Journalists Struggle with Web Logs
March 30, 2009
Gina M. Chen asked, “What do you think?” at the foot of her essay “Is Blogging Journalism”. You can read her write up here. My answer is, “Nope. Web logs are a variant of plain old communications.” Before I defend my assertion, let’s look at the guts of her essay is that “fear of change” creates the challenge. She asserted that blogging is a medium.
Web logs are not causing traditional media companies to collapse. Other, more substantive factors are eroding their foundations. Forget fear. Think data termites.
Okay, I can’t push back too much on these points, which strike me as tame and somewhat obvious. I also understand the fear part mostly because my brushes with traditional publishers continue to leave them puzzled and me clueless.
The issue to me is mostly fueled by money. Here’s why:
Google in Knowledge Grab
March 30, 2009
Google keeps getting on the wrong side of the UK newspapers. The Times of London’s “Google Makes a Grab for E-Books” here gives the company some of that put down jabber for which Oxford-style debaters are noted. (I debated a team from Oxford when in university. My partner and I won, but we had some mud sticking to our suits.) The Times said:
This move [Google’s deal with Sony] is merely the tip of an iceberg. Late last year Google settled a class-action lawsuit with the two most powerful authors’ and publishers’ associations in America. In exchange for a $125m (£86m) payment, the groups agreed that Google would set up and administer a publishing-rights register designed to match up new and existing electronic books to their copyright owners, and manage payments for anyone who wanted to download them. Unlike ePub, this would be a closed — and profit-generating — system owned and managed by Google. The system would effectively make Google the sole distributor — and seller — of many electronic books.
Googzilla needs to get its public relations program on track in the UK. The traditional book publishing industry may be in a death spiral, but it has the incentive to make life miserable for the laddies and lassies in Google offices.
Stephen Arnold, March 29, 2009
Desktop Operating Systems: A Partial Romp through the Graveyard
March 30, 2009
I was enticed by the title of this ComputerWorld article here: “Gone But Not Forgotten: 10 Operating Systems the World Left Behind” by Matt Lake. I am an old and addled goose, so the amount of detail provided for each of the 10 operating systems varies quite a bit. Mr. Lake does a good job with the highest profiles systems, less well with the older, smaller OSes. What struck me when I read the article was that none of the operating systems differed significantly under the kimono. I grant the coding was different and features available to developers varied. The significant difference was the interface. What I noticed from the screen shots was that the look and feel of the operating systems converged. Over time, the interfaces moved from the inscrutable to the explicit. My take away from the article was that the operating system has become mostly irrelevant to the user. The interface is shifting from the explicit to the anticipative. The implications of this in my opinion translate to significant market upheavals. Who will suffer? Most of the enterprise software vendors will find themselves on the wrong side of shift. Interoperability will eventually become a smart software problem. Products like Chrome, therefore, which look like a browser but are in effect software versions of space ports that connect the world of the user’s data craft with the larger universe, are important.
Stephen Arnold, March 29, 2009
Online Revenue Options
March 29, 2009
A happy quack to the reader who sent me a link to Long Tail’s round up of online revenue models. You can find “Terrific Survey of Free Business Models Online” here. I walked through the examples, and the number and variety remarkable. Some of the lingo baffled me, but my reaction was similar to my trying to decide which flavor of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream to get. The milk and other ingredients are the same, but a seemingly wide range of unique flavors baffles me. I suggest you print out the tables and study them. Buy a cone and combine the tasks. Thr graphic may require another single dip to figure out.
Stephen Arnold, March 29, 2009
Hitwise Says Search Frustrate Users
March 29, 2009
Hitwise is a Web consultancy. Web consultancies with analytics get a double boost. Hitwise has big ideas and data to make most assertions have the ring of truth. These were the thoughts that went through my goosely brain when I read Australian IT’s “Searches Frustrate Surfers” here.
The main point of this article was:
According to Mr Tancer {Hitwise executive], people were using more and more words in their search queries because they were dissatisfied with the results. He said one of the problems facing search engines was the amount of content that did not have a link pointing to it — the method Google and others use to find and rank sites.
I agree. Search is difficult, complicated, and deeply dissatisfying. The issue is, “What’s the fix?” The GOOG is on the search without search track. Microsoft is investing in a down economy. Yahoo is a beached whale. We know the problem. Any suggestions from the consulting or data side of the Hitwise house?
I don’t have too many problems with search, so the addled goose is not a good judge of such matters derived from statistical estimates of traffic. On system accounts for about two thirds or more of search traffic, so it must be doing something semi-right in my opinion.
Stephen Arnold, March 29, 2009
Google in the US Government
March 29, 2009
A happy quack to the reader who alerted me to the Google Blogoscoped article “Google Code Enters WhiteHouse.gov” here. No surprise, however. A view source shows that the Google Moderator app is humming away. The question is, “How quickly will Google displace other vendors’ systems?” In my opinion, this is not an “if” question. It is a “when” question.
Stephen Arnold, March 31, 2009
More Online Advertising Deep, Deep Thinking
March 29, 2009
TechCrunch has a “steel cage match” underway. A Wharton professor found himself in the spotlight with some amazingly naive assertions about making money online. Today I read “Steel Cage Debate on the Future of Online Advertising: Danny Sullivan Vs. Eric Clemons” here. In my opinion, the steel cage metaphor is in itself a good way to generate traffic in order to add some steroids to the TechCrunch advertising biceps brachii.
Advertising thrives on traffic in the way muscle tissue responds to steroids.
I want to do my part in fanning the flames of this intellectual Bessemer furnace. If you are not familiar with the Bessemer method, you will want to refresh your memory about the function of draughts of air blown through coal here. The Bessemer process was abandoned in the 1950s, which provides some color for my comparison.
The spectacular but remarkably wasteful Bessemer process produced some productivity gains, but by the 1950s better methods were found. Online advertising cage matches share some similarities in their inefficient production of heat and sparks.
Here’s this week’s cage match synopsis:
Search engine marketing wizard Sullivan: Advertising will be big on the Internet.
Ivory tower behemoth Clemons: I agree but trust is a big deal. Internet advertising will account for about 20 percent of online revenues in five years.
Let’s step back.
What’s going on is a shift in proportionate spending. The revenue revolution was the Idea Lab notion that people with Web sites would pay for traffic. The big idea here is that a person would spend money to get clicks. The model is not revolutionary. Paying for traffic was a consequence of a property of electronic information; namely, magnetic centers exist which attract the majority of users. Internet traffic is not distributed evenly or randomly. To get in the flow costs money.
Yidio Update
March 29, 2009
Quite a few readers have shown interest in Yidio, the video search system I wrote about here. A reader sent me a link to this interesting post on Quantcast. The site has shown strong traffic growth in the first two months of 2009. You can view the data here. What’s interesting is that the viewers of Yidio don’t favor YouTube.com, if the Quantcast data are accurate. Frankly I had not heard of most of the sites in the “Audience Also Visits” listing; for example, tvduck.com, although the name appeals greatly to this addled goose. TVDuck seemed to be quite YouTube.com centric which begged the question, “How dependent on YouTube.com are these services.
A happy quack to the reader who pointed out that I did not mention that a videographer can make money by posting the content to Yidio. The procedure requires that the videographer provide his / her AdSense identification code. Click here for details.
Stephen Arnold, March 29, 2009
For the Millions of Cloud Computing Ontology Lovers
March 29, 2009
I love ontologies, particularly those created for some of the one day seminars that are available. I love cloud computing analyses, particularly those created by the azure chip consultants who would not walk past, let alone paddle, in the addled goose’s pond. I loved the write up by Kevin Jackson in CloudComputing.com’s “A Tactical Cloud Computing Ontology.” You must read the article here. Mr. Jackson tackled the job of taming two of the most widely used buzzwords at information technology conferences today–cloud computing and ontology.
He presents several diagrams that put the cloud computing idea into a framework. the diagrams are useful, but they do contain some terms that I am not exactly sure how to define. Nevertheless, the distance between cloud computing and its ontology is narrowed. He outlined three actions and considerations the reader may wish to consider. I can’t quote this complete sequence, but I can identify broadly the ideas:
- Merge the cloud and on premises experience so the user doesn’t see much of change
- There will be some differences when using the proposed framework
- Something I don’t fully understand well enough to summarize: “As a way to organize an enterprise’s body of knowledge (architecture) about its activities (processes), people, and things within a defined context and current/future environment.
I am still thinking about how this framework applies to search across secure and open content sources in a regulated environment with known network bottlenecks. My hunch is that others will be thinking about these issues before embarking on a composite architecture. No harm from thinking either.
Stephen Arnold, March 28, 2009
Simploos Search
March 29, 2009
I learned about a new search system the other day. I don’t have too much data, but I wanted to mention it to my two or three readers. No point in sitting on what may be the first Chrome-centric rendering engine I have come across. The company offering the new service is Simploos.com here. If you get an error message, just click on continue. The system should work. We think this is a Flash related issue, but I haven’t heard back from the company yet. The figure below shows the interface for a query on my favorite subject, “Beyond Search”.
© Simploos 2009
My files suggest that the thumb nail preview was a feature introduced by the company Girafa. I wrote about it in my original Technology from Harrod’s Creek column for Information World Review in the 1998-1999 time frame. Girafa is still around, and you can see what the company is now doing by clicking here.
You see the thumbnails of the top hits from either a Google or Yahoo search. When you click on a thumbnail, the system displays the splash page of the site. The first hit on Googzilla for the phrase “beyond search” is this Web log. You can set various options and use either Google or Yahoo search results.
Our working hypothesis is that the Google-centric implementation uses Chrome under the covers. Yahoo appears to be using Yahoo’s technology.
The young goslings found the approach fresh and interesting. The older goslings found the screen refresh during scrolling somewhat distracting. For some types of queries, the graphic approach is useful. You can limit the results to those in Spanish which is a nice touch. There’s an advanced search section which is interesting to use as well. Give it a test drive and keep in mind that this implementation is a beta. We’ve noticed minor changes as we used the system over a span of three days. The addled goose emits a gentle, happy quack. A big honk to the person who alerted us to this system as well.
Stephen Arnold,
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