IBM and System Quality
August 6, 2010
I just read “Global CIO: IBM’s Bank Outage: Anatomy Of A Disaster“. Assume the inforamtion is spot on. The magnitude of the failure for IBM and its financial services customer underscores the complexity of large-scale systems. Here’s the passage that caught my attention:
According to ChannelNewsAsia.com’s coverage of the press conference, IBM regional general manager Cordelia Chung said that “the personnel directly involved with this incident have been removed from direct customer support activity and disciplined” and that “IBM has taken steps to enhance the training of all related personnel on the most current procedures.” And the BusinessTimes.com.sg article quoted Chung as saying, “We have also taken steps to review installations of the same storage system at other financial institutions in Singapore for whom we provide maintenance services.”
The problem, therefore, is one of those pesky humans. In the rush to replace people, organizations may lack the expertise to make software and deliver on the promises the azurini (that is, self appointed experts) and marketing mavens flippantly assert are “no problem.”
Well, problem. The notion that giant systems will work as advertised is one that needs scrutiny. In monoculture-centric methods, a single point of failure can have significant consequences.
The azurini and the mavens will write a nice case study but it seems to me more is needed. Talking about a problem is not the same as preventing a problem. So many experts are in a hurry today. Golf and fiddling with an iPad must be more important.
Little wonder that many search and content processing systems disappoint their users.
Stephen E Arnold, August 6, 2010
Ah, Now We Are Really Beyond Search
August 4, 2010
I love it when Fortune Magazine makes a brilliant business breakthrough. I don’t mean record setting revenues or surging subscriptions. Nope. I refer to Fortune’s article “Google: The Search Party Is Over.” The London newspapers have been nibbling on this dog bone for a year or so. The entire publishing industry has been howling in their kennels when it realized that Google was sucking money from ads and providing a road map for other tech-savvy entrepreneurs to exploit the traditional information industry. In my “domains collide” essays and talks, I pointed out that upstarts like Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google were pulling meta-plays, leaving those engrossed in checkers at the mercy of the 3-D chess players. The strategy for linear tactics allowed a number of multi-billion dollar outfits to poke their noses into a lousy financial climate. To make matters worse, the children of the “media establishment” were embracing the upstarts’ methods, not mommy and daddy’s.
What makes the Fortune article fascinating is that Fortune is now asserting that the miserable Googlers are going to face some tough sledding. The examples on offer range from Facebook (which is more like Google than most New Yorkers care to admit) to the New Age Apple. I mean black T shirts and blue jeans! Gasp. None of that in the Yacht Club on 44th, thank you.
Please, read the original. Get it on paper if you can. That will provide a gentle stroke to the money people at Time Warner. Who cares about that environmental, eco-thing. I used to work in Manhattan. Once you cross the river into New Jersey, who cares about the rest of the world, right?
Here’s a passage that caught my attention:
Amazingly, Google’s biggest and most promising opportunity to date, its successful Android operating platform for mobile phones, doesn’t produce much revenue or profit for Google — by design. The company in 2007 made the technology available to all comers in a bid to make the web more accessible on smartphones and in turn to encourage consumers to do more Google searches on their mobile devices. The strategy worked. Encouraged by this easy access to Android, handset makers began churning out multimedia phones, and the Android platform has been a consumer success: Google says some 160,000 new Android devices are activated each day, and device makers from Motorola (MOT) to HTC have all released popular phones on the Android platform. But Google doesn’t make gobs of money on those devices. (Google dabbled in phones but discontinued its Nexus One after only six months.) Apple, on the other hand, also stoked the smartphone market with its iOS, but with very different financial results: Last year the company posted an estimated $15 billion in iPhone sales, a benefit of making the hardware and the software.
There are four issues in this addled goose mind about the Fortune analysis:
First, Google has momentum. Just like Microsoft, complaining is not likely to stop the revenue flow. Sure the Web is “ever changing” – unlike the magazine business/ As a result, in course corrections are easier and the Google will make them. Will each adjustment be a home run? Nope. Will these modifications keep the company on track? In my opinion, yep.
Second, the problems Google faces plague its competitors and the many Xooglers in these companies. The legal hassles are just beginning, and I think that Google has been able to pull a Ronald Reagan. Some of its competitors won’t be so lucky. A single Microsoft-style anti-trust decision can trigger some interesting changes without much warning.
Third, the companies that are winning are increasingly monopolistic. A single problem within these constructs can have unexpected consequences. For example, as wonderful as Amazon and Apple are, both find themselves heading for a head on collision with regard to digital content. When monopolies collide, the impact will be quicker and more severe than when new methods of performing certain work intersect. In short, I see upheavals ahead. Big upheavals.
Finally, the problems at Google began in the pre-IPO period from 2002 to 2004. The Google got caught with its paw in the Yahoo-Overture-GoTo advertising method cookie jar. In 2006, Google was at its peak. The company could do no wrong. But after 2006, the company’s “culture” began to shift and the firm became careless. Betas were no longer tests; betas were outright mistakes. From the little known Web Accelerator tizzy to the spectacular Buzz flop, the caution signal was activated in late 2006. Hmmm. four years ago.
We’ve been beyond search for several years. In fact it is going on five years since I wrote in Searcher Magazine that search was dead. Slow reaction time works on Sixth Avenue. Doesn’t work in Harrod’s Creek.
Stephen E Arnold, August 4, 2010
Freebie
Taxodiary: At Last a Taxonomy News Service
August 3, 2010
I have tried to write about taxonomies, ontologies, and controlled term lists. I will be the first to admit that my approach has been to comment on the faux pundits, the so-called experts, and the azurini (self appointed experts in metatagging and indexing). The problem with the existing content flowing through the datasphere is that it is uninformed.
What makes commentary about tagging informed? Three attributes. First, I expect those who write about taxonomies to have built commercially-successful systems to manage terms lists and that those term lists are in wide use, conform to standards from ISO, ANSI, and similar outfits. Second, I expect those running the company to have broad experience in tagging for serious subjects, not the baloney that smacks of search engine optimization and snookering humans and algorithms with their alleged cleverness. Third, I expect the systems used to build taxonomies, manage classification schemes, and term lists to work; that is, a user can figure out how to get information out of a system relevant to his / her query.
Splash page for the Taxodiary news and information service.
How rare are these attributes?
Darned rare. When I worked on ABI/INFORM, Business Dateline, and the other database products, I relied on two people to guide my team and me. The first person is Betty Eddison, one of the leaders in indexing. May she rest in indexing heaven where SEO is confined to Hell. Betty was one of the founders of InMagic, a company on whose board I served for several years. Top notch. Care to argue? Get ready for a rumble, gentle reader.
The second person was Margie Hlava. Now Ms. Hlava, like Ms. Eddison, is one of the top guns in indexing. In fact, I would assert that she is on my yardstick either at the top or holds the top spot in this discipline. Please, keep in mind that her company Access Innovations and her partner Dr. Jay ven Eman are included in my reference to Ms. Hlava. How good is Ms. Hlava? Very good saith the goose.
Pundit Ignores Information Retrieval Reality
August 1, 2010
Short honk: I don’t have the energy to deal with “Cookie Madness”, an essay that appeared in the Buzz Machine. Maybe academics are afflicted with “a certain blindness” to use William James’s brilliant phrase? Maybe academics forget that most of the people using computers don’t know that their online activities can be tracked, including hover time, mouse movement, and cursor movement patterns?
More important is the penchant for publishers and reporters to embrace the roots of American journalism. The catch phrase for this approach to information fit nicely under the precept at the Courier Journal’s WHAS television unit as “If it bleeds, it leads.” Why? Money. Simple. Fear, controversy, and explosive allegations are the chemicals that feed the modern Venus Fly Trap of journalism. Nothing is more effective than creating an issue and then huffing with indignation about that issue. Quite an information ecosystem, right?
The Wall Street Journal is owned by a modern media mogul, presumably an owner of properties employing journalism school graduates, new media specialists, and even PhDs in social collaboration (whatever that means). When these rosy cheeked warriors arrive, those titanium tipped diggers will ferret out what sells.
The Wall Street Journal is focusing on fear and breathless explanations of how a computer system can track a user’s every online action. Hey, as long as it generates sales and gets the pundits’ panties in a bind, the Wall Street Journal’s story about tracking is doing its job. At least the journalists working on the story have jobs, for a while at least.
Sigh. Next Hyde Park moment coming up. Film at 11. Now this word.
Stephen E Arnold, August 1, 2010
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When Domains Collide: The Apple-Time Bonk
July 30, 2010
My NFAIS lecture will appear in a forthcoming book of essays. I won’t drag you through the argument in that write up. I do want to call your attention to “Apple Blocks Time, Others from Running iPad Subscriptions.” The issue is that Apple is taking a somewhat arbitrary stand with regard to a publisher using the Apple ecosystem sell an Apple device user a subscription without Apple being in the middle. For me the key passage in the write up was:
Why Apple would reject subscriptions isn’t known, but it’s speculated that the company may be worried about how publishers would use the consumer data collected with each subscription, even though such collection is standard in the print world. Apple might alternately be worried about missed revenue opportunities, since allowing direct payment for subscriptions would cut the company out of some or a lot of income. The latter approach would be incongruous though, since Amazon and the Wall Street Journal can already bill customers directly in some cases.
The view from the goose pond is easy to explain. Publishers want control but no longer own the distribution channel. Apple owns the distribution channel, including the bank, the customer, and the information pipeline. Apple wants control and will take it until someone or something prevents Apple from doing what it wants. Publishers on the other hand think they are in control.
When domains collide, the nature of who is on top guarantees friction between those who are crushing others and who is being crushed. In this battle, the publishers like the music folks are learning that the person with power pretty much calls the shots.
Solution: find a way to regain control. This might be tough because a core competency in distributing information in a 19th century world does not mean much in the data-centric world of 2010. Apple, which was a possible dead on arrival company two or three times in the last 20 years found a way to survive. Now publishers have to find their solution.
Complaining and trying to be clever in order to “work around” the Apple guidelines won’t work. Anyway, it may be too late.
Stephen E Arnold, July 30, 2010
Freebie, unlike a single copy of Time
Quote to Note: Google about Android and Content
July 29, 2010
Here’s a quote to note. Today is July 29, 2010, and I don’t want this puppy to slip away. The story “Eric Schmidt on Google’s Next Tricks” is about Google’s dependence on advertising revenue. There is nothing wrong with billions of dollars. The problem is that Apple’s revenues are more diversified and Apple is moving into advertising. Google is jumping into hardware but in a Platonic manner. Google gives away Android and allows other companies to build hardware. Apple on the other hand gets its hands dirty with deals, hardware, software, and online services. So in terms of tricks, the Apple orchard has more diversity than Google’s patch.
Now here’s the quote to note:
“If we have a billion people using Android, you think we can’t make money from that?”
That’s a good question. The proof will be like Apple’s bushel basket full of revenue, earnings, and valuation. Google’s good, but a monoculture may be more vulnerable than diverse revenue streams that are up and flowing, not glimpsed in the mirror reflecting the horizon. Plato was not into money. Investors are the kinds of folks who say, “Show me the money.” Very un-Platonic in this goose’s opinion.
Stephen E Arnold, July 29, 2010
Freebie from the goose
Google Books Israel Edition
July 29, 2010
Nobody ever said the next frontier of literature would be smooth, but it is a realm that will be conquered none the less. Google is learning all about the highs and lows of digital books these days. A recent Globes article, “Google Books Reaches Isreal,” [NOTE: Link may be dead when you read this Beyond Search post] highlighted the search giant’s new foray into Hebrew texts, reaching a deal to allow full or partial downloads of many books published in Israel. This victory is offset by the legal hot water Google Books currently finds itself in in America. There, the online bookshop finally reached a settlement which, “claimed that Google’s scanning of texts was copyright infringement,” so it can now release many more titles. While Google is making forward progress, their boat seems to be taking on water. But the Google is persistent.
Ken Toth, July 28, 2010
Freebie
Online Paywalls: British Users Click Elsewhere
July 29, 2010
Internet users in England are the biggest online penny pinchers. Net Imperative recently reported these finding in an article, “British Least Likely to Pay for Online Content According to a New Survey.” The survey, performed by global accounting firm KPMG, discovered nearly 81 percent of Brits polled would prefer not to pay for online content, no matter what it was.
According to the article: “UK users will make some concessions though: almost 75% of UK users are happy to have free or heavily subsidized content supported by advertising. In addition up to 48% are happy to allow their personal data to be tracked if it means cheaper content, though some remain concerned about online privacy and safety.”
Regardless of ad space, this is a sign that there is too much valuable free information, like the kind found here, to ever force readers to pay.
Commercial database publishers in the 1980s knew how to generate revenue. Pity those lessons have been ignored. But today’s managers are just so much more informed.
Stephen E Arnold, July 28, 2010
Freebie unlike the paywall crowd
Computer Does Stand Up. Sucks.
July 28, 2010
Did you hear the joke “What a grizzly memorial park?” Give up. “A gray-veyard.” Don’t believe me. Navigate to “The Joking Computer” and give it a whirl. You will how far content processing has come and how far it has to go. I don’t what to know what university funded this service. I don’t want to use the service. I will stick to my Tess does computers humor, the azurini references, and my persona as an addled goose. No smart computer needed.
Stephen E Arnold, July 27, 2010
Freebie
Content Risks and Rewards
July 28, 2010
My field is open source intelligence. I can’t reveal my sources, but I have heard that an intelligence unit can duplicate anywhere from 80 to 90 percent of its classified information from open sources. The trick of course is to know what is important. Most people can look at an open source document, dismiss it, and go about their day unaware of the key item of information that was right in front of them.
For that reason, this blog and my other blogs are open source. I use my Overflight system to suck in publicly accessible content. I look at what the system spits out and I highlight the important stuff. The magic in the system is not the software nor the writers whom I pay to create most of the content in Beyond Search and my other writings. I am sufficiently confident in my method that when I talk with a so called expert or an executive from a company, I am skeptical about what that person asserts. In most cases, experts lack the ability to put their information in context. Without context, even good information is useless.
When i read about Wikileaks publishing allegedly classified information, I wondered about the approach. Point your browser at “Next Step for Wikileaks: Crowdsourcing Classified Data” and learn what is ahead for information dissemination. The idea is that lots of people will contribute secrets.
Baloney.
The more stuff that is described as secret and sensitive, the more difficult it will be to figure out what is on the money and what is not. I have some nifty software, but I know from my tests that when information is weaponized, neither humans nor software can pinpoint where the train went off the tracks.
In my view, folks publishing allegedly classified information are looking for some rough sledding. Furthermore, the more baloney that gets pumped into the system, the greater the likelihood for disinformation.
If these documents had become known to me, I would have kept the puppies to myself. I would have used my Overflight system to verify points that my method identified as important. I would not accept any assertion, fact, or argument as valid until some more work was done.
Wikileaks is now famous, and sometimes fame can be tough. Just ask John Belushi if you can find him. People ask me what I don’t provide some color for some of my remarks. Well, that is because some information is not appropriate for a free blog. This is a lesson that I think some folks are going to learn in the School of Hard Knocks.
Stephen E Arnold, July 29, 2010
Freebie and open source
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