Disturbing Description of Google
September 4, 2010
This item could be categorized under “CEOs And Their Scary Ideas.” We get a look at Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s dystopian view of the future in an article at gawker.com. “Google’s CEO Has Scary Ideas For Children” outlines an odd idea. According to the article, “he predicts, apparently seriously, that every young person one day will be entitled automatically to change his or her name on reaching adulthood in order to disown youthful frolics stored on their friends’ social media sights…” Can this be true? The article expresses concerns about society as a whole not fully understanding what happens when everything is available, knowable, and recorded by everyone all the time. That’s definitely a valid concern. If you need a name-change at the end of childhood, how do you escape your sins as an adult? Not all indiscretions are youthful. I recall that the top Googler was annoyed at one Web news outfit for writing about Mr. Schmidt using information publicly available via Google. Hmmm. Two sets of rules? Do these “fluid rules” apply to individuals who write about liaisons and those about whom one writes? Maybe the rules are situational? Logical, Capt. Kirk.
Stephen E Arnold, September 4, 2010
Consultants Face the Lash and Backlash
September 4, 2010
Okay, a person gets RIF’ed. Or one gets nuked. Or one gets rationalized. What does one do? One can mail résumés, work on your LinkedIn postings, make phone calls, or become a consultant. Not much is required except printing a business card, creating a free Web page on Weebly.com, and posting to social sites.
Fortunately, as an addled goose, I am unqualified for modern day consulting. Geese in general and this goose in particular is suited to paddling around the pond or making like Jackson Pollock with a car hood as my canvas. However, lots of folks are hanging up their shingle and chasing billable hours.
There are quite a few prospects out there in the present business jungle. A charity’s supporters don’t stuff money in envelopes. Government bean counters kill a program. A company’s profits crater. So, wise managers, accustomed to getting a pay check every two weeks, hire a management consultant to access the situation and recommend solutions.
Here’s a news flash. Instead of growing the company, the consultant’s recommendations backfire, and the outfit the consultant advises enters a death spiral, maybe declaring bankruptcy or selling at a bargain price like mismatched shoes at Carnival Shoe Store, the buy one, get a pair free outfit down the hollow.
Sound familiar? In an article titled “Management Consultancy Scam” the news site nation.com expounds on a fascinating study conducted by the Cranfield School of Management. The article says that “just 36 percent” were happy with the consultant’s results. The strategies pushed by these consultancies are in fact disastrous and hasten the collapse of a company or service.
When folks who depend on a paycheck lose their exoskeleton, what are they supposed to do? Mow grass? Install electric fences? Paint houses? Nope, consult. A feedback loop of sort emerges, don’t you think? Everyone knows how to search. How tough can it be to be a search expert? Trivial for sure. I am “real” certain.
Stephen E Arnold, September 4, 2010
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Internet Brownout?
September 3, 2010
Perhaps it is the summer heat in Harrod’s Creek? Maybe it is careless or poorly trained workers? Maybe it is stray bullets from avid squirrel hunters. Internet connectivity in rural Kentucky has been lousy. I may not be alone in this de-connected space for much longer.
There’s growing congestion on one of America’s highways, and reports say the problem will only get worse. In the past few years, America’s technological network has gone from hare to tortoise. Seekingalpha.com explores this issue in its article titled “Traffic Jam On The Information Superhighway”. The article says “one of the main causes of the congestion is the exponential growth of smartphones,” and the iPhone 4G “uses hundreds of times more network capacity than older phones.”
The article see the global build out as a huge investment opportunity. Much of the problem is yet to come–as more people in the developing world join the broadband and mobile communities, immense strains will be placed on the global network over the next few years. We’ll be watching this story closely if the cable television signal stabilizes. Tough to surf or be a couch French fry when the pipes are not working. Grrrr.
Stephen E Arnold, September 3, 2010
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Open Source At The Smithsonian
September 3, 2010
Resource shelf.com received several emails from people wondering about the technology used to power the Smithsonian’s popular Collection Center catalog. A new article titled “What Search Technology Is The Smithsonian Collection Search Center Catalog Using?” answers that question. The article says, “Bottom line. It was built using open-source technology.”
The museum needed a system capable of supporting a wide range of documents and objects. In the end, the Smithsonian selected open-source Lucene/Solr indexing software for the project, which has given the Smithsonian a flexible and scalable indexing environment. The Smithsonian has also enhanced their online display by programming in a Java environment.
This is a major coup for open-source SOLR/Lucene software. We’ll be paying close attention. As budget pressures increase for certain types of organizations, open source search solutions may be getting more attention. With search vendors morphing into the great marketing hyperbole dimension, Lucene/Solr may be the down to earth solution that fills a void. If you want to download a Lucene/Solr system, navigate to Lucid Imagination.
Stephen E Arnold, September 3, 2010
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Study May Zap Content King App Fantasy
September 3, 2010
The addled goose is the first to quack about lousy research. In his 66 years, the goose has seen, participated in creating, reading, and analyzing research reports. Some from the blue chip outfits meet rigorous standards. Others, usually from the azurini, would have earned a D or F when I did a short bout of teaching when I worked as a teaching assistant.
Now the former English teachers who work in azure chip consulting firms get testy when I point out that the studies often use weird methods for creating a sample, lack meaningful analyses, and offer sci-fi type conclusions. That’s okay. I know that research methods are mostly great fun, and the tidal wave of studies make clear the truth in old saws about statistics; for example: “Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are more pliable.” For folks who don’t know what to do with their work time, studies fill up the gaps.
Nevertheless, I want to point to a study. Yep, I know it’s risky. Point your browser at “Study: Music, Not Apps, Rules iTunes.” Here’s the key passage from the azure chip outfit which produces data on activities that I find mostly inscrutable:
Software apps, which enable iPhone and iPod Touch users to do everything from play games to keep track of their weight, continue to grow in popularity but music is “still central to the iTunes experience,” according to a survey from research firm, The NPD Group. NPD says in contrast with years past, “when every dollar spent at iTunes was on music and video,” apps are now vying for a chunk of that money.
Who can get nervous about this type of statement? Certainly not the goose. The write up does not provide too much data which I find interesting. And the notion that applications for mobile devices like the iPhone and iPod Touch are “vying” for a piece of the action. With a sample of 3,800, it’s clear that “free” is a plus and that where money is concerned, folks buy music.
Why mention this music – Apps issue?
Some publishers may still see the iPad and related devices as a way to get to dry land from the waves in the Great Lake of Red Ink. My take on the research summary is that free is good, music seems to open billfolds and wallets, and Apps are in the race. Will the ponies who place third win the big race? And search. Not in the race it seems. My hunch is that third place horses are long shots. Just my opinion.
Stephen E Arnold, September 3, 2010
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Advanced Analytics and Search
September 3, 2010
In a recent meeting, a vice president with some basic technology knowledge asked, “How do I know anything unless I have some metrics?”
Good question. Quite a few folks find that getting reports about Web traffic provide the definitive method of figuring out what’s what on the Internet. Of course, when one digs into Web traffic there remains some mushiness, but, hey, for those who can use a mobile phone and an ATM, any metrics are better than no metrics.
No surprise, then, that advanced analytics is the talk of the analytics community on the Internet, and the companies are curious and excited about it. It utilizes sophisticated techniques to understand patterns and predict outcomes. The recent IT-analysis.com blog post “Five Requirements for Advanced Analytics” announces the need to develop skills for advanced analytics, being different from the business analytics in use presently.
This article feeds the analytics frenzy: “[Analytics] includes complex techniques such as statistical modeling, machine learning, linear programming, mathematics, and even natural language processing (on the unstructured side)”.
The five essential skills for the business users mentioned are; understanding the data in its entirety, appreciating data quality issues, knowing the questions to ask, getting proper training on the tools use, and thoroughly knowing the output analysis so you can defend it. Search is now more just a list of results, and we wonder if the search wizards can deliver useful information without understanding how a script can tally some clicks, and clever souls find ways to spoof the Google.
Enter search engine optimization: The Analytics Gang, Wanted Dead or Alive, Social or Outcast. Reward.
Leena Singh, September 3, 2010
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Send Your RSS feeds in Global Languages
September 1, 2010
Now the non-English speaking natives can get the RSS feeds in their own language. The mediacastermagazine.com recent news “RSS Feed Translation for Bloggers and Social Networking Firms” informs that the Toronto-based YYZ Translations will make available RSS feeds, translating them into 80 languages.
According to the article, the company claims about its translations, “will be more accurate, culturally correct and contextually to the point than those executed by automated machine translation systems like Google Translate”. This facility will help weblogs, RSS feed publishers, and the other social media platforms reach to a wider international audience.
This useful service will use a combination of digital technology and human translators to make the RSS feeds as powerful and accurate as the source message, after undergoing a qualitative control process of translation, editing, and review. The concept is interesting, and worth a look. The goslings see an opportunity to disseminate information is interesting ways.
Leena Singh, September 1, 2010
Lycos Wants a Come Back
September 1, 2010
Remember Lycos. The search system that made spider names trendy. The search system from Carnegie-Mellon University. The search company that bought our The Point (Top 5% of the Internet) when some of the azurini were playing with toys, not iPad apps? Yes, remember.
The Internet and its search engines continue to evolve and some change hands like Lycos. Featured on brightsideofnews.com, the recent business news article “Lycos, Granddaddy Of Search Engines, Finds A New Home” informs that Lycos has yet again been resold, this time to an Indian Digital Marketing company, Ybrant Digital.
Setup in 1994, Lycos has been one of the pioneers, and soon became the largest search engine. However, its sale price dwindled from $5.4 billion to $36 million in about 10 years. That’s a curve that vectored through the US, Spain, and points beyond.
Having had its own search algorithm and crawler, Lycos now uses the FAST crawler and takes search results from Yahoo!. Amongst many Internet brands that Lycos acquired since its inception, was Chris Kitze and Stephen E Arnold’s ‘The Point’ (Top 5% of the Internet) service. Now that Lycos itself has a new owner, the question is whether Lycos will be able to regain its former position in the world of online.
Leena Singh, September 1, 2010
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Exclusive Interview: Charlie Hull, FLAX
September 1, 2010
Cambridge, England, has been among the leaders in the open source search sector. The firm offers the FLAX search system and offers a range of professional services for clients and those who wish to use FLAX. Mr. Hull will be one of the speakers in the upcoming Lucene Revolution Conference, and I sought his views about open source search.
Charlie Hull, FLAX
Two years ago, Mr. Hull participated in a spirited discussion about the future of enterprise search. I learned about the firm’s clients which include Cambridge University, IBuildings, and MyDeco, among others. After our “debate,” I learned that Mr. Hull worked with the Muscat team, a search system which provided access to a wide range of European content in English and other languages. Dr. Martin Porter’s Muscat system was forward looking and broke new ground in my opinion. With the surge of interest in open source search, I found his comments quite interesting. The full text of the interview appears below:
Why are you interested in open source search?
I first became interested in search over a decade ago, while working on next-generation user interfaces for a Bayesian web search tool. Search is increasingly becoming a pervasive, ubiquitous feature – but it’s still being done so badly in many cases. I want to help change that. With open source, I firmly believe we’re seeing a truly disruptive approach to the search market, and a coming of age of some excellent technologies. I’m also pretty sure that open source search can match and even surpass commercial solutions in terms of accuracy, scalability and performance. It’s an exciting time!
What is your take on the community aspect of open source search?
On the positive side, a collaborative, community-based development method can work very well and lead to stable, secure and high-performing software with excellent support. However it all depends on the ‘shape’ of the community, and the ability of those within it to work together in a constructive way – luckily the open source search engines I’m familiar with have healthy and vibrant communities.
Commercial companies are playing what I call the “open source card.” Won’t that confuse people?
There are some companies who have added a drop of open source to their largely closed source offering – for example, they might have an open source version with far fewer features as tempting bait. I think customers are cleverer than this and will usually realize what defines ‘true’ open source – the source code is available, all of it, for free.
Those who have done their research will have realized true open source can give unmatched freedom and flexibility, and will have found companies like ourselves and Lucid Imagination who can help with development and ongoing support, to give a solid commercial backing to the open source community. They’ll also find that companies like ourselves regularly contribute code we develop back to the community.
What’s your take on the Oracle Google Java legal matter with regards to open source search?
Well, the Lucene engine is of course based on Java, but I can’t see any great risk to Lucene from this spat between Oracle and Google, which seems mainly to be about Oracle wanting a slice of Google’s Android operating system. I suspect that (as ever) the only real benefactors will be the lawyers…
What are the primary benefits of using open source search?
Freedom is the key one – freedom to choose how your search project is built, how it works and its future. Flexibility is important, as every project will need some amount of customization. The lack of ongoing license fees is an important economic consideration, although open source shouldn’t be seen as a ‘cheap and basic’ solution – these are solid, scalable and high performing technologies based on decades of experience. They’re mature and ready for action as well – we have implemented complete search solutions for our customers, scaling to millions of documents, in a matter of days.
When someone asks you why you don’t use a commercial search solution, what do you tell them?
The key tasks for any search solution are indexing the original data, providing search results and providing management tools. All of these will require custom development work in most cases, even with a closed source technology. So why pay license fees on top? The other thing to remember is anything could happen to the closed source technology – it could be bought up by another company, stuck on a shelf and you could be forced to ‘upgrade’ to something else, or a vital feature or supported platform could be discontinued…there’s too much risk. With open source you get the code, forever, to do what you want with. You can either develop it yourself, or engage experts like us to help.
What about integration? That’s a killer for many vendors in my experience.
Why so? Integrating search engines is what we do at Flax day-to-day – and since we’ve chosen highly flexible and adaptable open source technology, we can do this in a fraction of the time and cost. We don’t dictate to our customers how their systems will have to adapt to our search solution – we make our technology work for them. Whatever platform, programming language or framework you’re using, we can work with it.
How do people reach you?
Via our Web site at http://www.flax.co.uk – we’re based in Cambridge, England but we have customers worldwide. We’re always happy to speak to anyone with a search-related project or problem. You’ll also find me in Boston in October of course!
Thank you.
Stephen E Arnold, September 1, 2010
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Attensity and Its Positioning
August 31, 2010
I found it notable that Attensity, a company known for its “deep extraction” technology, authored a feature in Mashable. Mashable is a Web publication that touches the throbbing heart of the Web world and its denizens. I cannot recall a company with roots in the arcane world of content processing and the government information projects contributing a story about social branding to the pulsing Mashable readership.
But the story appeared. You will want to read “7 Steps to Measuring Your Brand’s Social Media Health”. Like Lexalytics and Vivisimo, Attensity has been working overtime to develop a product and service line up that would generate healthy revenue and deliver a stakeholder pleasing profit. Attensity’s positioning seems to be expanding to embrace the world of processing social media to determine if a company is hot or not, provide insight about opinion upticks and downticks, and other “metrics” that are useful to sales, marketing, and azurini.
Here’s the passage I found quite interesting:
Social media is very easily measured with various indicators like share of voice, reach, retweets, and comments. However, measuring without a clear objective in mind won’t bring you closer to success. Nowadays, its not enough to have and execute a social media policy. You need to be able to gauge its success, measure it, and see that it remains healthy and vibrant.
The “easily” through me for a moment as did the reference to a previous Mashable story. I think I understand the message, but I am not sure how “easy” the methods for determine social health are. What’s easy is providing the client with a report without any of the details about what’s going on under the hood. If Attensity can package “a social health monitoring service,” then the company could steal customers from Lexalytics and other companies chasing the ad sales and marketing sectors.
My thoughts on the positioning followed a slightly different line.
First, Attensity’s no cash merger with German firms and its push into social media reminded me how much the market for next generation content processing has changed in the last 36 months. The US government funds that spawned many content processing companies may be tapering off. This means that companies with the type of technology that makes Department of Defense professionals salivate has to be repurposed to new markets. Is this what Attensity is doing?
Second, the positioning and verbiage used to make the firm’s technology outputs “easy” remind me that the new markets want vastly simplified value propositions. “Easy” can generate new sales, and I know that “easy” rings the chimes of consulting firms who are abandoning the traditional information retrieval sector like rats leaving a sinking ship. I expect to see a flurry of consulting reports that describe these new, “easy” products and services. I don’t think the methods are easy, but I want Attensity and similar firms to thrive. “Easy”? Never.
Finally, the vocabulary in this Mashable write up and on the Attensity Web site follow the approach taken by Vivisimo. These former search and content processing vendors are like leopards who have pulled off a genetic trick. The spots are gone, replaced by language and services that sound more like companies that are in the research and integration business. Little wonder Garnter folded its search quadrant tent. I think more search and content processing companies will try to pull off this leopard-changing-its-spots trick.
Just my opinion.
Stephen E Arnold, August 31, 2010
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