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
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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
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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
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Not Search, But Mighty Useful
February 12, 2011
The article “50 Free iPad Apps for Business Users” at Datamation provides a helpful service. The authors have combed through the apps at the iTunes Store and compiled a list of free apps they feel are worthy of your attention:
Whoever claimed that business software costs a bundle never heard of the free iPad app.
Indeed, the iPad is showing that you don’t need a speedy notebook full of programs to run your company on the go; all you need is a tablet with free iPad apps.”
The offerings are organized by category: productivity, utilities, remote access, and knowledge.
It does look like there are some decent entries here- do check it out. Unfortunately, though, there is not a robust search app in the lot. (Job-hunting tools don’t count.) Search just doesn’t command respect in the free iPad app world. Sigh.
Cynthia Murrell February 12, 2011
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Will We Pay for News Online?
February 10, 2011
BBC Mobile’s article “News Corp Launches Daily Newspaper for iPad” prompts a few questions.
The article examines the Rupert Murdoch empire’s launch of the Daily, via Apple’s iTunes store. A dedicated staff of journalist has been hired, a choice which separates this from most device-specific news sources. Alongside traditional news articles will be interactive graphics, videos, Twitter feeds, and personalized content.
The Daily will cost 99 cents a week. That doesn’t sound like much, but will consumers be willing to pay anything to access news online?
“Mr Murdoch has made no secret of his desire to get consumers paying for news on the Web. The Wall Street Journal, The Times and The Sunday Times, all owned by Murdoch, have introduced pay walls for their websites. However, the Times has since seen an 87% drop in online readership.
We now have many sources for free, quality news coverage online, so it is no wonder readers are reluctant to pay. However, I predict that that flow will be stemmed in the coming years as companies become less willing to give their work away for free. Nevertheless, it is difficult to generate significant revenues online. Experimentation ahead.
Cynthia Murrell February 10, 2011
Online Outfits as Political Power Houses
February 9, 2011
We noted “Google Launches Phone Tweeting Service as Last Egyptian ISP Goes Down.”
The headline that Egypt turned off the Internet has made the global rounds and scared the entire developed world. If you do your research, you’ll find that in the US it will be extremely difficult to shut down the web, especially if Google is your ally. Noor Group, the last surviving Egyptian ISP, was shut down and totally blacked out the web. Maximum PC has the story, “Google Launches Phone Tweeting Service as Last Egyptian ISP Goes Down.”
“Over the weekend, engineers from Google, Twitter and SayNow — a company the internet giant bought just last week — extended a lifeline to the restive Arab country by coming up with the “idea of a speak-to-tweet service—the ability for anyone to tweet using just a voice connection.”
Google and Twitter to the rescue folks! Who would have thought these Internet companies would provide a voice in a time of crisis. While I applaud their efforts, I’m curious where Facebook, Amazon, and Apple are. Why aren’t these online outfits involving themselves in the political affairs of countries half a world away? What happened to search and content processing as an objective activity? Maybe search and content processing are no longer objective? Quite a shift for some, not much of a change for other organizations, however.
Whitney Grace, February 9, 2011
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Textalyser Highlighted on Podcast
February 9, 2011
Text analysis was mentioned by the podcast No Agenda, which is hosted by Adam Curry (professional broadcast journalist) and John C. Dovorak (technical and business columnist). The No Agenda podcast team runs certain text through Textalyzer and uses the output to identify “memes”; that is, words or phrases designed to be magnetic and persist in a conversation.
You can give Textalyser, the tool No Agenda mentioned, by navigating to http://textalyser.net/. There are two Web accessible modes. First, you can take a chunk of text and paste it into the Analysis Box on the Web page. The system will generate a report. Shown below, is a portion of the Textalyser report for one of my 2010 for fee columns.
The report generates a word frequency report, word length summary, and two, three, and four word phrase frequency reports.
The service carries this identification notice: V 1.05 help Traduction Nieruchomo?ci Magazine interactif Umarex Airsoft + Paintball. For more information about the service, you can navigate to this link and leave a message.
Stephen E Arnold, February 9, 2011
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Search into Politics
February 8, 2011
Here in Harrod’s Creek, we find search technology more interesting that political hoop jumping. Our question, “Has anyone noticed that companies with a foundation in search and content processing seem to be getting involved in politics?” Probably not, judging from the discussions of America Online’s purchase of the Huffington Post blog and information service or of the Google employee embroiled or at least caught in the turmoil in Egypt. You can get information about the AOL deal from “You’ve Got Arianna” and about the Googler-Egypt story from “Egyptian PM Says Missing Google Marketing Executive Wael Ghonim to Be Released Tomorrow.”
We don’t know if these two events are cut from the same bolt of fustian or completely unrelated events. If these are related, have search and content processing companies shifted from serving the needs of customers to a larger stage? And if on a larger stage, is the object generating value for stakeholders or some other goal; for example, implementing a “vision” of how the world should work.
If the events are unrelated, then the question becomes, “What next?” Will other companies knowingly or unknowingly allow employees to pursue political agendas under the colors of the corporation?
We liked the good old days when companies created products and met the needs of customers. The merging of technology and politics may be as complex a mixture as religion and politics. We have nothing against giving individuals and corporations some scope of operation. But when the actions play out on a global stage, we wonder if technology has worked its way into society in a new way.
What are the consequences of breaking a nation’s embargo against certain types of information? What are the consequences of using content as a weapon? What are the consequences of co-mingling corporate and personal goals with an online service? Is this stuff content, marketing, or something else entirely?
We don’t know. Fascinating for certain. And far from the mundane work in Harrod’s Creek.
Stephen E Arnold, February 8, 2011
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Is Google Ignoring an Apple Method?
February 7, 2011
Love it or hate it, the Apple iPhone set the yardstick against which smartphones are measured. Microsoft has not slipstreamed fixes to its Windows 7 Phone. Now Google seems to be following the Microsoft path, not the Apple four lane superhighway.
Secure Computing Magazine reports that “Google Fails to Fix Android Flaw” in the newest 2.3 version. Google was aware of the flaw in Android 2.2 last year and promised to fix the defect. When 2.3 was churned out, hackers went to work and easily cracked the patch. Android’s flaw is as follows:
“If a user is tricked into visiting a malicious site, the flaw could let hackers view any files stored on the SDcard, as well as view a list of apps and upload them to a remote server.”
Disabling JavaScript support and/or using a third party browser can avoid the hacking problem. Google has again promised to fix its popular mobile OS in the next version and are already working on a solution, but we’ll see how that goes.
What may be important is that Google has not gotten its chickens in the coop. Another indication of the similarity in management approaches and customer focus between Microsoft and Google? And search? Maybe taking a back seat? Just a thought.
Whitney Grace, February 7, 2011
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MySpace, News Corp., and Credibility
February 4, 2011
I read “News Corp’s MySpace Sale Options Include New Investors, Management Buy-Out”. The story was clear. News Corp. is going to get rid of the social networking service. What caught my attention was this statement in the write up:
“The new MySpace has been very well received by the market and we have some very encouraging metrics. But the plan to allow MySpace to reach it’s full potential may be best achieved under a new owner.”
I had in my Overflight files a 2006 story in Fortune via CNNMoney.com called “News Corp. (Hearts) MySpace.” That story reported:
MySpace has simply exploded since the deal was done last July. Measured in terms of page views, MySpace has become the second-most popular site on the Internet — behind Yahoo!, but ahead of MSN, AOL and Google. It has 66 million members, and about 250,000 new ones sign up each day. That’s a mind-boggling growth trajectory for an Internet site that was launched less than three years ago. “It looks like the best acquisition we’ve made in a long, long time,” Peter Chernin, the second-in-command at News Corp., said in an interview with FORTUNE. “MySpace is the single biggest growth opportunity this company has.”
Has MySpace been the home run referenced in the 2006 story? I had tucked away a story call MySpace vs Facebook, which ran in HubPages. The original was offline when I checked this morning, but I found a copy of the 2009 article in the Google cache. TechCrunch reported in January 2009 that Facebook had 200 million unique worldwide visitors. The figure was twice MySpace’s traffic.
Short take: consumers vote with their clicks. In the click department, Facebook is at 500 or 600 million and MySpace is for sale. Does this case example shed light on the outlook for the News Corp. iPad newspaper. We think it does.
Stephen E Arnold, February 4, 2011
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