Is an AOL Management Shift Coming?
March 26, 2011
Let me go out on a limb. I have observed Googlers in cubes and in management positions. Unlike the Google believers, I think that the equation Google = Good Management is a bit like 1 + 1 = 3. I read “Huffington-Armstrong Smackdown at AOL” and realized that the author is pretty much on the right cow path.
Here’s the passage I liked.
Meanwhile, Armstrong has to keep control of the company. He needs Huffington — now regarded as the company’s savior — more than she needs him because she has such a strong image. I wonder how long Huffington, who has grown accustomed to speaking her mind and having all the power at her company, will remain content to report to Armstrong. AOL has done nothing since the Huffington Post deal to show that it is in control of its destiny, that it has a coherent growth strategy and that it knows how to win. Arianna Huffington, the theory goes, surely knows how to win.
I think this is on the money, but it does not make the point clearly enough. I think what I would have said is that the Googler (Tim Armstrong) is going to find himself reporting to a person who can manage, and dominate. In short, the Googler is going to have his hands full. Several decisions of the Googler will come back to hang like a cloud over the “new” AOL.
First, the play for local content was expensive and is going to be exposed as a move that won’t yield the money the local golden goose is alleged to reside in the AOL offices.
Second, the expensive New York media wizards will find themselves looking into the eyes of a person who knows how to get traffic and eye balls without expensive New York media talent. You can terminate folks in India today but tomorrow, the empty cubicles will be in the good old USA.
Third, in a day to day content of “who can manage better”, the Googler is going to be in one of those corporate Mixed Martial Arts’s battles. I go with the Huffster.
Stephen E Arnold, March 26, 2011
Freebie unlike the local news company AOL bought
IBM OmniFind Tip: Corrupt Index Ruining Your Day?
March 17, 2011
Short honk: IBM’s support page contains a little item titled “OmniFind Enterprise Edition Returns Extra Invalid Search Results when Index is Corrupted.” When using OmniFind 9.1, fixpack 1, a power outage during your crawl can corrupt results, causing invalid search data to be returned. Fortunately, the fix is not difficult: just re-crawl. Time-consuming, but easy. So this is open source. What happens with Watson? Interesting question.
Cynthia Murrell, March 17, 2011
Freebie unlike IBM’s on site service and the FRUs we know and love
Is eBay Changing Direction?
March 8, 2011
Exorbyte just released some interesting news on its blog, “eBay is Magento’s Secret Investor – Internet Retailer”. It appears the leader of online marketplaces is finally catching on to its smaller merchants’ complaints. So much so that eBay had acquired a 49 percent stake in Magento, the open source ecommerce Web application. Exotbyte Commerce Search is available as a plug-in for Magento.
Here’s one snippet from the Exorbyte write up:
“This is confirmation that there will be an ongoing market of small online retailers who do not want to operate within the restrictive and expensive platforms of eBay.com or Amazon.com; where fees are high and they have no or little control of the customers relationships. This market of small online retailers using installed or hosted ecommerce platforms is where Exorbyte Commerce operates.”
The question in Harrod’s Creek is if eBay’s obvious need to appeal to its lower volume patrons foreshadows some version of a buyout on the horizon. We shall see. eBay has become dependent for sizzle on PayPal. eBay’s original service seems a trifle dowdy. Magneto is a fresh name at least.
Sarah Rogers, March 8, 2011
Freebie
Palantir: The Next Big Thing
March 3, 2011
I just read “Facebook Investor Peter Thiel: Palantir Is the Next Facebook or Google.” Quite a write up. The story references the Forbes’ story “Super Crunchers.”
To bring myself up to speed I reviewed my Overflight information about Palantir. It is a busy, busy outfit.
First, the company landed $90 million in venture funding last year. If you figure a 10X return on investment, Palantir was a company with a $1 billion potential.
Will Palantir be “the next big thing”? Image source: http://www.penn-olson.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/social-media2.pn
Second, in late 2010, the company was embroiled in a legal matter with the pioneer in data analytics and data fusion for police and intelligence work. The allegations made by i2 Ltd. involved reverse engineering of the i2 proprietary file format ANB (Analyst Notebook). I don’t want to recover information so you can find my write ups about this at this link for Beyond Search and this link for IntelTrax, our data fusion news service.
Third, the Palantir organization was involved in the some muddled HBGary sales initiative. Some current information about this matter is at “HBGary Suspected Trickery.”
The Forbes write up and the recent item from the Forbes’ blog struck me as discordant. Here’s why:
First, Palantir generated traction via splashy graphics and basic data fusion functions. The assertions about Palantir’s technology as a platform upon which to build intelligence applications are not yet founded. Palantir is trying to move from US government centric products and services to the financial services arena. With $90 million, Palantir can move quickly, but I am not sure that the company’s speeding along has reached the definition. I am reminded of my children’s question when we drove from Washington, DC back to Illinois: “Are we there yet, dad?” The answer then and now is, “No, we are about half way.” Marketing makes things appear one way. Reality is a bit different.
A duct tape roof rack. Looks interesting. Source: http://www.myspaceantics.com/image-myspace-graphic/funny-pictures/duct-tape-roof-rack.jpg.html
Second, there are a number of companies with comparable or better technology than Palantir’s. The company that comes immediately to mind is Digital Reasoning. The firm does the Palantir trick of flashy graphics but—and this is a big but—has a platform called Synthesys 3.x. You can ingest disparate data, analyze it using quite useful, quite advanced analytic methods, and you can “see” where the key item of information is. Unlike Palantir, the Digital Reasoning folks are like a group of Eagle scouts. The team, based on my own observation, does not look for short cuts and avoids stomping on other firm’s systems and methods. If you are not familiar with Digital Reasoning, check them out. I am trying to wrangle another job with this outfit, but I have quite a bit of confidence in the technology and the people. No messy allegations, no out of court settlements.
Third, one of the most common errors made in analyzing next generation search is looking at PowerPoint presentations and crafted reports. The action is algorithmic, systems, and methods. When a person with some but not decades of experience in the types of systems used by law enforcement and intelligence agencies stumbles upon a vendor, the reaction is one of surprise. The desire to share the “insight” is high. The problem is that with experience the deeper values of systems emerge from real world experience, not from a crafted demonstration and a couple of interviews.
Check out the write ups about Palantir. There is quite a bit of interesting information about the firm’s business methods. A JP Morgan deal and a reference to some brush with HBGary is not the same as a figuring the plumbing and finding the dripping joints and careless soldering.
But if Forbes says Palantir is the cat’s pajamas, won’t most people agree? My view is that too many people take public relations as the Gospel. I am a bit more reserved in my acceptance of pronouncements from certain business publications. Are the legal hassle and the HBGary events a coincidence or an indication of business tactics?
Stephen E Arnold, March 3, 2011
Freebie and no public relations inputs whatsoever
Find the Indescribable
March 2, 2011
Not every search is as cut and dry as a single keyword. When the object of your quest is too tough to shuffle into an appropriate string of words, discovery search engines may be the remedy. Such engines employ ranking systems that operate on relevancy over popularity. What that means for the user is if one pertinent webpage can be located, said page becomes a jumping off point to call up similar sites.
So, here is something worth perusing and saving: 3 Most Useful Discovery Engines: Find Similar Pages. Discussed therein is Google’s ‘related:’ operator, Similar Pages and Similar Sites, broken down for comparison by categories including index, algorithm and drawbacks. The largest shortcoming mentioned goes to Similar Sites for its inability to function out of the domain level, meaning it only crawls home pages; it was stated that Similar Pages seems to favor home pages as well.
For more details on the indexes, algorithms and compatibility with Google, check out the first link. You may want to squirrel these sites away to your bookmarks for future use.
Sarah Rogers, March 2, 2011
Freebie
Google and Search Tweaks
February 25, 2011
Chatter blizzard! There is a flurry of commentary about Google’s change to cope with outfits that generate content to attract traffic, get a high Google ranking, and deliver information to users! You can read the Google explanation in “Finding More High-Quality Sites in Search” and learn about the tweaks. I found this passage interesting:
We can’t make a major improvement without affecting rankings for many sites. It has to be that some sites will go up and some will go down. Google depends on the high-quality content created by wonderful websites around the world, and we do have a responsibility to encourage a healthy web ecosystem. Therefore, it is important for high-quality sites to be rewarded, and that’s exactly what this change does.
Google faces increasing scrutiny for its display of content from some European Web sites. In fact, one of the companies affected has filed an anti trust complain against Google. You can read about the 1PlusV matter and the legal information site EJustice at this link (at least for a while. News has a tendency to disappear these days.)
Source: http://www.mentalamusement.com/our%20store/poker/casino_accessories.htm
Why did I find this passage interesting?
Well, it seems that when Google makes a fix, some sites go up or down in the results list. Interesting because as I understand the 1PlusV issue, the site arbitrarily disappeared and then reappeared. On one hand, human intervention doesn’t work very well. And, if 1PlusV is correct, human intervention does work pretty well.
Which is it? Algorithm that adapts or a human or two doing their thing independently or as the fingers of a committee.
I don’t know. My interest in how Google indexed Web sites diminished when I realized that Google results were deteriorating over the last few years. Now my queries are fairly specialized, and most of the information I need appears in third party sources. Google’s index, for me, is useful, but it is now just another click on a series of services I must use to locate information.
A good example is trying to locate information about a specific US government program. The line up of services I had to use to locate the specific item of information I sought included:
- Bing.com
- Blekko.com
- DuckDuckGo.com
- EBSCO Electronic Publishing
- Exalead Search
- Google.com
- Google’s little known Uncle Sam
- Lexis.com
- ProQuest
- USA.gov (Keep in mind that my son is involved with this outfit.)
I also enlisted the help of two specialists. One in Israel and one here in the United States. As you can see, Google’s two services made up about one tenth of my bibliographic research.
Why?
First, Google’s Web index appears larger to me, but it seems to me that it returns hits that are distorted by either search engine optimization tricks such as auto-generated pages. These are mostly useless to me as are links to sites that contain incorrect information and Web pages for which the link is dead and the content no longer in the Google cache.
In my experience, this happens frequently when running queries for certain government agencies such as Health and Human Services or the documents for a US Congressional hearing. Your mileage may differ because the topics for which I want information are far from popular.
Second, I need coverage that does not arbitrarily stop after following links a couple of levels deep. Some services like Exalead do a better job of digging into the guts of large sites, particularly for certain European sources.
Third, the Blekko folks are going a pretty good job of keeping the older information easily identifiable. This date tagging is important to me, and I appreciate either seeing an explicit date or have a link to a page that displays a creation date.
Compusearch Launches PRISM Business Intelligence Dashboard
February 18, 2011
Why search? Look at the dashboard.
“Compusearch Puts Mission- Critical Information at Agency Fingertips” at redOrbit announces the release of Compusearch’s PRISM Business Intelligence Dashboard. Users can now access information on key performance indicators from within the PRISM software.
This is not, however, a simple point and click search. For confirmation, just take a look at the Dashboard. As the article explains:
“This add-on module to PRISM provides the power to support a wide range of custom report style widgets with drill-down and drill-through capability, as well as robust data visualization features that can be animated and interactive. The PRISM BI Dashboard is based on an open architecture and utilizes XML and web services, which allows data and information from across agency enterprises to be easily monitored, analyzed and reported.”
Compusearch focuses on software and systems integration, mostly for government agencies. The hitch may be that if you look at the dashboard when you drive, you may run over a pedestrian. Is this a risk when performing business intelligence and analysis?
Cynthia Murrell February 18, 2011
Freebie
OpenText Opens Advanced Content Analytics Market
February 14, 2011
Following in the footsteps of other vendors, Open Text has opened an advanced content analytics market.
“OpenText Licensing Agreement Brings Advanced Content Analytics to Market” reveals a tie up between OpenText and the National Research Council (Canada). The idea is that new Content Analytics innovations will be added to the ECM Suite and made available by spring 2011. The added content analytics to the ECM Suite will improve data mining and analysis. The key point is:
“Content analytics is the key to extracting business value from social media and text-rich online and enterprise information sources, an essential technology for marketing, online commerce, customer service, and improved search and Web experience. Given the mind-boggling growth in information volumes, no wonder uptake is booming, powered by rapid technical advances from leading-edge vendors such as OpenText.”
Content Analytics will perform data mining that will uncover and show relationships between businesses and other facts. It will be able to find information that a normal search engine wouldn’t find. This agreement is the beginning for OpenText to apply Content Analytics to all its enterprise content management Suite products.
Whitney Grace, February 14, 2011
Freebie
Google: How Big?
February 13, 2011
Google is an immense enterprise. It’s tendrils touch every corner of the Internet and a website does not exist that has not turned up on the results page. So how big is Google, really? Smashing Apps tried to answer that question: “The Massive Size of Google (Infographic).” Google was conceived as an experimental project back in 1996 and by American dream standards they’ve succeeded beyond ken.
“Till now it gets so many faces and expanded like an open sky. But there are so many of us who love to see the statistics. Here, we have found an infographic in which you can see the massive size of Google in numbers.”
The infographic visualization puts Google in an understandable perspective. If you’re familiar with children’s literature it reads like How Much is a Million? by David M. Schwartz and Seven Kellog. It’ll bring out your internal intellectual child , however, don’t take the information for fact. How are we supposed to determine how accurate the data is, when we can’t conceivably measure the Internet? Google. Big. Real big.
Whitney Grace, February 13, 2011
Freebie
Augmenting Output for Clarity
February 12, 2011
We love it when mid tier consulting firms “discover” a trend. A Gartner expert has revealed “Relationship Context Metadata.” Here’s the definition of the polysyllabic concept:
“Relationship context metadata explicitly describes the relationship from which the identity information was obtained and the constraints imposed by the participants in that relationship on the use and disclosure of the information.”
The consulting firm’s example is that of a credit card number. Instead of just sending the number, you could tag the number with metadata that specifies how it is to be used and what relationship will be damaged if it is misused.
This mid-tier consulting firm is applying a new name, “relationship context,” to the social graph. Will we apply their metadata to information from Foursquare, Gowalla, and other social networking / geospatial services?
One of the goslings here in Harrod’s Creek asked, “Could we include a tag that means no stalking?”
Cynthia Murrell, February 12, 2011
Freebie
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
