Murdoch Insists He Never Asked a PM for Anything in Any of those Meetings
May 4, 2012
We get a glimpse of a real journalist in action in The Sydney Morning Herald’s piece, “Murdoch’s 75 Meetings with PMs Since ’88.” Though Rupert Murdoch insists that he never leveraged the power of his British paper The Sun to gain favor from those in that country’s government, evidence presented during the Leveson Inquiry suggests otherwise. That Inquiry is examining the role of the press and the police in last year’s alarming phone-hacking scandal.
Writer Tom Wald reports:
“Rupert Murdoch shed light on his fluctuating relationships with British powerbrokers as it was revealed that he had 75 meetings with Prime Ministers over the past 24 years. The latest revelations at the Leveson inquiry included current Prime Minister David Cameron flying in on Mr. Murdoch’s son-in law’s jet for a meeting with the media tycoon on his daughter Elisabeth’s yacht on the Greek resort island of Santorini. . . .
“He met Margaret Thatcher eight times, John Major 10 times, Mr. Blair 31 times, Mr. Brown 17 times and Mr. Cameron nine times.”
So. . . I guess Murdoch and Cameron were meeting about the weather, perhaps comparing that of London unfavorably with the lovely Santorini. The trip must have been research. And the other 74 meetings, perfectly innocent as well.
Right. Keep in mind, folks, this guy owns the Wall Street Journal, too. Oh, joy.
Cynthia Murrell, May 4, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
One Plus One Equal a Winner
May 1, 2012
I read “Wall Street Journal remains No. 1 US newspaper.” Here’s the link but it will go dark. I won’t quote from the story. The addled goose does not need a “real” journalistic outfit chasing him for sandwiches. The big idea is that the Wall Street Journal is the top dog in US newspaperdom. Left in the dust are the New York Times and USA Today, both fine publications.
I then read “News Corp. Contrite In Wake Of Scathing Report.” I assume that the top dog of News Corp, which owns the Wall Street Journal, is the number one leader of newspaper publishing. The write up contains this statement:
“Hard truths have emerged from the [UK] Select Committee Report: that there was serious wrongdoing at the News of the World; that our response to the wrongdoing was too slow and too defensive; and that some of our employees misled the Select Committee in 2009,” it stated. The company has cited the work of its internal Management and Standards Committee, which has turned over voluminous email exchanges and other records in an effort to show authorities in the U.K. and the U.S. that it has changed its behavior and is being cooperative.
So top US newspaper and its top dog are cooperative. Does one plus one equal winning? Makes sense to me.
Stephen E Arnold, May 1, 2012
Sponsored by HighGainBlog
Scholarpedia a Valuable Resource
May 1, 2012
We’d like to share a useful resource we’ve come across: Scholarpedia.org is a searchable, peer-reviewed online scientific encyclopedia. Its contributors are respected authorities in their fields, including an impressive list of Nobel Laureates and Fields Medalists. The areas covered include: Dynamical Systems, Physics, Applied Mathematics, Computational Neuroscience, and Touch.
Articles are curated by prominent authorities who take responsibility for the contents. As trusted custodians, these shepherds are also able to sponsor new articles.
The format of Scholarpedia should look familiar. The site’s About page explains:
“Scholarpedia feels and looks like Wikipedia – the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Indeed, both are powered by the same program — MediaWiki. Both allow visitors to read and modify articles simply by clicking on the edit this article link. However, Scholarpedia differs from Wikipedia in some very important ways.”
Ways like a strict modification approval process, the selection of elite authors, and the curator review system. The statement goes on to emphasize the advantages the online community brings to the traditional scholarly paper:
“. . . Articles are not frozen and outdated, but dynamic, subject to an ongoing process of improvement moderated by their curators. This allows Scholarpedia to be up-to-date, yet maintain the highest quality of content.”
The site is well worth checking out for all you science types.
Cynthia Murrell, May 1, 2012
Sponsored by Augmentext
Is the End Approaching for Commercial Metadata Vendors?
April 26, 2012
This is a very interesting move, one that may have implications for the organizations which sell library metadata. Joho the Blog reports, “‘Big Data for Books’: Harvard Puts Metadata for 12M Library Items into the Public Domain.” We learn from the write up:
“Harvard University has today put into the public domain (CC0) full bibliographic information about virtually all the 12M works in its 73 libraries. This is (I believe) the largest and most comprehensive such contribution. The metadata, in the standard MARC21 format, is available for bulk download from Harvard. The University also provided the data to the Digital Public Library of America’s prototype platform for programmatic access via an API. The aim is to make rich data about this cultural heritage openly available to the Web ecosystem so that developers can innovate, and so that other sites can draw upon it.”
Wow. Now, Harvard does ask users to respect community norms, like attributing sources of metadata. Blogger David Weinberger notes that licensing issues have held up the release of library metadata, and that this move makes the metadata of many, many of the most- used library items accessible.
What will happen next? Will the sellers of library metadata fight back?
Cynthia Murrell, April 26, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
Is Amazon Building the Next Big Thing?
April 25, 2012
The Network Thinkers (TNT) blog believes it has discovered “The Next Big Thing:” social via Amazon. The write up posits that the information Amazon gathers from Kindle readers, which goes beyond “customers who bought this item also bought. . .” to include highlights and notes folks have made in their e-copies. The article asserts:
“It is what we specifically find interesting and useful in those books that reveals deep similarities between people — the hi-lites, bookmarks and the notes will be the connectors. Our choices reveal who we are, and who we are like! Today, Amazon introduces you to similar books. Tomorrow, they will introduce you to similar readers.”
Intriguing. What makes this post more interesting, though, are the comments; ideas presented as new strike some as covering old ground. “Anonymous” notes:
“Eh, not really that under the radar? Kindle.amazon has been recommending readers with similar profiles for quite some time. But more people take photos or have jobs than read books, so the scale will be less?”
Though his or her voice is tenuous, Anonymous makes a good point: book readers seem to be a dwindling breed (sigh), so the Kindleverse is unlikely to rival Facebook or LinkedIn anytime soon. Myspace, maybe.
Cynthia Murrell, April 25, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
Another Play for “Real” Content
April 25, 2012
Magazines have always been popular reads, and when Ezines broke out on the web, their popularity quickly spread as a way to enjoy reading without cluttering up your coffee table with old paper editions. Now according to, YouTube co-founders are working on a magazine publishing service called Zeen yet another online magazine is getting ready to hit the World Wide Web. We learned:
“It looks like you’ll soon be able to discover and create “beautiful” magazines online. In the last 24 hours, YouTube co-founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, who now run AVOS, posted a “Coming Soon” page on the website Zeen(a take on the word zine, which commonly refers to a narrowly focused self-published magazine). There are plenty of websites that allow you to create your own zine, so it should be interesting to see how the YouTube co-founders, who also own the social bookmarking service Delicious, plan to separate themselves from the rest of the pack.”
The world of online reading is vast offering readers fictional and reality based content. The internet has been flooded over the past decade with a variety of different blogs and ezines. You have to wonder if Zeen will be the beginning of an Ezine evolution, or just provide more publications to an ongoing fad in an over saturated industry. Is this just another play for ‘real’ content?
Jennifer Shockley, April 25, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
Fake Reviews a Growing and Tenacious Problem in Social Media
April 20, 2012
Ah, sentiment and lies. Next Gen Market Research blogger Tom H. C. Anderson interviewed data mining expert Bing Liu in anticipation of his day-before workshop for the Sentiment Analysis Symposium in New York City early next month. He has titled his interview, “Practical Sentiment Analysis and Lies.” Interesting.
Professor Liu teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago, in the Computer Science Department. His work on text analytics and detecting online ratings fraud was recently featured in the New York Times. Anderson posed Liu with questions on the upcoming workshop as well as on his work in general.
The words that caught my eye were in Liu’s response to the issue of detecting fake reviews:
“Social media is here to stay. Its content is also being used more and more in applications.
Something has to be done to ensure the integrity of this valuable source of information before it becomes full of fake opinions, lies and deceptive information. After all, there are strong motivations for businesses and individuals to post fake reviews for profit and fame. It is also easy and cheap to do so. Writing fake reviews has already become a very cheap way of marketing and product promotion.”
Important though the issue might be, Liu admits that ratting out fake reviews is a huge challenge. Almost impossible to identify simply by reading them, misleading missives must be discovered through secondary information, like aggregate reviewer behavior and the physical origins of a post. Apparently, a reliable method has yet to be developed.
So, let this be a reminder of something my Dad used to tell me: now, perhaps more than ever, you can’t believe everything you read.
Cynthia Murrell, April 20, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Trapit: Search without Search
April 18, 2012
Trapit at www.trap.it is an automated finding system. Software “watches” what a user reads and then performs a “more like this” function. The results are not a laundry list. The presentation is similar to that used in Flipboard and Pulse. The idea borrows from iPhone and iPad apps with some DARPA money stirred into the mix. The inventors or implements worked at SRI, the blue chip technology consulting firm which used to be the Stanford Research Institute. the company is getting a little PR push, but it has been in business since January 2010.
You can read the CrunchBase profile at Chattertrap. Heavy weight real journalist John C. Dvorak covered the company in his “Trapit, the Non-Search Engine” article at PCMag.com. TechCrunch characterized the company as a Siri sibling. The reason is that Trap.it and Siri share some artificial intelligence methods.
The big news is that in January 2012, the company landed $6.2 million in addition to the US government money.
These “we will tell you what you need to know” systems are going to become more prevalent. These “smart” systems are ideal for information grazers who have neither the time, desire, or expertise to perform old fashioned research.
Will a user know when a potentially important article has been filtered out of the stream? Nah. Won’t matter. Today’s MBAs and former middle school teachers are too busy to dig for info, verify it, and assemble their own synthesis. And magazines produced the old fashioned way have zero chance to gain traction with certain demographics.
Stephen E Arnold, April 18, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
One Real Journalist Disagrees with Another Real Journalist. News?
April 17, 2012
Recursive journalism has arrived. Gigaom takes on a legend in “Why Bob Woodward is Wrong About the Internet and Journalism.” It seems Woodward, of Woodward and Bernstein fame, believes the Internet can’t hold a candle to good old-fashioned journalism. He has stated:
“The truth of what goes on is not on the Internet. [The Internet] can supplement. It can help advance. But the truth resides with people. Human sources.”
Writer Mathew Ingram disagrees. He does sincerely give investigative journalism its due, citing Seymour Hersh’s recent report in the New Yorker on the U.S. government secretly training MEK fighters from Iran at a base in Nevada as a current example of its value. But he also treasures the collaboration made possible by the Web. As he points out, the Collateral Murder video might never have seen the light of day without the Internet.
Woodard, Ingram charges, yearns for the day when journalism was a solitary pursuit.
The article concludes:
“That view may be a lot more romantic, and it serves the purposes of journalists who see themselves as a special breed, with special powers that normal mortals don’t possess. It also serves the purposes of newspapers and other traditional media entities, which would like to be the sole source of all value in the media ecosystem. But it doesn’t really serve the purposes of journalism or society as a whole.”
Ouch. When real journalists collide, the result is recursive admiration. Is this real news?
Cynthia Murrell, April 17, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Exclusive Interview: Paul Doscher, President of Lucid Imagination
April 16, 2012
The Search Wizards Speak features Paul Doscher, the new president of Lucid Imagination. Mr. Doscher joined Lucid Imagination in December 2011. He had been president of Dassault Exalead USA prior to assuming the top spot at fast-growing, customer- and community-centric Lucid Imagination.
I spoke with Mr. Doscher when he was working for the Dassault Exalead organization. When he shifted to Lucid Imagination, I spoke with him about his views of open source search. After that brief initial conversation, I met again with Mr. Doscher and probed into his views about the impact open source search is having on traditional for-fee, proprietary search systems.
When I asked about the shift from proprietary search systems to open source search, he told me:
Today organizations need the flexibility to adapt and make changes. A proprietary solution may not permit the licensee to make enhancements. If a change is made, the proprietary search vendor may “own” the fix and will add that innovation to its core product. The licensee who created the fix gets nothing and may have had to pay for the right to innovate. As corporate information technology struggles to keep up with escalating business information demands and an ever increasing mountain of growing content of all types, open source search provides a cost effective and efficient way to develop applications to address the challenges and opportunities in today’s enterprise.
Mr. Doscher has strong views about how licensees of enterprise search systems have learned about costs, the time required to deploy a system, and the effort needed to keep a search system up and running. I asked him about Lucid Imagination’s approach to a search engagement. He said:
Our approach to an engagement is to listen to what our customers need, prepare an action plan, and then deliver. In a sense, our approach is the type of involvement that many software companies have stepped away from. We have an enthusiastic group of engineers and professionals who work with clients to meet their needs.
The full text of the interview appears on the ArnoldIT.com Web site. For more information about Lucid Imagination’s open source search system, you will want to explore the company’s Web site and its blog. In addition, an interview with one of the founders of Lucid Imagination, Marc Krellenstein, and with Eric Gries, a former executive at Lucid Imagination, is available in the Beyond Search archives.
Stephen E Arnold, April 16, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
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