AT&T: Ma Bell’s Giving the Internet Another Go
September 18, 2008
I need a scorecard to keep track of the “new” Ma Bell’s Internet initiatives. Disclosure: I worked on AT&T projects when I worked at Booz, Allen & Hamilton. I was a vendor to Bell Laboratories and several units of the pre-break up AT&T. I worked on a programming job at Bell Communications Research, and I was involved in the USWest Yellow Pages Project. I even have a couple of pals who are former Bell Labs’s wizards. Therefore, when I say, I’m confused it’s almost like hearing this from a real Bell head.
The story “AT&T to Link iPhone to U-Verse Video, Internet”. You can read it here. The hook for the story is AT&T’s effort to extend its reach into the Google-verse. Oh, sorry, I meant “Internet world.” I don’t want to go through the history of AT&T’s different efforts in different incarnations in the Internet. Some of them are truly amazing. The split between the “real” AT&T and the separate “hosting” outfit in year 2000 and 2001 were inspired. Then there was the buy out of IBM’s Internet service that became AT&T’s dial up Internet service. Then there was a deal with Yahoo for DSL which was pretty darned amusing. I could go on but won’t.
Now the “new” AT&T is creating a U-Verse to get a piece of the video action. Never mind that AT&T has changed directions more times that my mother when she was fiddling with which figurine went on which shelf. The notion that AT&T is going to glue together its new mobile search service (I think the partner is Yahoo now), the independent Steve Jobs (the dominant force in digital audio and video for money), and an AT&T designed high speed Internet services.
Right.
The traditional telcos can win in the US because the companies can bill people. Elsewhere, life is not so good. Furthermore, Google is a crafty beast, and it has already reached a truce of sorts with Verizon. (Chortle, ha, ha). Here’s what will happen:
- The new service will appear and AT&T mobile customers will get a deal–for a short time. Then the fees hit.
- The partners–Apple and Yahoo–may grumble. AT&T will try to put these outfits in a thumb screw and legal eagles will flap.
- Digital video will remain volatile, a money sink, and contentious.
- AT&T will reload and try again.
If you see another outcome, educate me. Just wear your Young Pioneers’ ball cap and t shirt. If you don’t know what these are, don’t bother writing me. You are uninformed about the way Ma Bell operates.
Stephen Arnold, September 18, 2008
Njouba: A New Metasearch Engine
September 18, 2008
In a conversation today, I learned about a new Web search engine. The system is Njouba, possibly operated by Ben Ahmed or in Roubaix, France. My research yielded this information. If anyone has more information, please, post it using the comments section to this Web log. With a little poking around, the service may be the work of a sharp programmer responsible for a number of useful services, including an MP3 search engine here.
The About section of the Njouba Web site says,
Njouba is an intelligent Search engine designed for crawling the Web, indexing documents containing information you’re looking for (by specifying keywords) that enables you to find specific information.
I ran several test queries and the results seemed to track with Google’s results. One feature I liked was the tabbed interface which makes narrowing the query to a particular type of content easy. Image search seemed to be inoperable when I tested the system on September 16, 2008, from Paris. The book search returned unusual results for the query “William Shakespeare”.
You can access the system here, and I will add it to my list of metasearch engines.
Google Solves One Asia Pacific Telco Problem
September 17, 2008
In early 2008, one of the firms with whom I work set up a series of Google telco briefings. These were quite interesting for me, but I think the telco executives were baffled by Google’s long history of telco-related inventions. The company nailed a quality of service invention a year after opening its doors. Yes, telco has been on Google’s very big brain for almost a decade, maybe longer.
A story, largely ignored by the trade journals, appeared on TelecomAsia.net that reported Google’s progress on what one telco executive told me was, and I am quoting from memory, “An almost impossible problem for the best minds in the telephone industry and almost certainly beyond Google’s capabilities.”
Well, the telco executive–not surprisingly–seems to have be incorrect if the TelecomAsia.net story is accurate. You can read “Google-Backed LEOsat IP Backhaul Project Is Go” by John C. Tanner by clicking this link. I verified this link at 10 pm Eastern on September 9, 2008, but some of these news sites roll off their content in order to protect their interests. (Your interests, dear reader, don’t count.)
The telco double talk is tough to penetrate. Let me simplify. Google is getting in the telco business in Asia. You can dig through the details that Mr. Tanner does an excellent job presenting.
Let me offer several comments;
- Google doesn’t seem to be particularly concerned about getting in the high speed connect business in the Asia Pacific region.
- The “problems” appear to be solved. Just as Google “owns” its own high resolution satellite for geospatial imagery, Google owns its own undersea cables.
- Telco assumptions about Google remain shallow.
My question is, “Who’s going to regulate Google outside the US and across the region empowered by the GOOG’s new backhaul initiative?” Any ideas? The World Court? The UN? There are two stellar outfits ideally positioned to understand the whys and wherefores of Googzilla.
Stephen Arnold, September 10, 2008
How Smart Is Google’s Software?
September 17, 2008
When you read this, I will have completed my “Meet the Guru” session in Utrecht for Eric Hartmann. More information is here. My “guru” talk is not worthy of its name. What I want to discuss is the relationship between two components of Google’s online infrastructure. This venue will mark the first public reference to a topic I have been tracking and researching for several years–computational intelligence. Some background information appears in the Ignorance Is Futile Web log here.
I am going to reference my analysis of Google’s innovation method. I described this in my 2007 study The Google Legacy, and I want to mention one Google patent document; specifically, US20070198481, which is about fact extraction. I chose this particular document because it references research that began a couple of years before the filing and the 2007 granting of the patent. It’s important in my opinion because it reveals some information about Google’s intelligent agents, which Google references as “janitors” in the patent application. Another reason I want to highlight it is that it includes a representation of a Google results list as a report or dossier.
Each time I show a screen shot of the dossier, any Googlers in the audience tell me that I have Photoshopped the Google image, revealing their ignorance of Google’s public patent documents and the lousy graphical representations that Google routinely places in its patent filings. The quality of the images and the cute language like “janitors” are intended to make it difficult to figure out what Google engineers are doing in the Google cubicles. Any Googlers curious about this image (reproduced below) should look at Google’s own public documents before accusing me of spoofing Googzilla. This now happens frequently enough to annoy me, so, Googlers, prove you are the world’s smartest people by reading your own patent documents. That’s what I do to find revealing glimpses such as this one display for a search of the bound phrase “Michael Jackson”:
The highlight boxes and call outs are mine. What this diagram shows is a field (structured) report or dossier about Michael Jackson. The red vertical box identifies the field names of the data and the blue rectangle points your attention to the various names by which Michael Jackson is known; for example, Wacko Jacko.
Now this is a result that most people have never seen. Googlers react to this in shock and disbelief because only a handful of Google’s more than 19,000 employees have substantive data about what the firm’s top scientists are doing at their jobs. I’ve learned that 18,500 Googlers “run the game plan”, a Google phrase that means “Do what MOMA tells you”. Google patent documents are important because Google has hundreds of US patent applications and patents, not thousands like IBM and Microsoft. Consequently, there is intent behind funding research, paying attorneys, and dealing with the chaotic baloney that is the specialty of the USPTO.
STR: More and Better Self Service Business Intelligence
September 16, 2008
When I was at university, the advanced statistics course meant learning SAS. I remember my feeling when I finished the course. I had been beaten into a “SAS person.” Today, some university graduates don’t want to wrestle with statistics again. Most people, in my opinion, forget the chi squared test of homogeneity after the final exam.
Recognizing that organizations need access to crunched data in a meaningful form, Space Time Research has labored to create self service business intelligence. The company’s strategy seems to be working, and I know that the number herders recognize that a challenge to the SPSS and SAS approach is building.
Space-Time Research is one of the global leader in self-Service business intelligence for government. The company–based in Australia–has offices in the US and the UK. The STR SuperSTAR Platform is an end-to-end solution providing self-service analytics and business intelligence, interactive web publishing, privacy and confidentiality protection, mapping and visualization. The company has released a new version of its SuperSTAR Platform. The release includes a Data Control Application Programming Interface (API) that provides a ‘plug and play’ approach to privacy and confidentiality mechanisms. The API allows use of STR integrated techniques, accepted protection and confidentiality products, or custom confidentiality rules. These techniques and rules are applied to ad-hoc queries on unit record and aggregate data when a request for information is processed. You can read ARnet.com’s take on the new version here. The MarketWatch write up is here.
You can download a two page brochure that provides more information about the self service interface. Click here. You may have to register to get the download to work. Take a look. Cloud-based business intelligence is going to gain importance. More information about STR is available at the company’s Web site here.
Stephen Arnold, September 16, 2008
Google’s Sky Darkens with Wings of Legal Eagles
September 16, 2008
The European Union has shifted its laser beams of investigation to Google. Microsoft must be chortling with the news. You have many ways to get the inside scoop on this inquiry. I liked Silicon.com’s summation. You can read “EU to Probe Yahoo!-Google Advertising Tie Up” here. For me the most important point in the story was this comment:
The Commission spokesman said there was no deadline for the investigation in Brussels.
I don’t know much about law in general and EU inquiries in general, but what I saw the words “no deadline”, I thought, “Yikes, probers can poke around for months, even years.” When governmental agencies gear up for a “no deadline” inquiry, the likelihood of uncovering mountains of information that can be interpreted in many different ways becomes a certainty.
My thinking is that Google might conclude the Yahoo deal is too much hassle and walk away. Let’s assume this happens.
First, I think the EU will keep its lasers on Mr. Google. The group working to gather information won’t go gently into that good night. At this point, I think the EU will keep on probing and sifting no matter what Google does with regard to Yahoo. Committees can find many interesting issues to weigh and then measure against applicable guidelines, regulations, and laws. Therefore, it’s open season on Mr. Google for the foreseeable future.
Second, if Google leaves Yahoo at the alter, what will Yahoo do? It’s bold play to get hackers to generate revenue appeals to my teen age self. But the 65 year old side of that self thinks, “Yahoo may be pushed off the cliff and into the clutches of gravity.” The “gravity” to which I refer is the pre crash 2000 notion of “zero gravity” Web companies. I think Isaac Newton and his mythical apple remind me of what may happen to Yahoo unless a fairy godmother rescues the company. Yahoo costs are tough to control and the loss of Google revenue may be too much for the Yahooligans to bear.
I see the EU investigation as a turning point for Google and possibly for Yahoo. What do you think? Mr. Google wows Brussels. Yahoo surges when cut free. Let me know because I see Google’s sunny day occluded by the wings of legal eagles.
Stephen Arnold, September 16, 2008
Chrome: Full Metal Jacket Ecosystem
September 16, 2008
Economic Times, September 12, 2008, reported that Google’s Sergey Brin sees Chrome as a challenger to Microsoft Windows. The story “It’s Not Just IE, Google Is Eyeing Windows’ Desktop Pie Too” by Stephen Wildstrom (Business Week) is here. For me the key part of the article is that it puffs up a beta browser into a big bazooka. The article chastises Google for a flawed initial effort. I agree. But the most important statement attributed to Sergey Brin, one of Google’s founders, was:
“What we want is a diverse and vibrant ecosystem…We want several browsers that are viable and substantial choices.”
Let’s take this at face value. Why will the existence of multiple browsers help Google achieve its objective?
- What’s the rush? Internet Explorer and Firefox have market share. Google is sufficiently realistic about the speed of migration from one browser to another. Google is taking a long view.
- The Google browser is not a browser. I know this is a different position from the millions of words written about Chrome. My research suggests that Chrome is a way for Google to bring control to certain applications and operations; namely, an icon on the desktop that launches a cloud based service. To the user, there’s no browser present.
- Google’s patent documents for the Programmable Search Engine suggest that Google will build its own data stores from bits and pieces of existing data. If this is an accurate reading of the PSE February 2007 patent applications, Google wants to become the semantic Web and probably “the Internet”. Chrome is a puzzle piece, not the solution to the puzzle.
- Chrome adds steroids to some 95 pound weakling issues with Google’s current enterprise offerings. Think “air lock” between the organization and the Google cloud.
Agree? Disagree? Send me your facts.
Stephen Arnold, September 16, 2008
Google and ProQuest
September 15, 2008
The Library Journal story “ProQuest and Google Strike Newspaper Digitization Deal” puts a “chrome” finish on a David and Goliath story. Oh, maybe that is ProQuest and Googzilla? In the story my mother told me, David used a sling to foil to big, dumb Goliath. With some physics, Goliath ended up dead. You need to read Josh Hadro’s version of this tale here.
The angle is that Google will pay UMI–er, ProQuest–to digitize. For me the most important paragraph in the story was:
The deal leaves significant room for ProQuest to differentiate its Historical Newspapers offering, which contain such publications as the New York Times and Chicago Tribune, as a premium product in terms of added editorial effort and the human intervention required to make its selectively scanned materials more discoverable and useful to expert researchers. In contrast to scanning by Google, editors hired by ProQuest check headlines, first paragraphs, captions, and more to achieve their claim of “99.95 percent accuracy.” In addition, metadata is added along with tags describing whether the scanned content is an article, opinion piece, editorial cartoon, etc. Finally, ProQuest stresses that the agreement does not affect long-term preservation plans for the microfilm collection. “Microfilm will always be the preservation medium…”
Three thoughts:
- Commercial databases are starting to face rough water. Google, though not problem free, faces rough water with a nuclear powered stealth war craft. UMI–er, ProQuest–has a birch bark canoe.
- Once the data are in the maw of the GOOG, what’s the outlook for UMI–er, ProQuest? In my opinion, this is a short term play with the odds in the mid and long term favoring Google.
- Will the Cambridge Scientific financial wizards be able to float the Dialog Information Services boat, breathe life into library sales, and make the “microfilm will always be the preservation medium” a categorical affirmative? In my opinion, the GOOG has its snoot in the commercial database business and will disrupt it sending incumbent leaders into a tizzy.
Yes, and the point about David and Goliath. I think Goliath wins this one. Agree? Disagree? Help me learn. Just bring facts to the party.
Stephen Arnold, September 15, 2008
Future of Business Intelligence
September 15, 2008
Chris Webb penned a thoughtful and interesting article about the future of business intelligence. “Google, Panorama, and the Future of BI” here. A number of the comments touch upon delivering business intelligence from the cloud. Take a look at his write up. For me the most interesting point was:
It [cloud based business intelligence] all depends on how quickly the likes of Google and Microsoft (which is supposedly going to be revealing more about its online services platform soon) can deliver usable online apps; they have the deep pockets to be able to finance these apps for a few releases while they grow into something people want to use…
What stuck me about this comment is that it suggests that the future of business intelligence will be determined by two companies who are not particularly well known for their business intelligence offerings. What becomes of SAP, SAS, and SPSS (just to name the companies whose names begin with “s”)?
What do you think? A two horse race or a couple of nags not sure where the race track is? Let me know.
Stephen Arnold, September 15, 2008
Attensity and BzzAgent: What’s the Angle
September 14, 2008
Attensity made a splash in the US intelligence community after 2001. A quick review of Attensity’s news releases suggests that the company began shifting its marketing emphasis from In-Q-Tel related entities to the enterprise in 2004-2005. By 2006, the company was sharpening its focus on customer support. Now Attensity is offering a wider range of technologies to organizations wanting to deal with their customers using Attensity’s technology.
In August 2008, the company announced that it had teamed up with the oddly named BzzAgent to provide insights into consumer conversations. BzzAgent, a specialist in word of mouth media. You can learn more about WOM–that is, word of mouth marketing–at the company’s Web site here.
The Attensity technology makes it possible for BzzAgent to squeeze meaning out of email or any other text. With the outputs of the Attensity system, BzzAgent can figure out whether a product is getting marketing lift or down draft. Other functionality provides beefier metrics to buttress the BaaAgent’s technology.
The purpose of this post is to ask a broader question about content processing and text analytics? To close, I want to offer a comment about the need to find places to sell rocket science information technology.
Why Chase Customer Support?
The big question is, “Why chase customer support?” Call centers, self service Web sites, and online bulletin board systems have replaced people in many organizations. In an effort to slash the cost of support, organizations have outsourced help to countries with lower wages than the organization’s home country. In an interesting twist of fate, Indian software outsourcing firms are sending some programming and technical work back to the US. Atlanta has been a beneficiary of this reverse outsourcing, according to my source in the Peach State.
Attensity’s technology performs what the company once described as “deep extraction.” The idea is to iterate through source documents. The process outputs metadata, entities, and a wide range of data that one can slice, dice, chart, and analyze. Attensity’s technology is quite advanced, and it can be tricky to optimize to get the best performance from the system on a particular domain of content.
Customer support appears to be a niche that functions like a hamburger to a hungry fly buzzing around tailgaters at the college football game. Customer support, despite vendors’ efforts to reduce costs and keep customers happy, has embraced every conceivable technology. There are the “live chat” telepresence services. There work fine until the company realizes that customers may be in time zones when the company is not open for business. There are the smart systems like the one Yahoo deployed using InQuira’s technology. To see how this works, navigate to Yahoo help central, type this question “How do I can premium email?”, and check out the answers. There are even more sophisticated systems deployed using tools from such companies as RightNow. This firm includes work flow tools and consulting to improve customer support services and operations.
The reason is simple–customer support remains a problem, or as the marketers say, “An opportunity.” I know that I avoid customer support whenever possible. Here’s a typical example. Verizon sent me a flier that told me I could reduce my monthly wireless broadband bill from $80 to $60. It took a Web site visit and six telephone calls to find out that the lower price came with a five gigabyte bandwidth cap. Not only was I stressed by the bum customer support experience, I was annoyed at what I perceived rightly or wrongly as the duplicity of the promotion. Software vendors jump at the chance to license Verizon a better mousetrap. So far, costs may have come down for Verizon, but this mouse remains far away from the mouse trap.
The new spin on customer support rotates around one idea: find out stuff * before * the customer calls, visits the Web site, or fires up a telepresence session.
That’s where Attensity’s focus narrows its beam. Attensity’s rocket science technology can support zippy new angles on customer support; for example, BzzAgent’s early warning system.
What’s This Mean for Search and Content Processing?
For me that is the $64 question. Here’s what I think:
- Companies like Attensity are working hard to find niches where their text analytics tools can make a difference. By signing licensing deals with third parties like BzzAgent, Attensity gets some revenue and shifts the cost of sales to the BzzAgent’s team.
- Attensity’s embedding or inserting its technology into BzzAgent’s systems deemphasizes or possibly eliminates the brand “Attensity” from the customers’ radar. Licensing deals deliver revenue with a concomitant loss of identify. Either way, text analytics moves from the center stage to a supporting role.
- The key to success in Attensity’s marketing shift is getting to the new customers first. A stampede is building from other search and content processing vendors to follow a very similar strategy. Saturation will lower prices, which will have the effect of making the customer support sector less attractive to text processing companies than it is now. ClearForest was an early entrant, but now the herd is arriving.
The net net for me is that Attensity has been nimble. What will the arrival of other competitors in the customer support and call center space mean for this niche? My hunch is that search and content processing is quickly becoming a commodity. Companies just discovering the customer support market will have to displace established vendors such as InQuira and Attensity.
Search and content processing certainly appear to be headed rapidly toward commoditization unless the vendor can come up with a magnetic, value add.
Stephen Arnold, September 14, 2008
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