US Government’s Federation Challenge
February 1, 2009
I don’t think too much about the US government’s information technology challenges. Been there. Done that. I read Wired Magazine’s “Every Military Net Accessed at Once Thanks to OB1” here. US central command has 14 networks. Instead of running one query one the individual systems, now an authorized war fighter can look to a day when a single computer can provide results from more than a dozen separate systems. Quite progressive. OB1 stands for one box, one wire. No word when the system will be available. Oh, don’t tell anyone at central command that the Science.gov has been delivering federated search for more than five years. Also, keep it a secret that USA.gov (formerly FirstGov.gov) has been delivering federated search for even longer. Too much information could overload the warfighters. Zip those lips.
Stephen Arnold, February 1, 2009
Social Brands
February 1, 2009
The discovery that bits can be used for communication continues to fascinate pundits. Online interaction is now “social software”. Okay with me. A more interesting angle appears in “Top Social Brands 2008.” The article by Andrew Lyle is here. The story lists the top 20 social brands. I was surprised. I hear social and I think of azure chipped consultants shouting about Enterprise 2.0 or whimpering about their technology conference attendance. I hear the reverberation of wiki and the tintinnabulation of the tweets. Two companies on the list illustrate my lack of sophistication in things social. (I think my 7th grade teacher complained about my lack of sociality in 1956.)
- Starbucks
- Hewlett Packard
Fooled me. I thought social meant software. Nope, social means nice. Now I don’t think of Starbucks as nice. I avoid the places because of the noise. HP? You’ve got to be kidding. Ever try to get coherent driver information from this outfit? No search vendors to be found. Google did not make the top 20. Microsoft grabs #5 and #11, which is pretty darned amazing as well.
Stephen Arnold, February 1, 2009
Google Thinks Dell Support May Harm My Computer
January 31, 2009
It’s a cold sunny morning. I wonder why Google is displaying a message that Dell Computer’s support page will harm my computer. I poked around and found quite a few sites identified as harmful. I ran the query at 10 15 am Eastern. Pretty annoying because the warning page forces me to copy and paste the “offending” url into a browser address bar. Here’s the results page for my query Dell 2950 Server:
Here is the hugely annoying “warning” without a hot link to go to the page with a single click.
If I were Dell Computer, I would consider trying to get one of the world’s smartest people to look at this behavior. In a lousy economy, Dell probably wants to get referrals from Google. Handling 75 percent of the Web searches means that Google’s slapping and “unsafe” flat on Dell.com may be the digital equivalent of putting a road block in front of a bricks and mortar store.
I ran a query for PS4 crack and no warnings appeared. Is Dell irritating Googzilla? Maybe it’s just moi?
Stephen Arnold, January 31, 2009
BA-Insight Triples in 2008
January 31, 2009
The economy is wobbly. Most search and content processing vendors are working hard for double digit growth. BA-Insight just raised the bar. The company reported a tripling of its revenue in 2008. The news release summarizing the private company’s performance is here. For me the most interesting comment in the write up was:
“Our strong customer growth proves that we’re delivering value to the market,” said Guy Mounier, CEO, BA-Insight. “As a result, we have tripled staff, and opened offices in Europe to fuel growth for 2009. It’s an exciting time for BA-Insight, and we will continue to lead the market with affordable, powerful, and innovative search solutions.”
The company’s 2008 performance caught my attention. You can read an exclusive interview with Guy Mounier, the senior manager for the company in this Web log on February 2, 2009. If you want more information about the company, click here.
Stephen Arnold, January 31, 2009
Documenting the Obvious: The Google Generation
January 31, 2009
Google is 10 years old. Who cares? The company now represents the “out there” intellect and YouTube.com content package for lots of people. What’s obvious? The article “Is Technology Producing a Decline in Critical Thniking and Analysis” here in Science Daily confirmed my perception of the trophy generation’s preferred method of learning: watch a video. I prefer books and when I can find a person willing to discuss concepts, I will give that approach a whirl. The study reported by Science Daily documents how the Google Generation sucks in video, news crawls, learning from video games, and other methods I find annoying. Little wonder that a procurement teams with an average age of 30 wants a “just like Google interface,” memos that are less than one page, and analyses that can be converted to a couple of PowerPoint slides. Alexander Pope pointed out the danger of a “little learning”. I wonder what he would have thought about financial VPs, newly hired corporate executives, and venture capital wizards who exist in a cloud of unknowing, fed with a diet of information without provenance captured on the digital equivalent of animated 3×5 inch note cards.
Stephen Arnold, January 31, 2009
Google Checkout: Monetization Push
January 30, 2009
In The Google Legacy, I created a diagram that showed Google pushing its Checkout service toward several sectors. I identified merchants as an obvious target. Over the last three and a half years, Checkout has gained traction. You can see the reach when you navigate to Google Shopping and run a query for a common tech product like motherboards. Here’s a screenshot of the logo for Google advertisers:
When you view a Google Shopping results display in standard or grid form, you see a modest blue shopping basket. The blue basket identifies that the merchant accepts Google’s payment services.
“How do you want to pay? Google?” here, written by George Lekakis and Jason Bryce, is a very important write up in my opinion. The authors have made clear Google’s increased appetite for monetization of services running on the Google infrastructure, what I call the “digital Googleplex”, not to be confused with the tacky Silicon Valley buildings and the make shift cube hatcheries in other cities. Google’s taste runs to engineering, not sky scrapers at least yet.
For me, the most interesting point in the write up was that Google is probing Australia, where there has been considerable Google interest of late. My talk in 2007 at the policing conference sparked quite a bit of interest in the notion of dataspaces. Australia is moving forward with this type of technology with or without Google’s support. Google nailed the New South Wales education deal. There are other interesting “down under” activities as well. Australia has quite a few wizards and boffins, and most American companies find the markets in Chicago and Cleveland more appealing. Probably an error, but that’s another topic.
What’s going on in Australia? I don’t want to spoil your fun reading the article, but I can highlight one comment of interest to me:
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission recently issued Google Australia with an authority to provide deposit and payments services to local merchants and shoppers. While the licence does not permit Google to provide cash-based payments services to Australian clients, it will enable the group to facilitate digital or online transactions.
I know zero about banking. Oh, the one thing I do know is that the banks who were my customers seem to have disappeared. Some of the clients now wear orange jump suits, not Armani duds.
Here’s what I think is unfolding:
- The payment plumbing is in place and has been since Googzilla started doing ad sales
- The missteps of eBay have now shackled the company making it easy for the GOOG to cherry pick among buyers and sellers disaffected with eBay and PayPal
- Google has a brand that remains untarnished. What’s your view of banks, I ask? See what I mean
- Googzilla can monetize some information access. I would pay to use Google. What about you? What if you have no choice?
The regulatory approval is a nice touch, but I don’t think it matters. Google is simply playing by the rules. After all, who worries when buying an AdWord. Government regulators still don’t understand that business. When Google slaps matchmaking services into advertising, government regulators will really be in a bowl of vegetarian soup.
I dig into this monetization issue in my new Google study, Digital Gutenberg. Think of this Australian test as similar to printing money. Google bucks, anyone?
Stephen Arnold, January 30, 2009
Maxxcat: Search Appliance Challenger
January 30, 2009
Maxxcat Corp., has released an enterprise search appliance to compete with Google’s. The Maxxcat XB-250 was designed with simplicity and speed in mind, and it offers all sorts of bells and whistles such as clustering and mirroring, customizable rankings, scripts and real time edits, field-based indexing, and remote support for diagnostics. They’ve posted a fact sheet at http://www.maxxcat.com/datasheet_final.pdf comparing the XB-250 and the GSA Mini (info available at http://www.google.com/enterprise/gsa/), and the more complex MaxxCat EX-5000 versus the Google™ GB-1001. For more specific details, check out http://maxxcat.com/compare.html. Maxxcat says its appliance is 16 times faster, takes three minutes to install, and is only a quarter of the cost for its basic model. You can also take the two systems for a head-to-head performance test at http://maxxcat.com/head2head.html. Added to our watch list. More later.
Jessica W. Bratcher, January 30, 2009
Search of Some Type Delivers For-Fee Content
January 30, 2009
The story Dutch Treat: Pay for Some Content, Pirate the Rest here reveals that publicly accessible search engines work pretty well for the Dutch. The author, Jart Armin, set out to report on the “piracy” rate in the Netherlands. The figure in his article was couched this way:
The Institute for Information Law in the Netherlands reports that the average downloader buys more DVDs, music, and games than people who never download. Illegal downloaders represent 45 percent of consumers who purchase content legally, the institute recently reported. The Institute estimates some 4.7 million Dutch Internet users 15 years and older downloaded hacked and pirated DVDs, games, and music in the last 12 months.
I interpreted the data differently. It’s obvious that the finding systems used by almost half of the Dutch deliver content that is protected by copyright or for sale. Search systems are obviously making it easy for about half of the Dutch Web users to find and obtain these materials. What’s the fix? Legislate Google (the new Microsoft)? Crack down on Ixquick.com (a metasearch engine I like)? Maybe the Dutch should take more stringent steps? Prison for some? Public service for others? Big fines? Filtering? A digital dyke instead of earth and stone dykes?
My hunch is that the demographic shift of which I have written will undermine the efforts to prevent “piracy”. “Kids,” as my boos at the root beer stand where I worked used to say. “Darn, kids.” Who are some of the piracy perpetrators? Some are the children of the Dutch outfits Wolters Kluwer and Elsevier. Others are kids of government employees. Some are student who will grow up to be executives in the Dutch government. At least we know that 45 percent of the Dutch Web users can find content. Encouraging? Discouraging? Ask the parents, I suppose.
Stephen Arnold, January 30, 2009
FindAnyFilm Search Engine
January 30, 2009
The UK Film Council has launched a search engine that focuses specifically on film. FindAnyFilm.com is free and has 30,000+ entries. It serves data, descriptions, viewing options, and where to buy links with the goals of both education and stopping film piracy. A statement from the council in UK Launches “Google for Films” here called FindAnyFilm.com “a Google for films.”
Was Google paying attention? Beyond Search opines that a competitive service would squeeze FindAnyFilm’s customers. Google does already offer a movie showtimes function and a Google Directory here, but nothing near as specific as FindAnyFilm.com. The only thing Google would have to do is code up the proper search and build an interface page – the kinds of things Google does at breakfast. Knowing Google’s propensity to squeeze little geese, this FindAnyFilm service may find modest traffic. The draw that may hold Google off is the small audience – the number of users in the UK is small compared to the rest of the world; FindAnyFilm definitely targets that market and lists movie prices in pounds, which further narrows its reach.
Jessica Bratcher, January 30, 2009
Google Versus Big ISPs: A Battle Brewing
January 29, 2009
“Google Begins Effort to Find Internet Blockers”, a Reuters story here, caught my attention. The GOOG is making servers available so researchers can find chokepoints where “net neutrality” is violated. As a former Bell Labs’s contractor, a Bellcore contractor, and a USWest contractor, I’m not going to jump into this stew. I think that is news item, if accurate, marks a turning point in Googzilla’s trajectory. I am going to stick close to my nest in Harrod’s Creek, Kentucky, on this skirmish. The “new” AT&T versus the remnants of the “old” AT&T. Should be interesting.
Stephen Arnold, January 29, 2009
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