Capgemini Renews Vows with Exalead
December 15, 2010
NMK reports that “Exalead and Capgemini Extend Global Partnership to Provide Innovative Search-Based Solutions.” Congratulations are in order for the happy couple as they set foot into the international market! Prior to going global, Exalead and Capgemini worked together in France to deliver SBA solutions to joint clients.
“The rapid increase in online data sources means that businesses in today’s 24/7 economy, need quicker, more user-friendly and flexible tools to interpret huge volumes of information. This new global partnership with Exalead means that Capgemini is expected to help companies worldwide in the reduction of costs, and drive innovation through increasing the value of their information with the use of an innovative Information Management solution.”
Exalead Cloudview and Capgemini give their clients an easy, reliable program that can both manage and interpret structured and unstructured data. All levels of office workers will benefit from this program.
Stephen E Arnold, December 16, 2010
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Blekko Bared
December 14, 2010
If you want to know about Web search engine Blekko, you will find “The Secrets Behind Blekko’s Search Technology” interesting. If I read the article correctly, Blekko built on the “Google legacy.” The idea is that Google got some things right and other things no so right. Blekko has figured out how to use “swarm” methods to obviate the need for the throughput choking approach of Google.
One of the most interesting passages in the write up from my point of view was this one:
This led them to the radical step of building an entirely decentralized architecture, with no masters, slaves or indeed any servers with special roles.
There are other interesting points in the article. However, for me the key message was that Google is now saddled with less-than-modern methods. Whether Blekko knocks Google off its lofty perch is irrelevant. The next generation of Web search systems will continue to push forward.
Poor Google now its hugely expensive infrastructure is, if Blekko is correct, starting to show signs of wrinkles and gray hair. Google now has many irons in the fire and brute force search is still the one trick money maker.
Challenges ahead as 20 sometimes build on Google’s legacy.
Stephen E Arnold, December 14, 2010
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Endeca: Perfect in the Eyes of CTOLabs, Just Perfect
December 13, 2010
CTOlabs has a write up titled “Endeca’s MDEX Engine Review” that finds no fault with the Endeca system whatsoever. The system is glorified by describing the MDEX features and what popular websites use it, i.e. Walmart.com, ESPN.com, and HomeDepot.com.
“Endeca uses a powerful and revolutionary semi-structured database to provide advanced capabilities for high-performance search and information access across the entire spectrum of structured and unstructured enterprise data. The MDEX engine mixes search, navigation and exploration to dig and guide the user to discover.”
Endeca advertises the MDEX engine to have the following features: integrated API, semi-structured database, generational data updates, security, performance and scalability, end-to-end web services support, and extensibility. This is interesting, because most systems we test struggle with petascale dataflows, connecting to such content sources as the i2 ANB format, query response time under heavy load, and generating revenue. Perhaps these issues are not drawbacks in the informed eyes of the CTOLabs’ crew?
Guess Endeca is the leader in search, not Vivisimo, as we learned in the UK last week. Poor Autonomy, Google, Microsoft Fast, and Exalead. Maybe each should just become Endeca resellers.
Stephen E Arnold, December 13, 2010
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Information Does Leak
December 10, 2010
In spite of repeated attempts in the last few days to shut Wikileaks down, the bane of the establishment’s existence presses on. Forced to relocate its Web address to a Swiss site, wikileaks.ch, after its original host, Amazon.com, abandoned it, Wikileaks has found refuge in hundreds of mirror sites, other Web sites that duplicate its content and make removal of the information from the Internet nearly impossible.
At last count, Wikileaks was mirrored on 1368 sites.
As documented by several news services, including the BBC, on Monday, founder Julian Assange was arrested by British police onsexual-assault charges. In both cases, the women acknowledge that sex with Assange was consensual, but they claim at some point, it became nonconsensual.
Meanwhile, in the United States, the anti-Wikileaks rhetoric has amped itself up several notches. The Hill quoted former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich as saying, “Information warfare is warfare, and Julian Assange is engaged in warfare. Information terrorism, which leads to people getting killed, is terrorism, and Julian Assange is engaged in terrorism. He should be treated as an enemy combatant.”
As CNN reported, one “statesman” even went so far as to call for his execution.
The standard buzz-phrase defenses are also being trotted out, aptly demonstrated by Sen. Diane Feinstein’s Wall Street Journal op ed, such as “threat to national security” and “placing our troops in harm’s way.”The keen-minded among us should note that these are the same buzz-phrase defenses that have been used to keep the United States mired in at least two wars for the last decade.
Is there evidence that Assange is endangering the United States? Some pundits see powerbrokers are being embarrassed and exposed. How is that a bad thing for the powerless? We understand how it is a bad thing for those in power, however.
After all, as Time Magazine reported, it was the United States government that trumpeted the interagency sharing of intelligence post-911. Naturally, it is the United States government that is appalled when such a wide distribution of “sensitive” information finds its way into the datasphere.
Whatever you may think of the interesting Julian Assange, some see him as doing a service to Americans and to the world by leaking this information. The less we know about our government’s activities, the stronger they become. The more we know, the stronger we become.
No matter how many attempts are made to silence Wikileaks and its supporters or to censor the Web, Assange and those like him are creatures of the Net. It is pervasive in its scope. Thus, Wikileaks or a comparable service will persist.
Can a government bureaucracy control information that leaks to the Internet? We don’t know.
Pete Fernbaugh, December 10, 2010
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Basis Tech Gets In-Q-Tel Funding
December 7, 2010
Calling the CIA “The Company” doesn’t seem like so much of an ironic joke these days with government funding developing technology that might help spooks spy. “How the C.I.A. Perfects its Social Media Monitoring Technologies” gives an overview of the workings of In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s 10-year-old venture capital company.
Kashmir Hill writes: “In-Q-Tel is a rather secretive group. It declined to speak to me for the story, but I did chat with the CEO of one of the companies the group has funded. Basis Technology CEO Carl Hoffman told me In-Q-Tel is a great investor for a small start-up because it’s a gateway to Washington for small companies that normally struggle to compete for federal contracts.“ Basis Technology has been the recipient of In-Q-Tel funding to expand its multilingual text analytic software products and services to include Middle Eastern languages. This new niche has, in turn, led Basis Tech to do business with several other federal agencies, an exciting development.
Hill’s conclusion is that the only downside for these CIA-funded companies is that it might hinder their expansion to China and the Middle East. With terrorism paranoia at the levels that it is these days, I think he might be right.
Alice Wasielewski, December 7, 2010
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Email: The Humpty Dumpty for 2011
December 7, 2010
Facebook’s announcement of Titan, its new messaging system, has provoked a lot of analysis of the future of email. “Facebook Messages Won’t Replace Traditional E-Mail, Poll Says” reports that the Wall Street Journal found that “More than 62 percent of over 3,680 participants in a recent online poll said they wouldn’t use Facebook Messages as their primary e-mail service.”
My initial thought is that the WSJ readership probably does not accurately reflect the overall FB demographic. And, of course, do people really know what they will use until they’ve used it? Most people had no idea four years ago how ubiquitous social networking would become. Cringely weighs in with “The Decline and Fall of E-mail,” where his main point is that the death of email is from spam and the rise of social networking. I wonder if there won’t be a different type of spam, or something spam-like on Titan. In “Distinction Between Email and Social Networks Eroding,” WebProNews reports: “The popularity of social networking services, along with changing demographics and work styles, will lead 20 percent of employees to use social networks as a main business communication tool by 2014, according to a new report from Gartner.”
Gartner sees collaboration moving to the cloud with companies like Microsoft and Research in Motion (RIM) cashing in. None of this comes as a huge shock to me. I think even the Luddite-ish among us have replaced much of email with FB already (Somebody needs tell the WSJ!), and with the size of Facebook’s membership, any additional incentive to message there will cause use of traditional email to shrink. I think email will always have it’s niche, but so does the postal service, radio, and printed magazines.
Alice Wasielewski, December 7, 2010
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Facebook, the Pain of Change, and the Web
December 3, 2010
I have been thinking about the sky-is-falling message in Tim Berners-Lee analysis of Facebook. Widely reported, the “inventor of the Web” sees Facebook as a flea carrying bubonic evil in the fur of entrepreneurs. In short, Facebook represents a shift from the Wild Web Web to a walled garden with security cameras and listening devices.
You can get a breezy run down of the anti-change message in the current Scientific American essay.
I can visualize a scene around the campfire in what would become Kansas. The conversationalists don’t have Facebook pages but both work for an outfit paying them to ride a bunch of horses in serial like Christmas tree lights from one cow town to another.
Cowboy 1: What’cha think of that tel-ee-graph thing?
Cowboy 2: I think it’s-a goin’ to be less personal than us’ns takin’ the mail to folks we know.
Cowboy 1: Yep, I think it is the end of the mail delivery as we know it.
Cowboy 2: I would like to shoot the varmints that want to ruin a perfectly good way to communicate.
I think I could have heard a grousing clay tablet expert yammer about papyrus. The print dudes are struggling with twisted knickers over digital today.
What’s a-goin’ on today, partner?
First, the good old Web is already gone. Email is collateral damage. The mantra of Gordon Gekko has enchanted enough people to make information the equivalent of manipulated messages. So, the Web is dead and it is not coming back. Ever.
Second, the pace of change is accelerating. The reason is money, not what users need or think each needs. Greed is good and greed is transformative.
Third, walled gardens solve a lot of problems. Customers are chained to specific vendors. Captivity is what makes accountants happy. Captive customers behave in a predictable way and for budgeting purposes, that predictability is the chief good.
One can take different sides of the argument. That diversity is what passes for critical thinking today. Before grousing about Facebook, I think it is useful to look at the data. Facebook has stickiness, 650 million users, and a growing arsenal of features. Why go anywhere else?
Research has been changed. I like the word “devolve”. The Web is on a long hill with a street named decline. Remember the telephone and its early supporters’ idea that it would be used to disseminate important news. The phone today is the stuff that makes 12 years old have goose bumps. Change. Already accomplished.
Just my opinion.
Stephen E Arnold, December 3, 2010
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What’s going on?
Modern Monopolies: Looking the Wrong Way
December 2, 2010
Far be it from me, an addled goose, pushing 70, living in rural Kentucky to disagree with super-poobahs. You can point your browser thing at “Should We Be Afraid of Apple, Google and Facebook?” and get a damning indictment and a rousing cheer for big business.
Neither the guru nor the professor are looking at the issue in the light of day. I am. Here’s the scoop. Familiarize yourself with Jacques Ellul, a dude of little or no interest to gurus or professors today. Dude Ellul was a Catholic priest, a Marxist, and generally pragmatic about technology and its alleged benefits.
His writings about technology are not what attract clicks on Reddit or Digg. There’s no Facebook page for Le bluff technologique. Paris: Hachette, 1988. Not too many tweets either.
Dude Ellul’s view is that technology triggers a chain of events. Some events have unexpected consequences. The really bad consequences get fixed by applying more technology. There you have it.
The company’s that the guru and the professor impugn cannot help themselves. The context in which each operates rewards their actions in many ways. Technology is now an end in itself.
Forget Skynet and other crazy robot-alien fantasies. The world is plugged in. Paraphrasing another professor who was mostly wrong is plugged in and ungovernable.
For search and content this means, in my opinion:
- Consumers cannot discern or filter content. Whatever is out there is okay for most folks. Think a different type of serfdom.
- Political entities lack the tools to operate in any other way than tactical response. A plan is almost guaranteed to go off the rails but you can “manage” with Pivotal Tracker, not share context.
- Companies are like hapless sharks who can never rest.
There are what look like monopolies. Monopolies are an illusion. We have an environment produced by technology and those who would use it for instrumental purposes.
Dude Ellul is more right than the guru and the professor in my opinion. I am glad I am old. Dude Ellul is probably glad he has leveled up.
Stephen E Arnold, December 2, 2010
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The Search Conference Wars
November 24, 2010
I was in Washington, DC last week for the Mark Logic Government Summit. I estimated that there were between 450 and 550 people at the Tyson’s Corner-area event.
I learned from a colleague at a conference across town that there were 1,200 people at the Information Today multi-part search, knowledge management, and digital everything conference at the Renaissance Center in the District of Columbia.
Sys-Con’s “Endeca Government Summit: Important Context on a Key Mission Area” reported:
The Endeca Government Summit was yesterday. The agenda included some fantastic presentations from customers who have used Endeca to address issues requiring incredible scale (billions of records) and incredible scope (including the need to discover meaning in data in milliseconds) and human-focused interfaces (including, in every solution I saw, an ability to enable humans to interact with data in ways that search never enables).
I heard that there were “hundreds” at the Endeca event.
I don’t doubt that the encomia in the Sys-Con write up is accurate. The Mark Logic Conference was excellent, but I was a captive participant and anything in which I get involved looks great from my vantage point. I think Mark Logic’s speaker line up from the military was more timely than Endeca’s but that’s my opinion.
The Information Today event yielded little feedback, and I assume that like its other conferences, the Information Today event was like previous Information Today events.
My views on these competing events are as follows:
- Vendors definitely like to target November for conferences
- Stacking up search and content processing conferences at about the same time is like the medieval practice of grouping shoe makers on the same street
- There must be a heck of a lot of people in Washington, DC with an unquenched thirst for information about finding information.
What’s this tell me?
I think there will be more piling on. An anchor conference—say, for instance, the Information Today road shows with their predictable line up of topics and speakers—pulls attention to a window of time. Then the savvy vendors target a conference at the same time, offering possibly more compelling programs. The result is a conference competition.
Who wins?
My view is that the magnet conference is carrying much of the marketing cost burden. Once the anchor event publicizes what it is doing, it becomes somewhat easier for other organizers to offer another venue to customers and prospects.
What happens when the magnet loses some of its pulling power? Interesting question. For now, the conference wars are minor skirmishes in the fight for the hearts and minds of information access. What’s ahead? Interesting question.
Stephen E Arnold, November 24, 2010
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A Real Jab at Google: Facebook and Artificial Intelligence
November 18, 2010
I know that the poobahs swarming around the various summits and “numbered” conferences are excited about the future presented through Dollar General eye glasses. Not me. I am warm and comfy at the goose pond, reading “DST CEO Yuri Milner: Facebook Will Help Power Artificial Intelligence In Ten Years.” In my opinion the comments about Facebook and artificial intelligence are more important than the Beatles on iTunes, the wacky predictions of a bubblicious venture firm, and the last gasps of companies ready for the rest homes.
Here’s the passage I noted:
Milner believes that Facebook could be one of the platforms that drives the development of Artificial Intelligence over the next decade or so. AI probably isn’t the first thing you think about these days when it comes to Facebook, but he has a point — that the site processes an incredible amount of data, and it has the potential to develop powerful filtering tools using both this content and social signals.
Please, read the original write up. I want to offer three observations and then paddle back to the shore for a evening snack of day old bread.
First, the remark underscores the importance of “member” input where the crazed postings are complemented by whatever data the “member” provides. Data with these characteristics are likely to be better than numerical recipes that try to build data sets and fill in the blanks. Google is better at the numerical recipe work; Facebook is a leader in the crazed postings and “member” provided data. Facebook has an advantage.
Second, the comment adds another example of Google’s inability to regain the momentum the firm had in brute force search prior to 2006 or 2007. Until thee pivotal years, it was Google’s world. The emergence of Facebook as a player in a key technical activity is like an aging athlete who finally hears, “You can’t do it any more, bud.” Ouch.
Third, Facebook is now officially a technical problem for Google. The Xooglers at Google know the weak spots and I think Facebook will exploit them. After I learned about the Facebook “permanent distraction” approach to communication, the flaws of Google’s offerings become much more obvious.
Check out the interview.
Stephen E Arnold, November 18, 2010
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