Onyomo Mobile Search
November 9, 2008
A happy quack to the reader who alerted me to Onyomo.com. Onyomo is a mobile search service. You can try it from your browser here or you can from your mobile device enter the number 53456 and text “find”. T Mobile would not place the call for me, but you may have better luck than I if you live in Delhi, Bangladore, Mumbai, or one of the other cities Onyomo supports. Harrods Creek, Kentucky, is out of the running at this time.
Reliance Communications, a telecommunications service provider, has launched its Quick Search service. The Quick Search engine is provided by Onyomo.com. You can read more about Quick Search here.
Onyomo says here:
Onyomo has made its mission to enhance the overall quality of our everyday life by swiftly serving actionable information that is of any consequence. The Onyomo team is committed to its mission of providing easy to access and easy to use quality information on every product and service of interest. The team is determined to eliminate any information bias/deficit that Onyomo users face and is equipped to do so through technology and processes driven innovation. In all this, Onyomo will firmly adhere to sound business ethics while managing any aspect of its partnership with its users or business partners. … The Onyomo team comprises of highly talented people with stellar background in business and technology. The team’s major strength lies in, among other technical and business skills, its focus on simplicity and practicality, its boldness and totality of vision and its tenacity.
Here’s the splash page for the search system:
My query for software in Delhi returned two hits, both to colleges. The service is in beta. So it is early days for Onyomo.com.
Stephen Arnold, November 10, 2008
New York Times: Online Can’t Save Her Now
November 9, 2008
My indifference to the plight of traditional media companies is documented elsewhere in the addled goose’s articles and essays. I would like to call your attention to Henry Blodget’s analysis of the the New York Times’s most recent financial challenge. You can read his “Cash Crunch at the New York Times: $400 Million Due in May” here. I liked the write up and I particularly liked the thumbnail of the Times’s headline on the occasion of the sinking of the Titanic. Mr. Blodget outlines some of the options the Times’s management team, aided no doubt by the wizards who run the online service that I a print subscriber simply don’t use. Mr. Blodget identifies such maneuvers as:
- Selling assets
- Borrowing more dough
- Cutting costs.
To this list, I would add sell the company to a media mogul in another country. I can name a couple of prospects in China and Thailand right off the top of my head. The company could contact a highly reliable and sensitive, loving investment banker in the hopes of identifying and marrying a white knight. Robert Maxwell is no longer with us. Conrad Black is temporarily indisposed. Rupert Murdoch may find it tough to own another major newspaper in New York City. Sam Zell seems to have his hands full with the Chicago Tribune. Perhaps Thomson Reuters, Bloomberg, or another professional publishing company will jump into the fray. I wonder if the spurned LexisNexis operation will come forward with a billion dollar deal. Maybe not? Reed Elsevier has its own financial demons to calm.
In my opinion, making the gray lady dance the two step is going to take some serious investment, effort, and maybe a bee pollen treatment in Switzerland. Never say never, so I think the old gal and its business and tech savvy team will find a way to make lemonade from today’s lemons. Lemons, however, don’t have a long shelf life. In my opinion, as goes the New York Times, other traditional publishing companies will follow.
Watch for my Google and Publishing monograph from Infonortics. I attempt to explain why the GOOG is a partial cause and a potential beneficiary of these publishing disruptions.
Stephen Arnold, November 9, 2008
Verizon: Battleground for Google and Microsoft
November 9, 2008
Verizon has become a battleground for Google and Microsoft. You can read Channel Web’s take on this dust up here. Michele Masterson’s “Microsoft Horning in on Google-Verizon Deal” does a good job of explaining of the fire fight. Google did not nail the deal in August. Apparently there were concerns about the sharing of advertising revenue. The result was that Microsoft stepped forward with a counter offer. Now Verizon finds itself the belle of ball with two handsome suitors vying for Verizon’s charms. My take on this is that Verizon will craft the best deal it can get. I don’t think Verizon knows what business Google is really in, nor do I think Verizon looks beyond the numbers on Microsoft’s proposal. What is certain is that Google and Microsoft will find themselves in more fire fights of this type. When will all out war break out? I think it has. Google’s too circumspect to say it. Microsoft is too distracted with its many other challenges to recognize it. A new era has begun. This Verizon issue may be the equivalent of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914.
Stephen Arnold, November 9, 2008
Free and Bundles: The Future of Information Access
November 9, 2008
In Denmark I last week. I had a number of interesting conversations. One person was explaining the open source approach to content management. In this context, “content management” or CMS is limited to authoring systems for Web pages. The number of vendors in this market sector underscores the need that appears to exist in organizations for software for Web content. Personally I think that most of the CMS systems were home grown. Now entrepreneurs want to take one off solutions and commercialize them. I am not convinced that there is much of a future for most CMS vendors, but I will be long gone before this software segment stabilizes and consolidates to a handful of players.
Accenture offers a new white paper that noses into these topic areas as well. You can read it here. Note: you will have to either complete an annoying survey or find a way to display the summary by Susan Campbell called “Accenture Whitewater Tackles Software Pricing Challenges.”
One interesting trend I noticed at the JBoye conference was the use of for fee services as part of the open source business model. Let me give you two quick examples and then offer a general comment.
First, navigate here to Phil Wainewright’s November 6, 2008, “Funding Software from Add On Services.” This article explains how a company can give away software and then charge those downloading the software for services. The idea is to give away software as a service, then monetize it through what one of Mr. Wainewright’s sources called “alternative channels.” In effect, the software is the loss leader. Less delicately, this is a bait-and-switch method with the edges sanded and nicely finished. A number of search and content processing vendors use this model; for example, Tesuji.eu, among others.
Second, take a look at Vinnie Mirchandani’s “IBM Tries the GE Approach to Complex Bundling” here. The article explains that IBM trying to emulate the GE approach to sales; that is, “bundles of complex systems and projects covering power plants, aircraft engines, their maintenance and other large infrastructure items.” IBM’s approach is to apply this type of thinking to “smart infrastructure” sales. The goal is increased revenue.
I think these two examples make clear that the traditional business model for some types of software needs updating. On one hand, the vendor gives away one thing in order to sell another; specifically, the software is free, but the knowledge required to customize and maintain that software is not. Companies think the vendor is giving them a deal when the price tag is probably comparable to what the software license fee would have been under the old pricing model. In short, the price list is gone. Replacing it is a series of fees that are variable and often tough to predict. A tight license goes out the window once a request that is out of scope is agreed upon. The “old license” fee is gone; the new and higher risk variable model is in.
The bundle is more interesting. The notion is that a big system can be delivered by a vendor with end to end capabilities. Instead of buying components from multiple vendors, the bundle turns the job over to a single firm. The approach is comparable to building a house using a general contractor. In high technology, the idea is even more appealing when the general contracto0r makes some if not all of the components and has the technical expertise to put them together and make the system work. The result is perceived savings, and the vendor gets a much larger fee. The client gets a deal.
But in each of these two business models for information access, there are some issues that don’t often take center stage when building a house, when looking for a one stop shop, or trying to pare down costs. Let’s look at three:
- Information is not easy to define. It has some slippery characteristics. Regardless of the cleverness of the vendors’ business models, costs are often difficult to control.
- Requirements for information can change due to exogenous forces; therefore, the mercurial nature of information is made more volatile by events or needs that cannot be anticipated. The technology to deal with these issues may not be affordable by the vendor or the client. In effect, the system can’t and won’t work in the “new” environment.
- The moon launch scale of a mega project does not work in organizations where information needs are distinct to operating groups, departments, and possibly individual knowledge workers. As a result, the big system forces some units of the organization to go in a different direction. This increases system duplication, costs, and situations in which no one knows which information is the “right’ information.
The new business models appear to give customers more options. That is true, but these are options for charging internal accounts. The costs and risks remain unchanged. In some situations, the new business models guarantee cost overruns. Mangers who understood traditional licensing agreements may be exploring new cost territory without a base of information on which to make management decisions.
New business models are in vogue. Customers want these options. My hunch is that the cost and management issues will increase. The net net is that the new business models do not reduce the costs for an information centric system. Search, CMS, and text processing will remain “problems” no matter how the customer pays the bills.
Stephen Arnold, November 9 2008
Nstein: Searching for a Better Search
November 8, 2008
Nstein Technologies [http://www.nstein.com/en/] digital publishing specialist Diane Burley presented a webinar titled “Searching … For a better Search!” on November 6, 2008. The point was to teach media companies to evaluate how search works on their web sites, address the pros and cons of search strategies like link lists or search boxes, and show how sites might be losing readers. Ms. Burley reviewed case studies to illustrate the differences between active and passive search; how to use semantic analysis to improve search; useable ideas for improving stickiness; and real-world examples of media companies using internal and external search. Has returned to its content processing roots?
Jessica Bratcher, November 7, 2008
Ballmer’s View of Android
November 8, 2008
Steve Ballmer, according to ZDNet Australia here, has little to fear from Android, Google’s open source mobile phone operating system. Suzanne Tindal’s article summarizes remarks Mr. Ballmer made at an annual investment conference sponsored by Telestra. Ms. Tindal presents the highlights of Mr. Ballmer’s talk in a series of quotations. You will need to read her article to get the flavor of Mr. Ballmer’s view and attitude toward Google and its mobile adventures. However, one comment, attributed to Mr. Ballmer, caught my attention. Ms. Tindal reported Mr. Ballmer as saying:
“They [Google] can hire smart guys, hire a lot of people, bla dee bla dee bla, but you know they start out way behind in a certain sense.
I think it was the “bla dee bla dee bla” that seemed memorable. Google has been circumspect in the information I have gathered when it comments about Microsoft. I think the GOOG enjoys making a modest move and then waiting to see if Microsoft reacts, sometimes with considerable gusto, to a tiny Google input. I cannot recall a Googler characterizing Microsoft’s technology as “way behind” or using “bla dee bla dee blah” in a presentation I have watched either in person or on YouTube.com.
Microsoft has made Google’s enterprise initiatives higher profile than they would have been in my opinion. Google does a so so job with sales and marketing. The Google brand is widely recognized, but few know that Google is in the email archiving business and offers bare bones email search for some enterprise customers. Almost no one in Harrods Creek knows that Google’s pricing for its GB 7007 is set up to make an upgrade a no brainer and a first time purchase pretty expensive. Yet Microsoft’s putting Office in the “cloud” has been explained as a way to keep competitors from snagging this business. The comparison is not that Zoho is challenging the Office suite of software. The comparison is between Microsoft and Google.
Now the mobile operating system. I listen occasionally to Paul Thurrott’s podcast which is available on iTunes and on Mr. Laporte’s Web site here. Not more than a week or two ago, I thought I heard Mr. Thurrott suggest that Microsoft should start over with its Windows mobile software. When a respected journalist makes such a radical suggestion, I had my personal hypothesis confirmed. I have fiddled with mobile devices running Windows mobile. I found that I had to click icons to do pretty basic phone things; for example, make a call. I also discovered that on both and HP and Treo device, the responsiveness was not well matched to my expectations. I gave up, dismissing the system as desktop Windows slapped on a phone. That’s not what a phone type device requires.
I think it is too early to know if Android is a hit or miss. Some of the applications for the G1 device available from T Mobile are interesting. I like the Apple iPhone, but it’s on screen keyboard is almost impossible for me to use. I don’t plan on visiting Hot Hot Hot Nails and getting plastic artificial fingernails glued on so I can hit the tiny keys. The applications don’t resonate with me either. I am accustomed to the BlackBerry device.
I think mobile device operating systems and mobile interfaces are in their infancy. It’s a phone, and I want to tell it what I want. No one has pulled off that feature to my satisfaction at this time. Therefore, I think Microsoft, Google, and Nokia have a long road to travel.
Mr. Ballmer’s comments are theater for investors. For me, the casual dismissal of Google is not warranted. Furthermore, I think Microsoft has quite a challenge with its own mobile operating system. Those 10 year olds are growing up and their needs will drive the market. My thought is that a more balanced statement might be, “Google’s first effort is good, but the company has a long road to travel. We all do. It’s a horse race that is ultimately decided by what today’s 10 year olds buy in three or four years.” The “bla dee bla dee blah” statement is a throw away dismissal, not a reflection of the reality Apple, Google, Microsoft, Motorola, and Nokia have to live with.
Stephen Arnold, November 8, 2008
Knowledge Tree: Just There Search
November 7, 2008
On November 6, 2008, a person told me that the addled goose should take a gander (no pun intended) at Knowledge Tree’s document managmenet software. My information about Knowledge Tree here was that it was another open source software player. I poked around and discovered a feature list here. The company has an extensive line up of partners who install, customize, and support the product in most major population centers. You can find the list of partners here.
On November 4, 2008, the company issued a news release here explaining that the company had signed on as an Intel partner. This particular Intel program ‘validates software security, interoperability, and Intel multi-core processor compatibility. This benefits software vendors by reducing support and development costs, whilst providing end users with increasing confidence in the security and quality of software optimized for Intel platforms.’
The San Francisco based company asserts:
KnowledgeTree is document management made simple: secure, share, track and manage the documents and records your organization depends on with ease.By leveraging an active and innovative open source community, Knowledge Tree provides an easy to use and production-ready enterprise document management solution for use by corporations, government institutions, medium to small business and many other organizations. KnowledgeTree’s open source architecture allows organizations to easily customise and integrate their document management system with their existing infrastructure, providing a more flexible, cost-effective alternative to proprietary applications.
I fiddled with the system, ran some basic queries, located information. The behavior of the system suggested that the underlying search plumbing was Lucene, not a negative by any means.
The reason I mention this system is that open source continues to be a hot topic in a country without vowels in its name. The logic is that extensibility and freedom from vendor lock in is important for some organizations.
The other hook that snagged my attention with the smooth integration of search into the main program function. Search is ‘just there’. As a result, users are getting what is an embedded search function that can provide acceptable access to content processed by the system. For many organizations, this approach is acceptable.
If you want to look at how software vendors will address the problem of search, take a look at Knowledge Tree. I will keep my eye opened for other vendors of systems with ‘just there’ search.
Stephen Arnold, November 7, 2008
Ask: Yet Another Play for a First Impression
November 6, 2008
Author’s Note: This post will not render correctly in Internet Explorer 7.0. I am looking for a fix.Â
My newsreader pointed me to “Ask.com Speeds Up Its Searches” on the IOL Technology Web site. The author was Rachel Metz. The article’s main point is that Barry Diller’s Ask.com has been tweaked to make it display results more quickly. The most interesting statement in the article was:
Ask.com, owned by InterActiveCorp, encountered the repeat-visitor problem after launching a version of its search engine, Ask 3D, in June last year. With Ask 3D, the site moved away from showing search results as a long list and sorted them into three vertical panels, one of which included photos and other multimedia content related to users’ queries. Ask 3D was well-received, chief executive officer Jim Safka said, but it was too slow at downloading search results. “A lot of people tried the site, but wouldn’t come back.”
A year, maybe 18 months ago, I had dinner with two people from a third tier consulting firm. One of the consultant’s comments lodged in my mind. The keen thinker said, “I think Ask.com is doing a very good job. I use the service because I find it more useful than Google.”
Quite useful for 11 year olds. Not so useful to me.
After this comment, I make Ask.com a regular stop on my swing through Web search engines. I come back to ask, so I am a repeat visitor. The problem is that I don’t use Ask.com, and it has zero to do with the interface. Speedier performance, related results, and skins don’t mean much to me. I learned in September 2008 that some middle school students find Ask.com a useful resource.
I don’t even know a middle school kid, so I can’t begin to think about an online search from that point of view. I made a couple of inquiries and learned that a middle school assignment is a personal narrative or a biography of an important person such as George Washington. I ran the query “George Washington” on Ask.com, Live.com, and Yahoo.com. I skipped Google because everyone I know uses Google for most searches. I wanted to see what the also-rans were doing to win me over.
Google Log Data
November 5, 2008
Robin Bal’s ‘Why Does Google Log Details of Search Queries’ is an interesting post. You can find the November 4, 2008, write up here. Robin Bal’s approach is to summarize Google’s statements about log data. If you are unfamiliar with these, I recommend reading this article. For me, the most important point in the post was this comment:
One of Consumer Watchdog’s complaints surrounds Chrome’s navigation bar, which can be used to enter a Web site address or a search query. The Google Suggest feature built into the browser relays searches back to Google as you type, in hopes of anticipating your desires. Brian Rakowski, product manager for Chrome, said queries sent to Google through autosuggest feature do include data like a user’s IP address. But Google logs just 2 percent of the data brought in through Google Suggest to improve the feature, Rakowski said, and anonymizes the data within 24 hours.You’re flying blind without that information, so we have to collect a little bit,’ he said.
Robin Bal does not reference any of the Google patent documents. A number of these provide more detail on the data model used to house usage data and the methods employed to convert individual clicks into useful values for other system processes. Nevertheless, the round up is helpful and depicts Google in a generally positive manner.
Stephen Arnold, November 5, 2008
OrcaTec’s Truevert: Green and Semantic Search
November 4, 2008
Truevert, created by OrcaTecjust released a beta version of its vertical semantic search engine that returns “green”-topic results. The program pulls its search from the body of Yahoo! spidered pages, and it interprets results based on context within the documents rather than keyword counts and popularity of hits. The goal is to focus on environment-conscious related answers. The engine will also “learn” words, no tagging or taxonomy required.
Truevert is also touted to work in any language. We ran some test quereies. “Batteries” returned attbat.com, a site with eco-friendly batteries, as the top result. In German (“Batterien”), the first result was GRS, a company that deals with recycling batteries. But in Spanish (“bateria”), the top listing was a Wikipedia entry for a type of Brazilian musical group.
They want feedback; Send it to feedback@truevert.com.
Jessica Bratcher, November 4, 2008
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