VideoSurf
April 4, 2009
VideoSurf, http://www.videosurf.com, offers a Firefox extension called VideoSurf Videos at a Glance to work with Firefox’s Ubiquity (an extension that allows for the use of dynamic commands in Firefox). Once integrated, it’s supposed to allow you to instantly use VideoSurf without leaving the page by accessing a pop-up search window. You’ll get VideoSurf capabilities like clip lists, video information, skipping within a video or clicking on a character to find other appearances. The extension information page is at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/10218. I downloaded Ubiquity from https://wiki.mozilla.org/Labs/Ubiquity and installed it. I followed the directions VideoSurf provided, used the Ubiquity hotkey (“option-space”) and typed “videos [your query]”, but I didn’t get the window of video clips. I just got three links in the search box. I checked some of the documentation, but I didn’t find any details. Anyone have some insight or tips? By all appearances, this could be a really useful tool.
Jessica W. Bratcher, April 4, 2009
Twitter-Mania
April 3, 2009
The banking industry may be near death, but the lads and lassies keep on trying. Kara Swisher’s views are fascinating and often informed. You can read “Sorry to Get You All A-Twitter, But Google Is Not in “Late-Stage Talks” to Acquire the Hot Microblogging Service” here.
The latest and greatest play is the pumping of Twitter. I have written about Google’s inability to make headway in the real time search sector. I compared this lack of agility to everything from arteriosclerosis to interest in solving the global energy crisis. On the other side of the argument is Microsoft, another outfit paralyzed in the real time search sector. What does an under employed venture centric deal maker do? My thought is to whip up a bidding war. A few billion sloshing around will help the trophy generation folks in the money business. I am sitting on the sidelines in this argument for three reasons:
- Real time search has no substantive history of earnings, which suggests more chit chat among the MBAs. Who wants to do a deal without being able to answer the question, “What’s the bottomline on revenue?”
- The sector itself is murky. Law enforcement and intelligence professionals understand the value of flowing comments anchored to a user. Other business sectors are not sure what value Tweets have.
- The idea of real time content flow is a powerful one. Many companies say their systems are real time. As a result, there is considerable confusion about the distinctiveness of the Twitter type of text streams.
This is an evolving story, and I think I will sit on the sidelines and watch the machinations of the MBAs.
Stephen Arnold, April 3, 2009
Ulla de Stricker: Rugge Memorial Winner in 2009
April 3, 2009
Ulla de Stricker, a widely respected information professional, received the Sue Rugge Memorial Award for 2009. Ms. Rugge was one of the pioneers in for-fee research and analysis. Sue Rugge is credited with founding the independent information profession. Through her work and teaching, she inspired many other information professionals to set up their own businesses and helped them succeed by sharing her advice. She is fondly remembered by those who knew her as a generous, caring, and passionate individual who paved the way for a new professional niche. My own recollection of Ms. Rugge is one of bravery. Struggling with a medical condition, she sparkled when talking about her Italian villa rental business, one of her side interests.
Each year in her memory, the Association of Independent Information Professionals (aiip.org) awards the Sue Rugge Memorial Award to a member who has “significantly helped another member through formal or informal mentoring”.
I learned yesterday to my great delight that the 2009 award was given to Ulla de Stricker – to her great surprise, I’m told. I am not surprised. Ulla is the consummate professional. I know first hand that in her more than three decades of work has always helped and supported her colleagues “above and beyond”. She is an inspiration to many who work in the professional information and research sector. Anyone who has attended her talks will testify she is inspiring, energetic, and genuine in her contributions to career building (resume reviews being but one part).
I have asked her to review most of my studies and monographs. Her attention to detail is amazing. Ms. de Stricker operates a consulting practice to assist clients with information and knowledge management challenges (www.destricker.com). She assists me in many ways, not least as a crackerjack editor making me sharpen my thinking. Subscribe to Ulla’s blog here. On offer is a series of substantive essays for information professionals.
Two honks for Ms. de Stricker.
Stephen Arnold, April 3, 2009
BoilingPage: What’s Hot among People
April 3, 2009
A happy quack to the reader who alerted me to the real time search service Boiling Page. The company processes Twitter messages, identifies hot Web pages, and presents a constantly updated list of what people are talking about. The company’s Web site said:
At BoilingPage, you will find the most popular (we call them HOT) and interesting Web pages among people. As we all know, people discuss about their favorite Web pages and interesting Web pages in various networks like Twitter, MySpace, Facebook etc. We basically mine these conversations, organize them properly based on which we’ll show you the best and the most popular Web pages among people. More than just displaying hot Web pages, we’ll show recommendations for each hot page that’ll help you discover more interesting Web pages. We’ll also allow you to create your favorite list by clicking ‘Bookmark’ and bring personalized recommendations based on your favorites. The best part is — you don’t have to keep refreshing our Web page to find new updates on a topic; you can simply register a topic as a feed and you’ll start receiving automatic updates by email.
My search for “business intelligence” revealed some useful links. Here’s a screenshot of the first two hits:
In addition to useful real time insights, I liked the company’s API. You can read about them here .
Stephen Arnold, April 3, 2009
New Column by Arnold
April 3, 2009
I have reached agreement with the Smart Business Network for a new column. I anticipate that the first one will appear in May 2009. The angle will be the use of social systems for marketing. SBN serves small and mid sized businesses in 19 geographic areas in the United States. I won’t repost my columns in this Web log. I think SBN plans to use the content on its Web site and in its business publications. Social system marketing is now an important service. Since Google has decided to sit on the sidelines, I want to follow the horse race in what looks like a crowded field. I am now doing three for fee columns each month: the KMWorld column about Google, the Information World Review column about real time search, and now the SBN column about online marketing via social networks. I will continue to recycle information for my Web log as well. The columns contain fresh information and are less frisky than the addled goose’s musings in this Web log.
Stephen Arnold, April 3, 2009
OneRiot Twitter News Search
April 3, 2009
Chris Snyder’s “OneRiot Launches Twitter-Powered News Search” struck me as a good write up about an interesting new service. Mr. Snyder wrote:
Unlike Google, which uses page rank and authority to display top results, OneRiot displays the most recent links Tweeted first. The results are updated constantly. Below each linked article, you can see who found it first and how many people have Tweeted it since. Users can also jump in and participate in the conversations.
He includes quite a bit of useful information. I want to fiddle with OneRiot. I have several tools to monitor the Twitterverse, and I am pleased with the results I am able to obtain. I ran a number of queries. Some defaulted to Web search results. I hit a home run with a query for food stamps:
You can try out the service here.
Stephen Arnold, April 3, 2009
Cazoodle: Semantic Search
April 3, 2009
A happy quack to the reader who sent me a link to Euwyn’s “Cazoodle – Semantic Data-aware Search” here. Developed by Chambana wizards, Cazoodle “looks to create semantic data-aware search for various verticals, starting with apartments, events, and shopping (electronics, for the most part).” Euwyn makes clear that Cazoodle is a vertical search engine; that is, the content focuses on a specific topic such as apartments. Cazoodle said:
[It is] a startup company from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), aims to enable “data-aware” search– to access the vast amount of structured information beyond the reach of current search engines. The company is co-founded by Prof. Kevin C. Chang and his research team of graduate and undergraduate students, with the support of the University and technology transfer from the MetaQuerier research at UIUC. Cazoodle is located at EnterpriseWorks, an incubator facility of the University, on the Research Park of UIUC in Champaign, Illinois.
The company seems to be going in the same direction as Classifieds.com, a Web start up that I found quite interesting. Cazoodle delivers a “semantic data-aware search.” I ran a query for an apartment in Urbana, where I worked on my PhD many years ago. The Cazoodle results looked like this:
The service looks interesting, demonstrating that dataspaces can be useful. I detected a few Google influences as well. Click here to try the beta search.
Stephen Arnold, April 3, 2009
Amazon Embraces Hadoop
April 2, 2009
The fleet footed Amazon surprised me. I read Larry Dignan’s Amazon Launches Hadoop Data Crunching Service” here. What interested me was Amazon’s use of the Hadoop framework. According to Mr. Dignan’s write up,
The service, called Amazon Elastic MapReduce, is designed for businesses, researchers and analysts trying to conduct data intensive number crunching (statement). Hadoop, which is used by companies like Google and Yahoo, is trying to be pushed into the enterprise data center by startups like Cloudera.
I found this interesting for three reasons:
- Amazon has consistently beaten Google to the punch in the cloud computing push for developers and startups. Google has, in my opinion, watched from the sidelines.
- Google influenced the Hadoop system, which is a variant of the Google MapReduce system. You can find a description in my The Google Legacy (2005) here.
- Amazon, despite its early somewhat unusual approach to infrastructure, has gotten its act together. The clearest indication of this is that the company can integrate new technology into its existing data centers and not go down.
In my view, Amazon is making the transition from digital retail operation to a more serious online force.
Stephen Arnold, April 2, 2009
Google Leximo Tie Up
April 2, 2009
Leximo is a social dictionary; specifically, “a Multilingual User Collaborated Dictionary that lets you search, discover and share your words with the World.” Google snapped up the company. You can read the Leximo manifesto here. One of the tenets is:
Open community-based and user-friendly functions promote participation, accountability and trust.
What’s Google need a dictionary for? In my opinion, the GOOG wants a flow of new words plus definitions to fatten up its existing knowledgebases. I am confident the idealism of Leximo will persist at the GOOG.
Stephen Arnold, April 2, 2009
Digital Video Delivery Cost
April 2, 2009
Short honk: ZDNet Blogs ran a short item called “$400 Mln Spent on Delivering Video via CDNs in 2008” here. Note: the link to the story is longer than the news item. So, $400 million spent hosing digital video. Question: who pays for this stuff? Not me. I prefer text which allows me to acquire information quickly, not at a fixed speed in linear streams. Will Google continue to subsidize YouTube.com? Stakeholders may want some of that money returned as dividends or invested in services that return a profit. Just my opinion and I am not a video person.
Stephen Arnold, April 2, 2009
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