Will Microsoft Be Able to Succeed Online?
August 30, 2010
It has been nearly a lost decade for Microsoft online, generating no returns on its Internet ventures. The ZDNet.com article “Microsoft’s Lost Eight Years Online: More Than $6 Billion Down the Tubes” discusses the financial hits of Microsoft’s Internet follies, comparing its fiscal reports of the past ten years. Microsoft has delivered a profit here and there since it has been consolidating online results, but the profits are rare.
Though the software giant says it believes in the shareholder value and thinks of the Return on Investment (ROI), it has ever been in huge operating losses, and did not make much money. Microsoft has recently touted its success with Bing, and the search engine will continue to gain share on successful partnership with Yahoo. Microsoft’s ineptness has until now cost it what Amazon, Google, and Face book have gained, but now all eyes are on cloud computing to cover the lost grounds.
On the other hand, Microsoft has a stake in Facebook. Google doesn’t. Who looks smarter in social media?
Leena Singh, August 30, 2010
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Tooting Tut Texts
August 27, 2010
The spirit of monitoring stretches to almost all areas of business, but nobody ever imagined it would pop up in a pyramid. While they are not using monitoring technology, we were struck with the similarities between a recent project by Oxford University and monitoring technology. Featured in a Read Write Web article, “iTut: All of Carter’s Tutankhamen Materials Now Online,” this fascinating story detailed how the mostly unseen documents of Howard Carter’s famous 1922 discovery of King Tut’s tomb are fully available online. “In 1995,” the article says, “the staff of Oxford University’s Griffith Institute of Egyptology, the custodians of Carter’s papers, started digitizing his Tut archive. The collection included all the photographs, glass negatives, reams of notes and diaries.” This now gives archeologists access to the tomb from anywhere on earth.
Pat Roland, August 27, 2010
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Digital Information and Progress?
August 25, 2010
Progress is an interesting idea. I read the “A Smartphone Retrospective” and looked at the pictures on August 19, 2010. To be candid, I didn’t give it much thought. Math Club types, engineers, and Type A marketers have been able to cook up the progress pie for many years. In fact, prior to the application of electricity, life was pretty much unchanged for millennia. A hekatontarch in Sparta could have been dropped into the Battle of Waterloo and contributed without much effort. Drop that same grunt into a SOCOM unit, and he wouldn’t know how to call in air cover.
Let’s take a trip down memory lane.
Most people in Farmington, Illinois, not far from where I grew up, believed that the world got better a little bit at a time. The curves most people believed and learned in grade school went up.
Well, most people believed that until the price for farm output stagnated. Then the strip mining companies made life a little better by pushing some money into the hands of farmers. Well, the money dried up and the land was not too useful for much after the drag lines departed.
Then the price of chemical fertilizer climbed. Well, then the government paid farmers not to farm so things looked better. Each year the automobiles got bigger and more luxurious and those who wanted the make the American dream a reality left for the big city. Now Farmington, Illinois, is a quiet town. Most of the stores are closed, and it is a commuter city for folks lucky enough to have a job in the economically-trashed central Illinois region about one hour south of Chicago.
Progress.
What’s happening in online and digital information is nothing particularly unusual. The notion of “progress”, at least in Farmington, is different today from what it was in 1960. Same with online, digital information, and technological gimcracks. I realized that most folks have not realized that “progress” may not be the bright, shiny gold treasure that those folks in Farmington accepted as the basic assumption of life in the U. S. of A.
Adobe and Its Digital Clay Bricks: No Search Needed
August 25, 2010
Former Ziffer John C. Dvorak (the real Dvorak and podcast personality) posted “Adobe Has the Right Stuff.” In the write up, Mr. Dvorak points out that Adobe has some competition-killers like Photoshop and the company has an opportunity to roll out some interesting new money makers such as a Linux-centric content creation center.
I don’t agree.
I am not too interested in graphics, although I know that is Adobe’s cash cow. I do know that Adobe has been unable to deliver acceptable search and retrieval across its own content for as long as I can remember. The company has floundered from search vendor to search vendor and still seems unable to make a snappy, intuitive search system available. Federation across Adobe’s wacky line up of sites is not working for me. Anyone remember Lextek International in Acrobat 6? Didn’t think so?
Adobe’s patent application US2010/0185599 underscores how Adobe’s own approach to content is designed to allow other vendors to index content created by an Adobe application. Adobe has worked hard to convince publishers to standardize on the Adobe platform, not the evil empire’s Quark system or even more expensive, bespoke solutions from specialist firms.
Adobe is rooted in print production and approaches many problems from the print angle of attack. Our tests of Adobe’s rich media applications reveals unstable, buggy and unpredictable behavior. Performance problems plague Adobe products even when the applications run on zippy, multi-core processors.
How’s that Adobe Premier interface grab you? At my age of 66, I can’t read the darned labels. What happened to black text on white background. I sort of can see the color video content. I don’t need it to “jump” at me. And the state shifting controls? Those are a wonder to behold. When Sony Vegas is easier to use that an Adobe product, I know something is off center.
Our view is that Adobe is trying to maintain its position in the market, and it is going to have an increasingly difficult time. Here are the points we noted in our recent review of Adobe:
- Security. Adobe products are potential challenges for enterprise system administrators. I love PDFs with embedded excutables but after a decade no control to permit a specific number of PDF openings by a user in a password protected PDF.
- User experience. Sure, a Photoshop or Illustrator professional can use Adobe products, but this is the equivalent of learning that Oracle’s database is a piece of cake from an Oracle system administrator. Ordinary folks may have a different view of usability. I can’t even read the interface for Adobe’s new products with its wacky gray background and tiny white type. Am I alone?
- Stability. Maybe Photoshop doesn’t crash as often, but there are some exciting moments with Adobe’s video production software. Lots. Of. Exciting. Moments.
- Focus. Adobe has kicked Framemaker under the bus. I abandoned Version 9.0 for Version 7.0. Adobe has lost track of who uses what products for what purpose. The Linux version of Framemaker sucked, and Framemaker once ran natively on Solaris.
- Production. Professionals from magazine make ready shops to printers have learned to live with Postscript, InDesign, and PDFs. I am not sure I am happy with my hard won knowledge because quite a few of the issues have to do with careless programming by contractors or staff in far off lands than what is required to create a content object. Let me give one example that bedeviled me yesterday: Color matching across Adobe’s own products and into whizzy digital printers. Hello, hello. Anyone at Adobe actually do this type of work for real?
In short, search is a core function. Adobe has never gotten it right either on its Web sites, in its products Help function, or in its “content objects”. If you can make information findable, that’s sort of a core weakness, and it is a key indicator of how many “content” issues Adobe has not handled in an elegant, effective manner.
Bottom-line: Revenue growth will be an interesting challenge for Adobe’s management team. I just rolled back to Photoshop Version 7.1 on one production machine. The interface is usable, not logical, but closer to the real world in which I work. Search. Long walk ahead. Linux support. Adobe has to spend a lot of money to keep its sail boats in trim. I don’t think the company has the cash or the technical resources at this time. In short, Adobe is more vulnerable than some perceive.
Stephen E Arnold, August 25, 2010
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Google Ads and Their Limitations
August 24, 2010
Publishers are not going to be happy with the tidbit tucked into “iFive: Goggles Coming to iPhone, Google Ads Can’t Fund Magazines, Cairn Energy, Smelling Robot, Russian Criminal Life.” Here’s the factoid from Fast Company:
A British business specializing in digital versions of magazines has revealed just how much money Google Ads can make for established magazines. “Nuppence ha’penny.” Hah!
What’s this mean? First, Google Ads require lots of traffic to generate a big payoff. The tinier the topic, the less likely Google Ads will generate huge bucks. Try Tiger Woods and now you are talking.
Second, subscriptions or outright grants, donations, or government support will be needed to make some online content viable. Most vulnerable? The traditional media.
Third, as challenging as Apple’s business methods are, the iPad and its kin may become the life preserver many information companies will try to grab. The problem is that the iPad does not solve fundamental problems of readership, demand, cost of content creation, and marketing.
My take is that publishers will try to jump into rich media, which is not these firms’ core competency. The result? More losses and more opportunities for those with a core competency in new media.
Stephen E Arnold, August 24, 2010
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The Google Commodity Problem
August 23, 2010
Fast Company ran an interesting story after the goose headed for the pond this afternoon. “Google’s Success in Facebook Game: Handicapping the Odds” zipped through some familiar observations about Google and its somewhat tardy response to Facebook. One highlight was pointing out that Google’s senior manager for things social and mobile, Vic Gundotra, presented a Math Club rationalization about Google. Fast Company reported:
Former head of Google’s mobile unit, Vic Gundotra, posted a spicy blog message yesterday to note that over 100 million Google users check places on Google maps, lots use Google’s MyLocation feature (that lets you track your position even in the absence of GPS), many people love Latitude on Android–the Google “checkin” and friend-tracker app, as well as Place Pages which adds extra local info to locations in Latitude, such as photos or reviews. In the immediate aftermath of the roll-out of Facebook’s Places application, it’s obvious what Gundotra was trying to do: He was engaging in a little feisty PR along the lines of “But Google lets you do all that stuff already, and millions of folk have been using it for years!”
Very good. The key passage in the write up was, in my opinion, this statement:
But the biggest problem Gundotra inadvertently highlighted is that (with the admitted exception of Android, which is a strong offering that stands alone) Google’s users tend to think of its services as a commodity.
Bingo.
The addled goose’s thoughts after reading the story were:
- The past may not be a predictor of the future. What Google did when it was in happy face mode does not seem to have the same magic now that the company has made some interesting moves with regard to Verizon, Wi-Fi, child care, China, and acquisitions.
- Oracle may rain on Google’s Android parade. The Sun is not shining on Java at the moment.
- Amazon and Apple keep on moving forward. Amazon is doing a good job in cloud computing and Apple is certainly pumping hardware and hooking folks into the iTunes’ ATM.
Can the Math Club ethos triumph? I am not so sure. Even cheerleaders like Leo LaPorte and his band of Twits are singing different tunes of late. Fast Company nailed it: commodity products and services for free. If ads weaken, the Google may be in a frenzied search for new revenue. That will be exciting. After 11 years, the company has essentially one revenue stream. What are the weaknesses of a monoculture? Shoot. I can’t remember. Something about an inability to resist a fungus or blight. Does not matter. Math is math. Just the addled goose’s opinion.
Stephen E Arnold, August 23, 2010
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Is the Web Dead? You Are Reading This Post, Right?
August 20, 2010
The Web is dead, or so the famous geek magazine, Wired, recently proclaimed. Fortunately, cooler heads are prevailing. Tech and pop culture hotspot Boing Boing took this ridiculous claim to task in a recent article, “Is the Web Really Dead?”. Using Wired’s comically misguided charts and graphs as evidence of factual negligence, the article pointed out more than one “interesting editorial choice”. In fact, as Boing Boing pointed out in its own hilariously similar charts, the internet is actually getting more popular, stating, “[a]ccording to Cisco, the same source Wired used for its projections, total Internet traffic rose then from about one exabyte to seven exabytes between 2005 and 2010.” An exabyte, of course, is a stack of floppies as big as the fish I caught in Harrod’s Creek, Kentucky, last week.
We’d like to applaud Boing Boing for showing us that, just because a news source needs a splashy headline, that doesn’t make it fact. Clearly, the confusion of plumbing, information, and methods of access is painful.
Stephen E Arnold, August 20, 2010
Solr Glitch Reported
August 19, 2010
Short honk: Solr, the open source search system, has some glitches that the standalone installer is locked into the server, unless you open it up. Besides this, other observations reported in “Standalone Solr 9.0.1 Woes” force to conclude that the Solr installer is not as robust as Verity’s. Good news for Autonomy and a view that will make the open source search community scramble. According to the write up, Solr works fine locally, but issues crop up on a more robust server installation, where Solr gives no indication of connection, and may not report errors. Stay tuned.
Leena Singh, August 19, 2010
Vivisimo and Its New Positioning
August 19, 2010
I was poking around with Compete.com. Just for fun, I plugged in Endeca.com, dtSearch.com, Mindbreeze.com, and Vivisimo.com. Here’s the chart that Compete.com spit out. I view most usage reports as general indicators, not definitive data. But look at the top trending lines for Endeca and Vivisimo line:
What are these Vivisimo-hicans doing to scalp two competitors and challenge top-rated Endeca.com? The answer, based on my poking around, is that Vivisimo does not talk about search too much, does not use tired search jargon, or trot out search platitudes.
Vivisimo writes a combination of Latinized buzzwords and business school jargon. Here’s an example from the company’s news release “Top 10 Ways the US government Has Used Information Optimization to Save Tax Payers $300 Million.” Whoa, Nellie. In a time of de facto bankruptcy and government waste running amuck, Vivisimo is saving tax payers $300 million.
Here’s what the company says its Velocity Platform is doing:
Vivisimo, a leader in information optimization, today announced the top 10 ways its Information Optimization platform has saved taxpayers $300 million by helping the federal government become more efficient and improve national security. Over the past few years, federal agencies, including federally funded organizations, have saved hundreds of millions of dollars and improved America’s security posture by being able to quickly surf through mountains of information and pull relevant data that will allow federal employees and contractors to perform their job better and faster.
“Information optimization” is an interesting concept. It suggests that “information”–a concept not defined in the write up—can be optimized. “Optimize” to me connotes making a process as effective as possible or taking steps for me to make the most of an action such as my time at the gym. Optimizing information sounds pretty darned good, but I don’t know what it really means.
The news release continued:
Fortunately, Vivisimo’s Information Optimization Platform, provides capabilities that improve information access, re-use and collaboration across the full range of government activities. From internal knowledge portals that enhance agency performance to intelligence analysis, military operations and public-facing websites, Velocity helps government agencies fulfill their missions and deliver value to taxpayers.
Next the company explains that
Information Optimization is the process of finding insights across multiple systems and then delivering the right information to enable better business decisions that solve operating challenges and create economic value. The Velocity Platform helps organizations achieve information optimization through information connectivity and contextual intelligence that then enables organizational capabilities.
“Information” appears in this definition three times, optimization twice, and the notion of “contextual intelligence” (not defined) one time. I recall from my university days something called the “fog index”. My hunch is that this chunk of prose would tally a high fog score. Your mileage may differ.
What’s clear is that Vivisimo is selling its clustering and federated search technology in a quite different way. What’s also clear is that the people looking for information about solving “information problems” are find their way to the Vivisimo Web site. That big read line makes the other outfits’ search engine optimization strategies look less effective that Vivisimo’s interesting new approach.
Is Vivisimo radically different from what it was when it operated Clusty.com (now long gone) and processed content for some of its government clients? In my view, no. What’s different is that the management team is selling to the Federal government using jargon that is second nature to the procurement crowd.
Is there a lesson in this shift? Well, traditional search technology does not deliver the traffic that the Vivisimo jargon seems to deliver. The real test will come when hard financial data becomes available or the company gets acquired. In the meantime, other search vendors may want to study the Vivisimo vocabulary.
Do I know what the Vivisimo lingo means? Does that matter? Not in the world of Web site traffic in my opinion.
Stephen E Arnold, August 19, 2010
Update on Facebook Questions
August 18, 2010
It’s no secret that Google has been aiming to take a bite out of the social media world with programs like Buzz. However, social media kingpin Facebook is fighting back and possibly taking a bite out of Google’s search dominance. Digital Journal outlined this tactic in a recent article, “Facebook Launches Questions Feature.” The gist of the article is that Facebook will soon allow users to ask questions to the community and get answers. Anything from recipes, to historic facts and personal data are up for grabs. According to the piece, “Facebook Questions goes up against some strong players in the ask-a-question-get-an-answer field.” Namely, the king of answer providing: Google. This is going to be a fun war to watch, because Google is not used to losing and Facebook provides a unique spin on Q&A options that its competition can’t touch. Google seems to be a giant looking like the gorilla on top of the Empire State Building.
Pat Roland, August 18, 2010
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