Oracle Updates Its Enterprise Publishing System
May 25, 2010
I know that the world outside of Harrod’s Creek, Kentucky, believes that Oracle is a database company. I have pointed out that the company has done its best to baffle geese like me, particularly with its search technology.
I wanted to call your attention to a news item that has not been picked up and bruited far and wide. The write up’s title is “Oracle Introduces Oracle Documaker 11.5.” The upgrade pushes Oracle into the rarified air breathed by Hewlett Packard, StreamServe, Mark Logic, and a handful of other companies.
Forget desktop publishing and Web content management. These systems and Oracle’s deliver industrial strength document generation from repositories, business logic, and assorted bells and whistles unheard by the InDesign crowd.
Among the new release’s features are:
- Support for Microsoft Word as an authoring tool
- A rules-based system so content can be repurposed
- Multiple output options, including hard copy and Web pages.
Will Exstream Software, InfoPrint (a brand new identify is coming and new features from what I hear), and Mark Logic roll over and die? Not likely, but Oracle seems to recognize that unless it defends this important segment, the company can lose and lose big.
Stephen E Arnold, May 25, 2010
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Big Data, Publishing, and an Opportunity?
May 16, 2010
People are looking for a way to connect to the massive quantities of data online, but these publishers may be missing the point. Semantic Web’s recent article, “Big Data Publishing: Common Threads in STM, Legal & Educational Publishing,” discusses the possible onslaught of publishing online data, even recommending it as an entrepreneurial option. Big data publishing is the idea that a publisher will compile the Web—from blog posts, tweets, news articles and other ephemera—into print form. The goal is that people will want to study the web as a whole and understand how all things are connected. The question is, why should the internet be published? There are tools like social search that help us make connections between many topics, individuals and opinions already. Do we really need researchers and academics to help us make these connections?
Patrick Roland
May 16, 2010
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Mark Logic, Content Automation: Flexibility and Lower Costs
May 4, 2010
I just sat in a technical presentation by Mark Logic wizards (Mark Walsh and Mary Holstege). The highlight was the explanation of Mark Logic enhancements that promise more flexible content automation and lower costs to Mark Logic’s customers. Other points I noted included:
- “Smart” interaction between XQuery and XSLT
- More flexibility in repurposing content
- Lower costs for certain content transformations.
The payoff is that revenue opportunities go up for Mark Logic licensees and the costs of performing certain content transformations goes down. More information is available from www.MarkLogic.com. My impression: important step forward.
Stephen E Arnold, May 4, 2010
eBooks and Mobile
May 4, 2010
“Paper View”, which appeared in Mobile Entertainment, provides an interesting glimpse of eBooks in the UK market. For me, the most telling comment in the article was this passage from the CEO of Mobcast:
There was a good deal of support for the no-DRM idea at the Mobcast event. Tony Lynch, CEO of Mobcast, was quite forthright. He said: “The current level of DRM is problematic. But ultimately, obscurity is a bigger problem than piracy. People need to be able to find what they want, and if they can they will buy. The single biggest complaint we get is about availability. That’s what we need to focus on.” Evidence suggests that removing DRM can work and may indeed become the norm in e-books as it is in music. In the 18 months since O’Reilly, the world’s largest publisher of tech books, stopped using DRM on its e-books, sales increased by 104 per cent. Hard to assess how much of that growth was organic, but it’s still a thought-provoking figure.
Common sense may not prevail. The stakes are sufficiently high that companies perceiving themselves as kingpins want control. Right now, I am looking at any reference to open, open source, and standards to try and figure out if these are marketing words or something else.
Apple is the poster child for control. When Apple talks about “standards” and an “open Web”, I have some disambiguation to do.
Stephen E Arnold, May 4, 2010
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The Courier Journal and Winning Horse Races
May 2, 2010
Post-Derby day. Sunday newspaper day. Depressing, and it is only 9 am.
A near miss in New York City excited the NPR news team this morning (May 2, 2010). Nary a word about Greece, Spain, and Portugal, however. To get the details, I had to fire up my laptop and check out online news sources.
I walked to the end of my driveway to retrieve the Courier-Journal, where I used to work. I also picked up my home delivery copy of the New York Times. The NYT was wet because the blue plastic bag was not closed, so water happily nestled in the newsprint. I could tell at a glance that the NYT closed before the problem in Times Square was news. I tossed the paper aside to dry.
The C-J was the ad section and the soft features. No front page. What was delivered dripped water on the kitchen floor. My wife told me to sort the newspaper in the garage. Fun. The Derby was yesterday and I was curious about the coverage of the event. Despite the nose dive in the original content in the C-J over the last 20 years, reporters do hoof and gallop around the Derby in search of “stories”. Well, mostly it is “who got rich,” “who showed up”, and “who got in trouble”. No joy. A call to the C-J’s hotline triggered a recording that told me there were production problems with the Sunday paper. No big deal. There’s online, Twitter, and Facebook. The story was online here “Production Problems Prevent Delivery of Full Sunday Courier Journal.” I wonder if there were cutbacks and efficiencies applied that made one of the highest circulation editions of the year fail? Like aircraft maintenance, no one knows what shifts have been made until the toilets don’t work, the flights can’t leave the gate, or the pilot reports a “slight issue and some paperwork”.
The one section of the C-J that showed up is called “Forum”, and what do you know? The front page of section H for Sunday, May 2, 2010, ran a story with this headline: “Rethink: Newspapers are better off than you may think.” The author is a fellow named Arnold Garson, whom I don’t know. His picture shows a kindly visage in dark suit with red tie and the slug: “The Courier Journal remains a strong and credible local news provider and a profitable business today.”
Since my Sunday paper was missing the front page, the sports section, and some other bits, I am not on board with the assertion about “a strong and credible local news provider.” I think the “profitable business” part is really the point.
I read the article, which purports to be the text of a speed delivered on April 7, 2010, to the Downtown Kiwanis Club meeting. The article is a long piece, running about 80 column inches. If Mr. Garson read this speech, I am delighted I was not in attendance.
Summarizing the talk is easy: C-J makes money, reaches more than 85 percent of the readers, and makes money. Oh, I repeated myself. Sorry, but that point jumps out a couple of times in the text of the talk.
I noted some other highlights as well:
- The C-J is performing better than other newspapers; that is, “less bad” is “good”
- Delivery of the hard copy to “outlying areas” has been trimmed
- Ad rates and subscription prices are going up
- TV news viewers are older than C-J newspaper readers
- A 100 million people read newspapers.
You get the idea.
The C-J’s local Web site attracts 1.3 million unique users per month and generates 16 million page views. The C-J has achieved 380,000 mobile impressions per month. That’s good. The questions I had were:
- What’s a “unique”? What’s a page view” What’s a mobile impression?
- How does this compare with Facebook’s 400 million users in early 2010, up from 150 million in early 2009?
- What’s the relationship between circulation decline and uptake of the C-J’s Web site?
I could crank out more questions, but I want to jump to the wrap up of the talk. This is the assertion I find most interesting:
Ninety-nine percent of the nation’s newspapers, including The Courier-Journal will survive this recession based on our own core strengths, our determination to transform our business model and through the lift we will get from the recovery itself.
I am not sure how to make the leap from 99 percent survivability to “our own core strengths”. The core strengths seem to be advertising. I am not convinced the C-J does much local news. I understand determination. The assertion about the recovery seems to be a “maybe” argument. But it is tough to get coverage of the European financial crisis based on my reading the C-J every day. I have to turn elsewhere for that information.
Why do I think the talk is baloney? First, I fund the Seed2020 meet ups for women- and minority-owned businesses. I know that none of the more than 20 companies featured in the meet ups since November 2009 have been covered in the C-J. A couple of these businesses are real stories with solid news value. Nope. No coverage. One can argue that the weakening Business First, American Cities Business Journal publication is taking up the slack. Nope. The Seed2020 events show that there are solid news stories that are just not covered. I find the C-J argument on ground as muddy as the race track yesterday.
Second, without the C-J’s front page or the coverage of the NYT event in Times Square, I question the value of the newspaper as a timely source of information. Traditional deadlines and production problems underscore the irrelevance of the “business model” that will keep 99 percent of the newspapers in business. Mr. Garson does not provide any reference points for the number of newspapers in business in 1900, the number in 2000, and the number today. I do touch on this issue in Google: The Digital Gutenberg and won’t repeat the decline, consolidation, and homogeneity referenced in my monograph.
Third, the folks I know who are 55 and younger are not into newspapers. I watched how my son’s friends, now in their 30s, looked at the sports pages and their iPads and Macbooks. They talked to one another, chatted on their mobile devices, and sent text messages. This behavior took place as we sat at the kitchen table. The newspaper was marginalized.
Bottom-line: Timeliness, medium, and business model are intermingling with the DNA of people who don’t find the hard copy newspaper relevant. The C-J’s Arnold Garson is putting a positive spin on a reality that does not exist in our household.
Of course, I live in one of those outlying areas in Kentucky. I can log on to Newsnow.co.uk and learn about Europe. I can check Craigslist.com for ads. I can scan my Twitter stream to learn about the horrific accident that took place at Highway 42 and Highway 841 at 6 45 am.
No C-J needed for that. And I used to work there. Big changes to which the C-J and papers like the NYT are struggling to adapt. Like the long shots in the Derby yesterday, only one horse won. In my opinion, the C-J and the NYT are both entering the media race next year with long odds. Just my opinion and it is as valuable as a tip at the track.
Stephen E Arnold, May 2, 2010
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Kindle Forced in a Nook
April 29, 2010
Short honk: I mentioned at a break in the Boston search conference that I heard the Barnes & Noble Nook was outselling the Amazon Kindle. Several people expressed surprise. I did a quick online check and the factoid appears in “Nook Outsells Kindle in March, E-Reader Sales Expected to Hit 11 Million.” Interesting if spot on. In my opinion, along side the Apple iPad, the Kindle and the Nook seem “old”. Nook and Kindle seem clunky next to the iPad. Just my opinion. Apple does hardware pretty well. Just my opinion.
Stephen E Arnold, April 29, 2010
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Oxford Flexes Its Reference Muscles
April 22, 2010
I go to a gym every couple of days when I am in town. So happens that that a number of semi pro wrestlers go to the gym. Big people. Tattoos. Muscles. I an old wimp and I graciously give up my place when one of these steroid stallions trots to the workout station I favor. Academics have muscles, but I think that my image of a muscular academic and one from Oxford University at that is of a milder, more gentle giant.
The Oxford muscle builders have turned their attention to creating online bibliographies. I think, based on reading the write up “Oxford University Press Launches the Anti-Google” that these will be variants of the old Goldentree bibliographies or the type of reference book Constance Winchell cranked out.
Here’s a synopsis of the product:
The OBO [Oxford Bibliographies Online] tool is essentially a straightforward, hyperlinked collection of professionally-produced, peer-reviewed bibliographies in different subject areas—sort of a giant, interactive syllabus put together by OUP and teams of scholars in different disciplines. Users can drill down to a specific bibliographic entry, which contains some descriptive text and a list of references that link to either Google Books or to a subscribing library’s own catalog entries, by either browsing or searching. Each entry is written by a scholar working in the relevant field and vetted by a peer review process. The idea is to alleviate the twin problems of Google-induced data overload, on the one hand, and Wikipedia-driven GIGO (garbage in, garbage out), on the other.
Sounds good but there may be some challenges:
First, these hand crafted bibliographies are expensive to create and keep current. The rush of enthusiasm for a project of this type gets some bibliographies out the door. However, the ongoing costs are likely to be an issue because libraries may not have the agility to buy this online service. Oxford University has the money, but once the reality of the costs sink in, my hunch is that push back from the finance person will be coming in 12 months.
Second, revenue. The spreadsheet fever makes the project look pretty tasty. Oxford will find itself dancing with some big outfits in the commercial database world. My view is that Oxford will have to find a partner quickly because, let’s face it, universities are not exactly the top guns in the marketing arena.
Third, the anti Google thing is cute but irrelevant. The Google is muddling along with probes into different market sectors. The Google is in the “good enough” game and that’s where Google’s search and reference services will aim. Google may end up with some academic wonder products but that will be exhaust from the Google revenue machine. Red herring to even mention Google.
Fourth, users want to click and get the full text. When I am doing research, I know how to do the primary and secondary research drill. The problem is that time and resources force me to use my own tools like the Overflight system. But for some tiny percentage of folks looking up information online Bing, Google, and Yahoo will pretty good. To dig into the next level, libraries have Ebsco products. Those who need more are going to be Oxford level researchers, and I am not sure a product aimed for this tiny slice of online users can generate enough revenue to exist without subsidies. Will Oxford fund the rowing team or the bibliographies? Time will tell.
In short, interesting but a bit of anachronism in my opinion.
Stephen E Arnold, April 22, 2010
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A Surprising Spurt in Self Publishing
April 19, 2010
Short honk: I read “Self-Published Titles Topped 764,000 in 2009 as Traditional Output Dipped” and was surprised by this factoid:
A staggering 764,448 titles were produced in 2009 by self-publishers and micro-niche publishers, according to statistics released this morning by R.R. Bowker. The number of “nontraditional” titles dwarfed that of traditional books whose output slipped to 288,355 last year from 289,729 in 2008. Taken together, total book output rose 87% last year, to over 1 million books.
Quite a treasure trove of uncurated content. If I were younger, there might be some useful information tucked in these publications.
Stephen E Arnold, April 19, 2010
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eBook Sales to Grow
April 15, 2010
In a report from Goldman Sachs, analysts predicted growth in book sales. “U.S. Book Sales to Increase on E-Books, Goldman Says” included this statement: “Apple’s share of the e-book market will surge to 33 percent in 2015 from 10 percent this year.” Amazon, it seems, will see its share of e-book sales decline to 28 percent from 50 percent. Will e-books remain books, or will e-books morph into interactive media? Will authors of books be able to create products that will appeal to users of new devices like the Apple iPad? If publishers have to invest in software development, will increased costs of production put further pressure on author royalties?
Stephen E Arnold, April 15, 2010
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Tablets and a Puzzle for Publishers
April 13, 2010
Here’s the article I thoroughly enjoyed: “The Dark Side of Steve Jobs.” If you are interested in online information and tablets like the iPad, it is a must read. I even tucked a copy in my “quotes” file. The main point is that Apple’s Steve Jobs is exerting control over publishers, programmers, and for good measure Adobe. The write up makes a number of interesting observations and weaves a compelling story of how some publishers responded to Steve Jobs’s sales pitch.
Now the iPad may not look as the life boat some publishing companies wanted to float by their executive dining rooms and deliver boat loads of cash. Developing for the iPad will have some costs and require that publishers follow Apple’s rules.
The options available to publishers range from Google, which is not a particularly big hit on the partner league table for some, Amazon which is embroiled in a pricing tug of war, and the raft of other eBook reader manufacturers. Nook, anyone? JooJoo. WePad?
I think that some publishers will have the expertise to become a software development company that can code in Apple’s mandated programming language. Other publishers will try and be swamped by costs and the brutal life of bug fixes, updates, and enhancements. For publishers with deep pockets, no problem. For other publishers, problems.
Who will join the merry band of Googlers? Who will jump on the Amazon Kindle? Who will embrace the other eBook hardware devices? Which publishers will try to diversify and run conferences, become hardware manufacturers, or buy Web 2.0 properties in the hopes of spinning money?
I have no answers. Data will become available with each quarterly report going forward.
Stephen E Arnold, April 13, 2010
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