.” You read his write up here. A happy quack to Mr. Connell for the download links as well.
The WSS SDK includes:
- Expanded documentation of backup and restore features This release contains greatly expanded documentation of backup and restore features, including a new top-level node, “Backing Up and Restoring.” The node includes twelve articles, including “Overview of Backing Up and Restoring Data in Windows SharePoint Services,” and four new How To topics.
- Complete documentation of Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.Backup Object model reference documentation in the Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.Backup namespace is complete, and code samples are provided for all critical types and members.
New documentation of the administrative object model A new section, “The Administrative Object Model of Windows SharePoint Services 3.0,” contains six new articles, and the “Administration” section has a new, extended code sample. - Revised Web Part documentation The section that provides conceptual documentation of Web Parts has been completely restructured, and two walkthrough topics have been significantly revised and rewritten.
More migration support A new section, “Selective Content Migration,” contains three articles to support selective migration strategies. Additionally, additions and revisions have been made to existing topics in the “Content Migration Overview” section, and a large number of API reference topics that support migration and deployment scenarios have been completed in the SharePoint.Deployment namespace. - Expanded and updated reference documentation You can find enhanced documentation of types and members in the SharePoint.Workflow and SharePoint.WorkflowActions namespaces, the People Web service, and three ActiveX controls.
I did not write this golden prose. Credit MSFT here.
Stephen Arnold, April 27, 2009
Wolfram Alpha: Google in No Danger
April 26, 2009
ReadWriteWeb.com’s review of the Wolfram Alpha search system is here. The name Wolfram Alpha includes a pipe symbol, which I am not going to include in this write up. Indexing systems have enough trouble with words. Including a vertical bar is one of those marketing things that annoy me. Booz, Allen & Hamilton in the 1970s replaced the comma between “Booz” and “Allen” with a dot. What a headache. No vertical bar for me, thanks.
The headline on the write up was “Our First Impressions.” In sales and search, first impressions matter. The problem is that each search engine is different, and the methods required to get the results a user wants takes time, experimentation, and often industrial strength testing.
ReadWriteWeb.com’s Frederic Lardinois participated in a Web demo and concluded:
It will definitely not be a Google killer.
He continued:
Alpha is built around a vast repository of curated data from public and licensed sources. Alpha then organizes and computes this knowledge with the help of sophisticated Natural Language Processing algorithms. Users can ask Alpha any kind of question…
Alpha taps into a buzzword that like a summer tornado has been gathering momentum before it hits the trailer park of content that makes up much of the information available on the public Internet. To duck into the storm cellar, Alpha focuses on sources that are “curated”. My impression which is not even based on a demo is that Alpha is in the “deep Web” business. The idea is that there are some useful sources which may be tough to index with a general purpose indexing system like that used by Microsoft Live.com or Yahoo.
When results appear, the system attempts to answer the implicit or explicit question. AskJeeves.com focused on this angle in the early 1990s, but quickly ran aground due to editorial costs and the reluctance users had to ask questions the template system could answer; for example, “What’s the temperature in Chicago?” worked. Questions like “What is the IBM patent for RDBMS?” did not work.
ReadWriteWeb.com pointed out that there will be a free and a for fee version, alerts, and a way to “embed” Alpha into other applications. According to ReadWriteWeb.com, the demo “mostly focused on math and engineering data, so we’ll still have to wait and see how Alpha copes with questions about historical events, for example.”
Let me make several observations:
- There continues to be a hunger for a system that answers questions. Users don’t ask questions, but those in the research and investment business assume or know that users * should * ask questions. The ArnoldIT.com worked on a couple of question answering systems in the past, and we learned first hand that users want the system to make life easy. The idea search system just displays information the user needs to know at a particular point in time. Today the predictive mobile search systems that hook into a context clue like a geographical position seem to be closer than a search box.
- Questions pose big problems in ambiguity. There are many ways to serve this fish. Google has its PageRank core wrapped in add on methods to give you a rock star when you type “spears” or “idol”, not Macedonia weapons. The proof of the disambiguation will emerge not from a demo or from impressions but from subjective and objective tests. So the fish remain in the stream at this time.
- The hope for a Google killer is now a catchphrase. The problem with killing Google is that it has morphed into more than search. The Google platform is going to be tough to break up because it is polymorphic, a characteristic I I discuss along with fluxion in my new study Google: The Digital Gutenberg here. Google has some interesting data management tools that can deliver answers as well.
To wrap up, the ReadWriteWeb.com story is good. The Alpha system seems interesting. The desire to have a kinder and gentler Web search engine is intense. The challenge will be delivering users who understand an answer and who have the types of questions a system can answer without sucking too much money from its investors until the cash begins to flow.
In the meantime, “Cuil” is not longer the word. The word will be “Alpha” for the pundits until the next Google killer walks out of the computer lab into the world of the average Web user.
Stephen Arnold, April 26, 2009
As Print Fades, Online Readership Grows, Asserts Research Guru Nielsen
April 26, 2009
Leo LaPorte, a radio personality and one-man podcast network, popped into my crawler as the author of “Online Audience3 Grows for Newspapers” here. I did some clicking and discovered the attribution here on The Long Tail, a Web log by the author of the book by the same name. Another link aimed me at http://www.techfuga.com. I found a version of the story on MSNBC here, but to my dismay the source was the deeply litigious Associated Press. No Leo LaPorte in sight, but his name drew me into a festival of clicking.
And what was the story?
Oh, people are reading more news online. The ultimate source of the data is the stats giant Nielsen. You can read the data, but my thought was, “If newspapers kill off their print editions or make them too expensive, maybe online is the alternative.”
The problem which the mathematics whizzes at Nielsen don’t address is that the online business models in use by the dead tree crowd don’t pay the bills.
I wonder if Leo LaPorte knows he is the attributed author of what strikes me as a somewhat obvious study? Maybe he linked to the story? Pretty darned confusing provenance. At least the free Web news search systems worked. I could find the MSNBC story easily.
Stephen Arnold, April 26, 2009
Security: Not If There Is Money for Some Humans
April 26, 2009
ITBusiness.ca ran a story with the eye catching headline “One-Third of Employees Willing to Steal Company Data If the Price Is Right” here. Studies of this type require some mental prudence. I found the write up a useful reminder than humans are the weakest link in a security fence. For me the most interesting comment was:
Research by the security event organizer revealed that of those willing to steal sensitive data, 63 per cent would expect at least £1 million (Can$1.78 million) for their troubles, while 10 per cent want enough to pay off their mortgage.
Now, what about that confidential information secured with industry standard systems? Take out your checkbook?
Stephen Arnold, April 26, 2009
An Howl of Hyperbole Induced Pain
April 26, 2009
PCAdvisor.co.uk is a Web site that complements a consumer computer magazine in the UK. I recall buying a copy and getting a DVD stuffed full of “editor picks” in shareware, code snippets, and articles from back issues. I saw a reference to the article “10 Things We Hate about Technology Now”. You can read the story here. This is the second “we can’t take it any more” write up in the last 24 hours. Dan Sullivan pointed to the public relations blitz that accompanies a new search engine. My take on his article is here. Now the journalists at PCAdvisor.co.uk are showing signs of stress. I can’t recite the entire list of 10 pain points, but I can point to three items and offer a brief comment about each.
First, the magazine objects to the buzz about Twitter. I don’t agree. Twitter is the poster child for real time search. RTS is novel and not well understood. The outrage makes clear to me that no one on the PCAdvisor.co.uk team thinks about the Twitter messages from the point of view of a person involved in police or intelligence work. Twitter is important. A failure to understand is a problem of analytic intelligence, not Twitter. RTS is not likely to go away quickly.
Second, news releases. Last time I checked PCAdvisor.co.uk it seemed to have its share of recycled news releases in its “news” section. Companies generate news spam and publications gobble up the bits and bytes. Story ideas are often hard to get when a publisher pays low wages and rationalizes staff. Recycling is a big part of the profession of computer journalism. Remember. I worked for one of the big guns in the industry.
Third, Apple and Microsoft. I am combining two items because each illustrates a characteristic of news. High profile companies are high profile because people want their products, need information about the companies, or enjoy keeping pace with the buzz about something that has ubiquity. No company is perfect. Publications have to cover the high profile companies in order to attract eyeballs. A niche publication covers more specialized topics and attracts a smaller, more specialized audience. Writing positive or negative articles about high profile companies is a requirement.
I think the marketing bandwagon has been pimped by West Coast Customs. Marketing is now a Hummer, not a Mini Cooper. The change says more about the nature of unchecked capitalism, the desperation some publishers feel when trying to turn red ink into black ink, and journalists who are short on copy ideas.
Stephen Arnold, April 26, 2009
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