Government Spending Can Be Reduced: What a Surprise
February 21, 2009
PCWorld, according to Yahoo News here, published one of those stories that make me shake my head in disbelief. At age 65, I thought I had a good grip on how the US government worked. Then I read “Federal Gov’t Can Save Billions in IT Spending.” For me the most interesting comment in the write up was:
Looking at 30 federal agencies, the study assumes every agency is starting from scratch with new technology. So instead of buying new software, agencies could save a collective $3.7 billion using open-source instead of proprietary software. Agencies could save $13.3 billion using virtualization technologies instead of buying new servers, and they could save $6.6 billion by using cloud computing instead of buying software and hardware.
Goodness. I thought the US government was the very model of efficiency. One learns something every day. I was involved in a program in the year 2000. Its cost was less than $250,000. Last time I checked the budget for that search related project, spending allocations totaled about $23 million. Now I learn that the government can save money. Shocker.
Stephen Arnold, February 21, 2009
Tips for the Traffic Starved
February 21, 2009
Goodness, the SEO inputs keep on keepin’ on. If you are hungry for traffic, Xponex Media Blog has pulled 10 positive factors in Google’s relevance algorithm. You can find a list of about 100 factors in The Google Legacy (2005) which I assembled from Google’s open source information and other open sources. But my monograph costs money, and Xponex list of 10 factors is free and in an SEO blog, not in a monograph chuck full of polysyllabic words, tables, and diagrams. You can find the article here. I don’t want to reproduce the 10 factors, but I can mention three and offer a comment:
- Use your keyword (index term) in the body copy of the Web page. That makes sense. If one writes about Tennessee walkers, it’s a useful tactic in indexing to use the term “horse” as one of the tags.
- Use your keyword in a headline. That makes sense. In writing about horse shows, putting the phrase “horse show” in a headline allows a human to scan a document quickly.
- Use your keywords in the indexing field (metatag). That makes sense.
Bottomline: the secret of getting a better PageRank: basic indexing know how and commonsense. And for this SEO wonks charge money?
Stephen Arnold, February 21, 2009
The Dangers of Social Software
February 21, 2009
Quite a story on the BBC Web site here. I don’t think too much about social software, but folks are forcing the subject with me. I tolerate; I don’t participate. No tweets for me. Thank goodness because an expert named Dr Aric Sigman has allegedly suggested that sites like Facebook.com could harm users’ health. For me, the most interesting comment in the remarkable article was:
A lack of “real” social networking, involving personal interaction, may have biological effects, he suggests. He also says that evidence suggests that a lack of face-to-face networking could alter the way genes work, upset immune responses, hormone levels, the function of arteries, and influence mental performance. This, he claims, could increase the risk of health problems as serious as cancer, strokes, heart disease, and dementia.
Yikes. I am glad I don’t have a Facebook.com, MySpace.com, or Twitter account. Google rejected my request to sign up for Orkut when I learned about the alleged legal action about intellectual property and the alleged use of the system by certain individuals of interest to some authorities. Shucks. I wanted to see if any of my former pals in Campinas were on Orkut. Now I will never know.
What if I * had * used Orkut? According to the BBC story, I would run the risk of:
- Lowered immune response
- Wacky hormone levels
- Inefficient arteries
- Cancer
- Strokes
- Heart disease
- And (my favorite) dementia. I know I will have dementia when I embrace SEO and hang out with SEO carpet baggers, shills, and entitlement analytics wonks.
The BBC opened my eyes to risks of which I had not thought. To me social software means security issues, evidence, and clues for users’ predilections. From Top Gear to the dangers of social software. That’s the new BBC.
Stephen Arnold, February 21, 2009
SEO Maven Now Sells Content Services
February 20, 2009
Whoop-de-doo. I received a copy of a news release with a “Market Wire” tag on February 19, 2009, with this headline, “Leading SEO Company Includes SEO Copywriting in Search Engine Optimization Program at No Additional Charge.” I located a copy of this gem online at Reuters here. Click this puppy quick because I don’t think the item will be online very much longer.
Here’s the story:
SEO Advantage in Florida said: “We’re pleased to let our clients know that we are now including professional copywriting in our ongoing SEO programs at no additional charge”.
Let’s think about this:
- If SEO worked, then why include anything other than the key word indexing, site set up tweaking, and metrics? Well, these tricks don’t work reliably. Sure, an SEO maven can goose a ranking, but if the maven makes a boo boo, the client slips backwards, sometimes fast, sometimes slowly.
- If content were not important, this firm would not add to its costs of doing business by fooling with writers. Human writers require management and money.
- With the inclusion of writing, does this not suggest that the basic premise of does this not suggest that SEO may be like a three legged stool with two legs: tricks, analytics, and the missing leg, content?
After a feisty entitlement generation SEO apologist attacked me today, I find this news release indicative of the change that is going to sweep across the carpet bagging business.
Are your sensibilities wounded? I am too old to get annoyed with SEO wizards who now find that content, not metatag stuffing, is needed to make a Web page appealing to an indexing bot.
Stephen Arnold, February 20, 2009
Online Craziness: SkyNet Edition
February 20, 2009
The provenance of the story “Experts Warn of Terminator-Style Military-Robot Rebellion” here appeared on the FoxNews.com Web site, and the story carried a link to the February 19, 2009, Times of London. You will have to read this article and make up your own mind. For me, the most interesting comment was:
The report, the first serious work of its kind on military robot ethics, envisages a fast-approaching era where robots are smart enough to make battlefield decisions that are at present the preserve of humans. Eventually, it notes, robots could come to display significant cognitive advantages over Homo sapiens soldiers.
I quite like the phrase “Homo sapiens soldiers”. Within the last 24 hours, Windows 7 lost its ability to see a network attached storage device. Our Vista test platform froze. And our NetFinity 5500 running Windows Server 2005 died. My BlackBerry would not render www.popurls.com. My two Macs lost the ability to see an external SATA drive with FAT32 partitions. Nope, I won’t be worry too much about a robot taking over the mine drainage pond here in Harrod’s Creek for a while. Those Homo sapiens journalists at FoxNews.com and the Times of London may be in more immediate danger, however. Robots are not likely to kill addled geese since roast goose is not part of the robot diet based on my experience.
Stephen Arnold, February 20, 2009
Google Gunk
February 20, 2009
Lee Gomes (now writing for Forbes with a picture too) raised an interesting point about Google’s 411 service here. His story “Google Gives and Takes Away” said:
…Instead of getting the simple vanilla address and phone number I was looking for, my screen results were crowded with Web businesses of dubious utility, offering to help me, say, read reviews of the sought-after doctor written by people I didn’t know and had no particular reason to trust…
The point is that Google gunk gets in the way of the information the user wants. Mr. Gomes did not use the impolite word “gunk”. I do. Ads and clutter may be part of the deterioration of Google that I have started to notice.
Stephen Arnold, February 19, 2009
Social Networks: Tempest in a Teapot
February 20, 2009
A happy quack to the reader who sent me a link to Conversationblog’s “Enterprise 2.0 Questions – Social Networks a Waste of Time here. The write up points out that “social networks” already exist in organizations. I think I heard that in my high school civics class in 1958, and it is gratifying that organizations consisting of people are social networks. For me, the most interesting comment in the write up was:
it is about setting down guidelines, agree on usage and put the tool – in this case internal social networks – within the company and employee context. Explain how and why the tool can add value – both to the company & the employee (effectiveness, productivity, reduction of search time, creation of virtual teams etc…) and you will probably be positively surprised.
My hunch is that the sticky wicket is the phrase “agree on usage” may become a point of contention in some organizations. Social uses of networks are part of the under 24 year olds’ environment. Before the implosion of one of the largest banks in the US, I watched as MBA wizards used their personal mobile devices and their super secure company laptops. What made this interesting was that I overheard a new hire briefer say that personal communication devices were not to be used in the facility.
Charcoal cooking. Slow, tasty, and best when a cook keeps his / her eye on the veggie burgers.
I think social software has been around for a long time. What’s new is the ubiquity of connectivity. Organizations seem to be getting into hot water. Whether it is the bank in Switzerland coughing up depositer information or the ineptitude of the Securities & Exchange Commission, it is clear that a number of employees, entrepreneurs, and managers do what they want. Social software and ubiquitous real time communications lubricates the flow of information and disinformation. As a result, what control an organization had over its employees is getting harder to exercise.
Charcoal with an accelerant added. Fast, nasty, and no one in his / her right mind wants to watch the consequences.
Consider information. I am amazed at what factoids pop up on Twitter search. More interesting to me is that I can find a reference to a secure information system and then poke around with social systems and unearth specific details of that system. I don’t know if these details are supposed to be floating around like dust motes, but if I were working for a living at a company with Federal contracts, I would feel mightily uncomfortable about the information flowing without control through social communication systems. I know chatter around a water cooler (if these things still exist) is routine, but the speed of information dissemination and the tools available to suck in many factoids raise the stakes in my opinion.
My view is that social software is here. I agree with Conversationblog on this point. I am, however, not convinced that the effects of this information accelerant will be. The difference between charcoal cooking a veggie burger and gun powder is this accelerant angle. Information speed works differently from water cooler chatter. Think explosion. Random explosion at that.
Stephen Arnold, February 20, 2009
More Conference Woes
February 19, 2009
The landscape of conferences is like the hillside in the aftermath of Mt. St. Helen’s. Erick Schonfeld has a useful write up about DEMO, a tony conference that seems to be paddling upstream. You can read his article “DEMO Gets Desperate: Shipley Out, Marshall In” here. DEMO is just one of many conferences facing a tough market with an approach that strikes me as expensive and better suited for an economy past. I received an email this morning from a conference organizer who sent me a request to propose a paper. My colleague in Toronto and I proposed a paper based on new work we had done in content management and search. The conference organizer told us that there were too many papers on that type of subject but we were welcome to pay the registration fee and come to hear other speakers. My colleague and I wondered, “First, the organizer asks us to talk, then baits and switches us become paid attendees.” Our reaction was, “Not this time.” Here’s what I received in my email this morning, February 19, 2009:
Due to the current economy, I have decided to extend the Content Management ****/**** North America Conference Valentine’s Day discounted rate to March 2, 2009. This is a $200 discount for all Non-**** members. (**** members can register at anytime at a $300 discounted member rate.) This is meant for those of you needing additional time to get approval to attend the conference. I understand that with the current economy it is becoming harder to obtain funding for educational events. Hopefully by offering this type of discount I will be able to give you the extra support needed to get that final approval. [Emphasis added]
I have masked the specifics of this conference, but I read this with some skepticism.
Valentine’s Day is over. I surmise the traditional conference business is headed in that direction as well.
Telling me via an email that I need additional time to get approval to attend a conference is silly. I own my business. Furthermore, the organizer’s appeal makes me suspicious of not just this conference but others that have been around a long time and offer little in the way of information that exerts a magnetic pull on me.
Conferences that have lost their sizzle are like my mom’s burned roast after a couple of days in the trash can. Not too appealing. What’s the fix? Innovation and creative thinking. Conference organizers who “run the game plan” don’t meet my needs right now. Venture Beat type conferences do.
Stephen Arnold, February 19, 2009
Keeping Internet Transparency Clear
February 19, 2009
Lauren Weinstein of Vortex Technology, http://www.vortex.com/, just announced at http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000506.html a set of forums he is hosting at http://forums.gctip.org/ called GCTIP–the Global Coalition for Transparent Internet Performance. It’s meant to address Internet transparency, performance and ISP Issues. The project grew out of a network measurement workshop sponsored by “Father of the Internet” Vint Cerf and Google, for which Weinstein assisted in organizing the agenda. Weinstein’s point: It’s impossible to know if we’re getting enough bang for our buck using the Internet unless we have hard facts, so set up measurement tests. My point: Not only is this already being done, but how would you ever get definitive results, and how will an info dump help? Am I oversimplifying? Comments?
Jessica Bratcher, February 19, 2009
Mysteries of Online 7: Errors, Quality, and Provenance
February 19, 2009
This installment of “Mysteries of Online” tackles a boring subject that means little or nothing to the entitlement generation. I have recycled information from one of my talks in 1998, but some of the ideas may be relevant today. First, let’s define the terms:
- Errors–Something does not work. Information may be wildly inaccurate but the user may not perceive this problem. An error is a browser that crashes, a page that doesn’t render, a Flash that fails. This notion of an error is very important in decision making. A Web site that delivers erroneous information may be perceived as “right” or “good enough”. Pretty exciting consequences result from this notion of an “error” in my experience.
- Quality–Content displayed on a Web page is consistent. The regularity of the presentation of information, the handling of company names in a standard way, and the tidy rows and columns with appropriate values becomes “quality” output in an online experience. The notion of errors and quality combine to create a belief among some that if the data come from the computer, then those data are right, accurate, reliable.
- Provenance–This is the notion of knowing from where an item came. In the electronic world, I find it difficult to figure out where information originates. The Washington Post reprints a TechCrunch article from a writer who has some nerve ganglia embedded in the companies about which she writes. Is this provenance enough or do we need the equivalent of a PhD from Oxford University and a peer reviewed document. In my experience, few users of online information know or know how to think about the provenance of the information on a Web page or in a search results list. Pay for placement adds spice to provenance in my opinion.
So What?
A gap exists between individuals who want to know whether information is accurate and can be substantiated from multiple sources and those who take what’s on offer. Consider this Web log post. If someone reads it, will that individual poke around to find out about my background, my published work, and what my history is. In my experience, I see a number of comments that say, “Who do you think you are? You are not qualified to comment on X or Y.” I may be an addled goose, but some of the information recycled for this Web log are more accurate than what appears in some high profile publications. A recent example was a journalist’s reporting that Google’s government sales were about $4,000, down from a couple of hundred thousand dollars. The facts were wrong and when I checked back on that story I found that no one pointed out the mistake. A single GB 7007 can hit $250,000 without much effort. It doesn’t take many Google Search Appliance Sales to beat $4,000 a year in revenue from Uncle Sam.
The point is that most users:
- Lack the motivation or expertise to find out if an assertion or a fact is correct or incorrect. Instead of becoming a priority, in my opinion, few people care too much about the dull stuff–chasing facts. Even when I chase facts, I can make an error. I try to correct those I can. What makes me nervous are those individuals who don’t care whether information is on target.
- See research as a core competency. Research is difficult and a thankless task. Many people tell me that they have no time to do research. I received an email from a person asking me how I could post to this Web log every day. Answer: I have help. Most of those assisting me are very good researchers. Individuals with solid research skills do not depend solely upon the Web indexes. When was the last time your colleague did research among sources other than those identified in a Web index.
- Get confused with too many results. Most users look at the first page of search results. Fewer than five percent of online users make use of advanced search functions. Google, based on my research, takes a “good enough” approach to their search results. When Google needs “real” research, the company hires professionals. Why? Good enough is not always good enough. Simplification of search and the finding of information is a habit. Lazy people use Web search because it is easy. Remember: research is difficult.
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