A Fatter Big Brother? Search, Surveillance, and More
September 19, 2010
Big Brother. The Man. Spies. All three of these buzzwords conjures up many things in peoples minds. Who are they? What exactly do they do? Are they watching me and recording every move I make? To most, silly paranoia. But, in an eye opening article “Big Brothers of Multiculturalism,” Ms. Julienne Eden Buši?’s points got me thinking.
Follow along from this excerpt from the article:
The time I got into an argument with a waiter named Tony at a restaurant behind the Votiv Church and was escorted roughly out, never to return. They must have been snickering at my indignation, these omnipresent agents. Who does she think she is? Creating a ruckus, disturbing the other guests? Another time at the Prater amusement park, had they been there, too, when I had….oh the indignity of it all! It was bad enough that I remembered, but to think that others remembered, too, that they had written down all the gory details in a secret report so that others could visualize it as well….that they had then talked about it with still more people, perhaps their wives or colleagues, chuckled again about the “American girl”, her scandalous behavior, her embarrassment, excessiveness…this was unbearable. Who did she think she was, anyway? On the other hand, many of the other dossier allegations, observations, statements, conclusions were total fabrications, less believable than if they had written that I’d suddenly grown a long, hairy tail and sprouted horns, and intended quite obviously to gain praise from one’s boss, or perhaps a raise in position or salary. So how effective, after all, was the notorious spy agency, if its actions were predicated upon some agent’s literary flights of fancy?
The exact time frame of that statement is unknown, and information gathered in that same time is also unknown. The real question then is, What is the quality of the information gathered? Is it from a trusted source? How reliable are the “facts”? Someone gathered it from somewhere, but was that information handled correctly? It would also be a safe bet that some of this information recorded was not at all accurate, but an all out fabrication of a persons mind.
Fast forward to 9-11. After the attacks on America, the Federal Government shifts into ultra high gear. Overdrive is an understatement. The effort and investment are mirrored by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, “We did as we so often do in this country…the attitude was, if it’s worth doing, it’s probably worth overdoing.”
The article is a thought starter if largely unverified. Interesting to consider search, surveillance, and content processing in the context of Eden Buši?’s remarks.
Glenn Black, September 19, 2010
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Twitter Morphs into an Application
September 16, 2010
The Web pundits are in full stampede mode. Twitter, beloved of those who live and breathe real time connectivity, has changed from a Fail Whale into a Application. You can get a useful summary of the new features at “How Twitter.com Gives Your Favorite App a Run for Its Money.” The idea is that one does not need a service like Collecta.com or one of the dozen of other Twitter-attuned services to make sense of the tweet stream. Nope. You can do it all from Twitter. I find this development interesting for three reasons:
- The new layout makes monetization options blossom like dogwoods the week before the Kentucky Derby.
- The Twitter-centric services will have to put on their innovation sneakers and get moving. Twitter, long content to deal with stability issues and explaining what tweets are, is on the move.
- The shift takes another chunk out of the hide of traditional key word search. The narrowing by hash tags, the social component, the following—each of these makes a Boolean query look like a Babylonian clay tablet.
With complexity overwhelming many computer users, a service that becomes an application runs the risk of feature-itis. I find the new service quite interesting, but it tells me more about how companies like Twitter are reacting to the laundry list approach to finding information. That’s what makes the goose paddle faster.
And it is “real time.” That’s a fuzzy concept but it mashes up info in an app. Sort of new methinks.
Stephen E Arnold, September 16, 2010
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Microsoft and Its Next Big Challenge
September 16, 2010
As the giants Apple, Facebook and Google continue to grow man wander if there is a place for Microsoft among the elite. The author of the Xconomy article “Can Microsoft Outflank Apple, Facebook, and Google? A Strategy Update” attempts to get readers to see exactly how Microsoft continues to makes moves while flying under the radar. The author points to Microsoft’s business strategies and believes 2010 could be the “turning point for Microsoft new businesses.” Bing is Microsoft’s Web search project and the key to its strategy. Due to Microsoft’s aggressive marketing efforts it is a definite and dangerous Google competitor and continues to flourish and grow. Bing also created interest with the announcement that it “is officially powering all of Yahoo’s search capabilities in the U.S. and Canada.” As Microsoft grows and spreads its wings Google may end up paying the price for dropping the ball and missing the opportunity to spread and solidify its dominance.
Stephen E Arnold, September 15, 2010
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Social Media and Attensity: Pushing Forward
September 15, 2010
The social media world has become deeply rooted into the business world. The ZDNet article “Social “Rising Stars: Maria Ogneva on Scaling Social Media” gives Attensity’s Social Media Director, Maria Ogneva, a chance to discuss the importance of knowing what is going on in the social media world. According to the article social media is “heading straight into mass-market adoption, with no signs of slowing down.” It is the “#1 activity on the web” and with so much influence companies must find ways to listen to their customer online chatter and properly respond. Tools are needed that allow companies to filter customer responses, route them to the appropriate department and provide a prompt response. With so many different social media outlets, companies must decide which ones to put emphasis on and the employee assistance set up needed in order to properly handle customer issues. The social media world has become like a gossip column where customer comments, especially negative, spread like wildfire and can have lasting effects.
April Holmes, September 15, 2010
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Exalead Anchors US International Trade Commission
September 14, 2010
Drowning in a sea of data, one government agency recently had a life preserver tossed its way from one of the search industry’s best and brightest. “U.S. International Trade Commission Selects Exalead CloudView as Primary Search Engine” said:
USITC end user site surveys indicated that people couldn’t easily find the information they were looking for on http://www.usitc.gov via its search function. In 2009, USITC decided to replace its previous search software and reviewed a number of other enterprise search options for a solution that met its needs, was easy to administer, and fit its budget.
The United States International Trade Commission (USITC) (http://www.usitc.gov) handles issues of global and domestic trade with its quasi-judicial authority. In doing so, the agency collects massive quantities of data that both employees and visitors to its site needed to access.
The solution was Exalead CloudView, which “uses advanced semantic technologies to bring structure, meaning and accessibility to previously unused or under-used data in the new hybrid enterprise and Web information cloud.” For the USITC, specifically, CloudView aimed to provide two very specific functions. First, it gave outside users access to over 40,000 documents ranging from PDFs, spreadsheets, Word docs and more. Secondly, CloudView gave employees the ability to search file systems, folders and data repositories that, previously, had to be searched for in a time-consuming manual process.
The result is a highly efficient enterprise and web combination that improves the agency’s ability to monitor trade around the globe. The new system increased the range of available information, boosted performance and provided much-needed speed and simplicity to the Web site.
This is not only a big win for Exalead.
Stephen E Arnold, September 14, 2010
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Social Media: Will It Challenge Apple?
September 14, 2010
Google has not hit a home run in the social media market. Now it appears that Apple may face a similar challenge.
Facebook is not ready to shake hands with Apple because it’s got the ‘i-flu’, which could contagiously disrupt its massive user base with spam. It is the curse with which social networking sites are born, and have to live with. The TechNewsWorld article “Can Spam-Swamped Ping Survive Without Facebook?” sings about the spam problem, which few Sophos tech geeks say Apple could have avoided. Remember Facebook was earlier hit by Apple-related spam, and now even ping profiles are spammed, making people wonder why Apple is not beefing up its security.
Facebook is in security frenzy. “It’s looking closely at every link that comes to its service to see if it has malicious content,” reports the article. Normally Facebook’s APIs are open to other services; it isn’t taking any chances with Apple’s new iTunes-related social music network. The negotiation deadlock to let Apple access Facebook’s APIs, now probably depends on Ping’s success. Well, Ping sure needs Facebook, but is Apple repeating the Lord of the Flies plot?
Harleena Singh, September 14, 2010
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US Government and Its New IT Directions
September 14, 2010
The U.S. Government is shedding its old clothes for new ones that fit the new technology. The Obama Administration wants the agencies to be transparent and innovative, giving command to U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) to implement the “Open Government” initiative, which in turn created the Office of Citizen Services and Innovative Technologies (OCSIT).
The CRMBuyer interview “Making Change Happen Every Day: Q&A With GSA’s David McClure”, reports the OCSIT associate administrator comment that, “OCSIT is rapidly becoming a leader in the use of new media, Web 2.0 technologies, and cloud computing, to proactively make government agencies and services more accessible to the public.” According to him, by operating at the “enterprise level,” the GSA is aiming to accelerate the adoption of technologies, including mobile applications, and improving search engine capabilities, to involve greater customer interactions and gain efficiencies. We concur with David who feels enhancing citizen participation in government will pay dividends on technology investments, but by hiring IBM to add agility, we are not sure if it could be the swiftest runner on the track team.
Why are there so many separate search systems? Is one efficiency to use one indexing system?
Is IBM the swiftest cat in the nature preserve?
Leena Singh, September 14, 2010
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Some Social Traction: Grinding Google and Seducing Seniors
September 13, 2010
A recent survey reveals that the older American generation is becoming very active in social networking. Supposed to be the playground of the young, now “nearly half of the US Internet users ranging in age from 50 to 64, marking an 88 percent increase from the prior year” use the online communities such as Facebook, MySpace, or LinkedIn, according to the Medindia.net article “Older Americans Flocking to Online Social Networks.”
Though the older users still use email as their primary mode of communication, most were “inclined to reconnect with people from the past, potentially creating support networks for retiring or changing careers,” stated the Pew Research Center’s report based article. There is a double fold increase in seniors of 65 years of age and above using the social networking platform, who mainly use it for blogging or online health discussions. It shows that the once broadband-resistant community has now embraced it, as an everyday utility of life.
To add to the spice of the Facebook service, PCWorld reported “Facebook Now More Popular than Google.” Usage data are controversial. But for those who never look at log files, these seemingly concrete numbers are reality. This means that PCWorld’s statement “A total of 9.9 percent of consumers’ online time was spent on the site Facebook in August, surpassing time spent on Google which came in with 9.6 percent.”
Is the sky falling on Google? Nope, but this Facebook news makes clear that Google’s “speed” with regard to displaying laundry lists is not equally in its race against Facebook. As any race car driver knows, a few seconds lead can make a significant difference in the end-of-race pay off.
Stephen E Arnold, September 13, 2010
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KlickOut: Curation from the Users
September 11, 2010
In this age of information, KlickOut provides a platform where content is available for free, can be shared with the world, and even managed by the users themselves in a democratic fashion. For the content it receives from the people world over, the website says, “You are the editor and you are the reader here. We’re here to provide a place where people can collectively determine the value of content.”
Users upload their content as ‘Upcoming Stories’, which viewers add as favorites if they like it, and on gaining popularity the content is shifted to the home page of its respective category, on the basis of receiving a critical number of favorite counters. The best of each category makes it to the front page of the website, and the content varies from news to videos to images. Users can even login through their Facebook account and view or submit content in categories like movies, TV, celebrity, music, lifestyle, gaming, business, health, sports, world, and technology.
Curation is useful. Low or zero cost curation could be a solution to the laundry lists of baloney that are now delivered with Alacrity.
Leena Singh, September 11, 2010
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Mobile Search in China
September 11, 2010
The Middle Kingdom has a track record for doing it the “emperors’ way”. Want to negotiate a tough deal? No problem. Get the traders into a trading city. Offer a deal. If refused, the area in the walled city becomes a hot spot. I find these architectural details from the past interesting.
Now Baidu, China’s top search engine with the largest market share is making all plans to keep up with the recent tech trends, and cash on the boost in the mobile segment. The Yahoo news article “Baidu to Focus mobile Internet Investment on Search” unfolds the company’s strategy to stand on its strength of core search business for the mobile Internet. According to the news, Baidu will “include mobile Internet and ecommerce initiatives in the business-to-consumer space” as it targets to dominate the next big Internet space.
Completing ten years of its existence, Baidu began its preparations last year, to play big in the mobile Internet, with the “introduction of a Baidu text input method and mobile maps.” The news reveals further that, “the company also set up a mobile Internet department.” The first to offer WAP and PDA-based mobile search in China, Baidu is equipping itself to continue to be the search king in China.
Now what about those inside a trading city? Tough spot for some vendors who make big plans just like the traders traversing the Silk Road. Long way from home to try and get frisky.
Stephen E Arnold, September 11, 2010
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