Powerset Available
May 12, 2008
Navigate to Powerset.com and try out the much-publicized Web search system. Using proprietary technology plus third-party components, Powerset is a semantic search system. The system differentiates itself with fact extraction (Factz, in Powerset jargon), direct links to definitions, and a summary / outline view. A big yellow sticky note says that Powerset is searching Wikipedia articles, but my test queries returned useful information in the results list in default mode; for example, the name of Tropes Zoom, a system I had heard about but never seen. A quick Google search allowed me to pinpoint Semantic Knowledge as a company with a technology of this name. I’m not sure Powerset envisioned my use of its system as a front end for Google, but that use jumped out at me. Check it out and let me know if you think it is better than Google, Hakia, or Exalead. These are systems that contain a dollop of semantic sauce. Hopefully the company will provide a larger content index either by spidering the Web or via a metasearch like Vivisimo’s.
Stephen Arnold, May 12, 2008
Kartoo’s Visu: Semantic Search Plus Themescape Visualization
May 11, 2008
In England in December 2007, I saw a brief demonstration of Kartoo.com’s “thematic map”, which was announced in 2005.
The genesis for the company was developed from the relationships with large publishing groups into 1997. Mr. Baleydier was working to make CD-ROMs easily searchable. Founded in 2001 by Laurent and Nicholas Baleydier to provide a more advanced search interface. You can find out more about the company at Kartoo.net. Kartoo S.A. offers a no-charge metasearch Web system at Kartoo.com.
The original Kartoo service was one of the first to use dynamic graphics for Web search. Over the last few years, the interface became more refined. But the system presented links in the form of dynamic maps. Important Web sites were spherical, and the spheres were connected by lines. Here’s an example of the basic Kartoo interface as it looked on May 11, 2008, for the query “semantic search” run against the default of English Web sites. (The company also offers Ujiko.com, which is worth a quick look. The interface is a bit too abstract for me. You can try it here.)
The dark blue “ink blots” connect related Web sites. The terms provide an indication of the type of relationship between or among Web sites. You can click on this interface and explore the result set and perform other functions. Exploration of the interface is the best way to explore its features. Describing the mouse actions is not as effective as playing with the system.
Another company–Datops SA–was among the first to use interesting graphic representations of results. I recall someone telling me that the spheres that once characterized Groxis.com’s results had been influenced by a French wizard. Whether justified or not, when I saw spheres and ink blots, I said to myself, “Ah, another vendor influenced by French interface design”. In talking with people who use visualizations to help their users understand a “results space”, I’ve had mixed feedback. Some people love impressionistic representations of results; others, don’t. Decades ago I played a small role in the design of the F-15 interface or heads-up display. The one lesson I learned from that work was that under pressure, interfaces that offer too many options can paralyze reaction time. In combat, that means the pilot could be killed trying to figure out what graphics means. In other situations where a computational chemist is trying to make sense of 100,000 possible structures, a fine-grained visualization of the results may be appropriate.
Google: A Brace of Media Analyzer Inventions
May 11, 2008
On May 8, 2008, the USPTO, an outstanding organization with a stellar search system, published two Google patent applications. US2008/0107337 is “Methods and Systems for Analyzing Data in Media Material Having Layout” and US2008/0107338 is “Media Material Analysis of Continuing Article Portions”. You can download these here.
Both inventions, to which Google is the assignee, pertain to figuring out what’s important and what’s not on Web pages. Companies that scan hard copy and convert those images to machine-readable ASCII use some tricks but a great deal of brute force to figure out what’s information and what’s advertising or other dross.
The inventions’ systems and methods can also be applied to other types of images converted to a machine-readable form; for example, a PDF that consists of the PDF wrapper and the TIFF image in the wrapper. I know that commercial database publishers are on top of Google’s innovations in content processing, so this is old news to the wizards at ProQuest, Reed Elsevier, and Thomson Reuters. But others in the less rarified atmosphere may find these disclosures interesting. Two patent documents stumbling through the USPTO’s hallowed halls are not an accident of fate.
Stephen Arnold, May 11, 2008
Google: Content Management for YouTube
May 9, 2008
My hobby is reading Google’s opaque, jargon-filled, and disjointed patent documents. If you are following the $1 billion legal dispute between the GOOG and the media dinosaur Viacom or you upload video to Google, you will want to take a gander at US 20080109369, “Content Management System” by eight Googlers.
The invention is a control panel that shifts certain content tasks to the person posting content to the Google system. There are references to bits of Google technical magic that make the system smarter than the clunky content management systems that most organizations use.
In my opinion, this Google disclosure could shift the burden from Google to the person or software function posting content. You can download the document from the wonder system provided without charge by the US Patent & Trademark Office. I’m interested in your views of US 10080109369. The Verizon attorneys have undoubtedly gone over this invention with the legal acumen embodied in their sleek selves. I just read this stuff as I find it. This one’s worth a quick look if you are curious about one of Google’s systems for handling the more than one million video uploads pumped into the company every three or four weeks.
Keep in mind that the system and method in this patent document can be extended to other types of content. This invention could–note the could, please–make Google into a great big database publisher. Now Google is just inventing, not doing, what the system and method asserts. Patent applications aren’t products and services.
Stephen Arnold, May 9, 2008
Cluuz.com: Military Intelligence-Like Functions for Web Metasearch
May 8, 2008
One of my business associates in Canada sent me a link to an interesting search engine named Cluuz.com. The system–unlike the shy Powerset, a media darling developing a semantic search engine–is available for anyone to use. Navigate to Cluuz.com. Make sure you add the extra “u”, or you will be looking at a plain text page from the graphically restrained Clue Computing operation in cow country.
Cluuz.com takes results and applies semantic processes to them. Some of the company’s display options are a bit too sophisticated for my 64-year-young eyes, but I found the system quite useful. Let’s run through a basic search and take a cursory look at some of the features that I found interesting. Then I want to comment on the semantic search boom or boomlet (depending on how jaded you are), and conclude with several observations. In the last few days, the shrinking violets in the Big Name search vendors’ public relations department have reduced their flow of 30-something insights. Perhaps my comments about semantic search will “goose” them into squawking. I certainly hope so. Life’s no fun in rural Kentucky without well-groomed Ivy League wizards asserting their intellectual superiority in email speak.
A Query for Cluuz.com
Navigate to the Cluuz.com splash screen. Make certain that you have checked the option under the search box for “Charts”. We’ll look at the other options in a moment. Now enter the test query as shown in italics: Google +”programmable search engine”. Here’s my result for this query on May 7, 2008:
The system processes results from MSN (search.live.com) and Yahoo, processes them, and displays this map. Note that the system identifies important people and companies. The system correctly identifies the Google Forms service as related to the “programmable search engine”.
The system offers other ways to view the results set. For example, you can look at hits from the search engines to which the query is passed as a traditional laundry list. Other choices include a cluster display and a Flash display which is, in my opinion, cluttered with sliders, controls, and options.
You can also enter a more complex query using the Cluuz.com advanced search page. In my tests, the system did a good job of dealing with specific Boolean queries. You can also set preferences, which may not be necessary for a metasearch-based approach to generating hits.
US Government Uses AdWords
May 6, 2008
By the time you read this, the estimable Financial Times will have renamed the file, moved it to a digital dungeon, and besiege you with advertisements. The headline that stopped me in my web-footed tracks is, “US Advertises on Google to Snare Surfers”. Click here for what I hope is the original FT link.
The idea is that traffic to a US government site–America.gov–needs to be goosed (no pun intended, dear logo). Do you think the government might use content? Do you think the US government might use backlinks from high-traffic Web sites? Do you think the government might use nifty Web 2.0 features? Keep in mind that this site’s tag line is, “Telling America’s story”.
The answer is, “No.” The US government bids for such zippy terms as terrorism. The person who clicks on an advertisement and gains an insight into the American government’s psyche.
The FT story said:
In recent months the US administration has quietly been running the advertÂisements for its America.gov site, which is intended to give foreign audiences the Washington take on US Âforeign policy, culture and society.
I am not doing any government work at this time. I hope someday to meet the consultant who came up with this idea. I will try to get this wizard to take me to lunch. I have a hunch this consultant made some money on this project.
Stephen Arnold, May 6, 2008
London Times Says Google’s Unhealthy Dominance Will End
May 6, 2008
A cultured journalist, David Rowan, argues that “Google’s unhealthy dominance will end”. Read the story here, before it becomes unfindable in the murky depths of the (London) Times Online, “the news site of the year”. I don’t agree with the conclusion nor do I agree with the reasoning in the article, but it will be important, particularly in London’s financial sweat shops.
The points that jumped out at me cluster under this statement, “They [Google management] feel pretty damn lucky over in Google’s Mountain View headquarters this week.” Here’s my take on the argument presented in this article:
- The Microsoft Yahoo tie up would have been good for Microsoft and bad for Google
- Google’s monopoly is “in none of our interests”
- The changes in information will be significant and Google will play a big part in them
- Microsoft and Yahoo have a chance to develop more products and services “that people actually want”
My thought is that notions of Microsoft and Yahoo building products that people want is partially correct, almost like horse shoes where getting close to the stake earns a point. The problem is that Google is an infrastructure company, and it has an operational advantage and a cost advantage.
You have to be “pretty damn lucky” if you develop a product and expect it to run fast, run economically, and run at scale on the plumbing Microsoft and Yahoo now depend upon. Google’s products and services are a by product of its infrastructure and its engineering. Until the competition figures this out and responds to it with a leap frog solution, Google faces no significant competition from Microsoft or Yahoo. As I argue in Google Version 2.0, Google faces many challenges. These range from keeping staff on the team and productive to inter personal relationships among Messrs. Brin, Page, and Schmidt. A focus on products and services won’t narrow Google’s engineering lead, which I estimate at 12 to 24 months and increasing.
Stephen Arnold, May 6, 2008
MuseGlobal Adheres to Google
May 5, 2008
MuseGlobal, a rapidly-growing content platform company, has teamed with Google integrator Adhere Solutions to deliver next-generation content solutions.
The companies have teamed to create an All Access Connector. With a Google Search Appliance, a bit of OneBox API “magic”, and the Adhere engineering acumen, organizations can deploy a next-generation information access solution.
You can read more about the tie up here. (Hurry, these media announcements can disappear without warning.) This deal will almost certainly trigger a wave of close scrutiny and probably some me-too behavior. Traditional content aggregators and primary publishers have lagged behind the Google “curve” for almost a decade. MuseGlobal’s aggressive move may lead others to take a more pro-active, less combative and defensive posture toward Google. Content providers, mostly anchored in the library world of “standing orders” are struggling as much as traditional publishers to figure out how to generate new revenues as their traditional cash foundations erode beneath them. For some, it may be too late.
You can read about IDC’s “success” here. On the other hand, you can read about the “non success” of the New York Times, for example, here.
Discloser: My son is involved with Adhere. Even more interesting is that I delivered a dose of “Google realty” to a MuseGlobal executive at the recent eContent conference in Scottsdale, Arizona. Obviously some of my analyses of Google as an application platform hit a nerve.
Stephen Arnold, May 5, 2008
The Microsoft Yahoo Fiasco: Impact on SharePoint and Web Search
May 5, 2008
You can’t look at a Web log with out dozens of postings about Microsoft’s adventure with Yahoo. You can grind through the received wisdom on Techmeme River, a wonderful as-it-happened service. In this Web log posting, I want to recap some of my views about this remarkable digital charge at a windmill. On this cheery Monday in rural Kentucky, I can see a modern Don Quixote, who looks quite a bit like Steve Ballmer, thundering down another digital hollow.
What’s the impact on SharePoint search?
Zip. Nada. None. SharePoint search is not one thing. Read my essay about MOSS and MSS. They add up to a MESS. I’m still waiting for the well-dressed but enraged Fast Search PR wizard to spear shake a pointed lance at me for that opinion. Fast Search is sufficiently complex and SharePoint sufficiently Microsoftian in its design to make quick movement in the digital swamp all but impossible.
A T Ball player can swing at the ball until he or she gets a hit, ideally for the parents a home run. Microsoft, like the T Ball player in the illustration, will be swinging for an online hit until the ball soars from the park, scoring a home run and the adulation of the team..
Will Fast Search & Transfer get more attention?
Nope. Fast Search is what it is. I have commented on the long slog this acquisition represents elsewhere. An early January 2008 post provides a glimpse of the complexity that is ESP (that’s enterprise search platform, not extrasensory perception). A more recent discussion talks about the “perfect storm” of Norwegian management expertise, Microsoft’s famed product manager institution, and various technical currents, which I posted on April 26, 2008. These posts caused Fast Search’s ever-infallible PR gurus to try and cook the Beyond Search’s goose. The goose, a nasty bird indeed, side-stepped the charging wunderkind and his hatchet.
Will Microsoft use the Fast Search Web indexing system for Live.com search?
Now that’s a good question. But it misses the point of the “perfect storm” analysis. To rip and replace the Live.com search requires some political horse trading within Microsoft and across the research and product units. Fast Search is arguably a better Web indexing system, but it was not invented at Microsoft, and I think that may present a modest hurdle for the Norwegian management wizards.
A Word’s Meaning Expanded: Microsoft’s Been Googled
May 4, 2008
It’s a Sunday morning in rural Kentucky. The animals have been fed. Mammon’s satisfied with the Kentucky Derby: victory and tragedy.
In the post-race excitement in Harrod’s Creek, I pondered the one-sided flood of postings on Techmeme.com and Megite.com. The theme was the collapse of Microsoft’s plan to thwart Google via a purchase of Yahoo. I’m no business wizard. The entire deal baffled me, but I found one aspect interesting.
As the most recognized brand in the world, the word “google” is the name of a company and it is a synonym for research. It’s a noun, and it’s a very handy way to tell someone how to find an answer; for example, a person tells another, “Just google that company”.
But, the meaning of the word “google” has another dimension. Permit me to explain this
As the Microsoft-set deadline ticked to zero hour. Yahooligans tried to find a way to thwart Microsoft’s intentions. Yahoo announced a “test” with Google for ad sales. Pundits picked up the idea, expanded it, and spiced it with legal shamanism. Yahoo’s executives hinted that working with Google would be interesting.
Google, on the other hand, maintained the Googley silence that makes competitors uncertain of Google’s intentions, Wall Street analysts crazy from hints and lava lamps, and insiders chuckle while chugging Odwalla smoothies.
However, behind the scenes Google and Yahoo decided to cooperate to an as-yet unknown degree in advertising sales.
In the 11th hour meeting in Redmond, Washington, Yahoo mentioned the “g” word. Microsoft’s appetite was spoiled. The meaning of the word “google” has been dilated.
Allow me to illustrate a unary version of this expansion: Yahoo “googled” Microsoft. The meaning is derived from the verb “google” which in this context means derailed Microsoft’s ambitions by utilizing an un-Machiavellian ploy: an advertising deal.
Thus, “Microsoft’s been googled” means that “Microsoft has been given the shaft” or “Microsoft has been thwarted” or “Microsoft has been hosed”.
Synonyms for “google” in this new meaning are screw, befoul, muck up, and toy with.
By extension, we can craft this statement: Google googled Microsoft. In this usage, Google (the company) managed in Googley ways to foul up the Yahoo acquisition. Colloquially, this becomes, “Dudes, Google got you again”.
Stephen Arnold, May 4, 2008
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