Quote to Note: Perfect Search Engine
December 28, 2011
I find the search engine optimization blogs entertaining and humorous. The writers go through amazing gyrations, often suggesting that “real” SEO pros should tie clicks to money. Yep, great idea. But the theme that causes me to chortle is the message, “Content is king.” Yep, great idea.
Navigate to “Search & Mobile Marketing Trends: SEO Apocalypse 2012”. You will get a shovel full of SEO goodness. But the point of the write up is secondary to this quote to note. The speaker is top Googler Larry Page. He allegedly said:
“The perfect search engine would understand exactly what you mean and give back exactly what you want,” according to Google CEO Larry Page. Generalized search tactics become even murkier as results become so individualized to time, place, preference, and personal social trends.
Yep, perfection. But what does “perfect” mean? Ad revenue? When SEO fails, there is the life saver of Adwords I believe.
Stephen E Arnold, December 28, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Quote to Note: PowerPoint
December 16, 2011
I encounter PowerPoint “decks” when indexing enterprise content. I should emphasize the plural. The bane of PowerPoint is that users skip over the metadata. When indexing an enterprise corpus, there are lots of versions of a particular PowerPoint deck. To make matters more interesting, some decks include confidential information. Running a query on a PowerPoint collection without figuring out versions, duplicates, access rights, and date and time conflicts makes for a long spell of opening, scanning, closing with the cycle repeated many times.
The quote appeared in the write up “PowerPoint Alternative Closes $14 Million Funding.” (Note: this is a Murdoch Wall Street Journal link which can go dark without much warning.)
If you have ever sat through a death-by-PowerPoint presentation (once described by commentator Michael Bywater as “the most loathsome, vicious and immoral piece of software ever produced.”)
I find the sequence loathsome, vicious and immoral fascinating. Software, not its users, are loathsome, vicious, and immoral. Hmmm. Software, not the users. I want a T shirt with the phrase printed across the chest area. Quite a conversation starter I wager.
Stephen E Arnold, December 16, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Quote to Note: Kindle Issues
December 13, 2011
We don’t know much about the Kindle. We ordered one. Turned it on once. Put it in the box. Meh. We did read “Can a Software Update Quench Kindle Firestorm?” and wondered, “What does one want for $200?” Here’s the quote we noted:
A lot of the Kindle team is ex-Microsoft, and [their] process of releasing a major new platform
followed by updates to correct problems and make minor in-line improvements has proven to be successful over time,” Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group, told TechNewsWorld.
Our view: Wonderful. Hello, mediocrity and her brother good enough. Search. Never tried it. Device to slow and clunky. Microsoft, eh?
Stephen E Arnold, December 13, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Quote to Note: Role of Media and Search
November 30, 2011
Point your browser to “Max Mosley Sues Google over ‘Orgy’ Search Results.” The write up focuses on what media and search engines like Google should do. This is the woulda-coulda-shoulda logic which I find fascinating. The story concerns a “real” news story about a prominent figure, a court order, and the existence of pointers in indexes to the entities referenced in the information chain.
I don’t have a view of what is the appropriate response to the situation or the suggestions offered in the source document. Two quotes caught my attention, and I want to snag them before I lose track of the original.
Quote one:
In his written statement to the inquiry, Mosley [the individual attempting to clean up some improper references to himself] compared the internet to “a sort of Wild West with its own rules which the courts cannot touch”. He said that the “really dangerous thing” is that search engines like Google “could stop a story appearing, but don’t or won’t as a matter of principle”.
The “don’t or won’t” phrase struck me as interesting and heavy with a freight of implications. Exactly what should an algorithm centric system do? How will such a system “know” something is an issue? I sure don’t want the job of hiring editors—assuming there were enough qualified people to do the work and the money to pay them—to convert numerical recipes into tasty, more satisfying human results. Some traditional publishers would do the job if there were money in the work.
Quote 2:
Elsewhere in his Leveson [shorthand for the legal matter] testimony, Mosley reaffirmed his calls for newspapers to always warn people before publishing stories about their private lives…
I don’t know much about how the 20 somethings run newspapers and magazines, but I am not sure some of them are sufficiently well organized to inform one another about what is going on. When I read about the difficulties AOL has communicating with its writers and editors, I think that controlled chaos or no interaction is par for the course. Given the staff cuts and Twitter-driven world of journalism, who is going to inform whom of anything? AOL apparently was confused about a high profile executive’s investment fund. Now an outfit is going to have to get sufficiently serialized to put A before B and then do C?
Wow.
In Beyond Search, we rely on open source content for inspiration. We then offer comments. In this particular pair of quotes, we will remain silent. A gentle “honk” is the best we can offer.
Stephen E Arnold, November 30, 2011
Quote to Note: Google Plus Surely Doomed?
November 10, 2011
Quote to note: Today is November 9, 2011, and I just read an article in an online publication which I thought was going to shut down several times. So predictions about the death of an online service can be wrong. Nevertheless, point your browser thing at “Google+ Is Dead.” Absorb the information, but here’s the quote I have now safely tucked away into the Beyond Search archive:
But a social network isn’t a product; it’s a place. Like a bar or a club, a social network needs a critical mass of people to be successful—the more people it attracts, the more people it attracts. Google couldn’t have possibly built every one of Facebook’s features into its new service when it launched, but to make up for its deficits, it ought to have let users experiment more freely with the site. That freewheeling attitude is precisely how Twitter—the only other social network to successfully take on Facebook in the last few years—got so big. When Twitter users invented ways to reply to one another or echo other people’s tweets, the service didn’t stop them—it embraced and extended their creativity. This attitude marked Twitter as a place whose hosts appreciated its users, and that attitude—and all the fun people were having—pushed people to stick with the site despite its many flaws (Twitter’s frequent downtime, for example). Google+, by contrast, never managed to translate its initial surge into lasting enthusiasm. And for that reason, it’s surely doomed.
Yowza. “Surely doomed.” But aren’t we all?
Stephen E Arnold, November 10, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Google and Competitive Position
November 7, 2011
Quote to note: I read “Google Chairman Eric Tells US Senators Apple’s Siri Could Pose ‘Competitive Threat‘”.
Here’s the quote:
I would disagree that Google is dominant,” he said after senators asserted that Google is approaching a monopoly. “By investing smartly, hiring extremely talented engineers, and working very, very hard (and with some good luck), Google has been blessed with a great deal of success.”
Definitely a keeper. I like the “luck” touch too.
Staephen E Arnold, November 7, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Quote to Note: Modern Truisms
October 18, 2011
I don’t plan on getting back on the rubber chicken circuit, but a good quote is often useful. I noted one in the hard copy newspaper of the faltering New York Times. The story with the quote was “A Series of Red Flags for Financial Planning Concern,” page B5 of the Personal Business section in the Business Section of the October 15, New York Times. I love that metadata. Don’t you?
Here’s the quote attributed to Dan Candura, “a financial planner,” whose photograph accompanies the article. Mr. Candura does not have the cheerful demeanor of a character on the defunct TV show “Friends” in my opinion. He allegedly said:
It’s easier to sell the bad stuff than the good stuff.
I must say that when I read the quote I thought about search and content processing marketers, azure chip consultants flogging studies, and assorted unemployed English teachers, failed Webmasters, and political science majors turned “search expert.”
What is the “bad stuff”. Well, if I understand the New York Times’ write up, the “bad stuff” are investments that are too good to be true. In search and content processing, the “bad stuff” are systems which contain cost spikes like those children’s toys which shoot a crazy doll in one’s face without warning.
The only problem, of course, is that the search bad stuff does not end with cost spikes. Other “benefits” of selling search and content processing systems include:
- Content adaptors which don’t work as advertised or have to be customized to handle a specific client situation
- Technical issues associated with updating indexes in “real time”, a bogus concept in my experience
- The need for “eternal engineering support.” The idea is that the license gets the consultants in the door. The consultants never leave, however.
A pop and tune from the Jack in the Box lovers to Mr. Candura, who was quite “candid”.
Stephen E Arnold, October 18, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
IBM Watson in Health Care
September 12, 2011
Quote to note: A keeper. Navigate to the PR festival in “IBM Putting Watson to Work in Health Insurance.” The main idea, if I understood the write up, is that fresh from the game show win, IBM Watson is going to help diagnose illnesses. The stakes may be a trifle higher than a staged TV show’s, but I suspended disbelief when reading the story. With news about the US government cracking down on health care fraud starting to appear in “real” media, I tagged a quote to note. Here you go. The alleged author of the statement is Lori Beer, an executive vice president at Indianapolis-based WellPoint. This outfit is paying IBM for the Watson search elixir. She allegedly said:
It’s really a game-changer in health care…patients needn’t worry that Watson will be used to help insurers deny benefits.
Sounds fantastic. Now the goose will watch the hands of time move forward to see if the health care “game” is changed and it fraud investigators really ignore a technology that could save the US government billions of dollars in erroneous or fraudulent payments.
I am punching the button on my cheap iPad app which counts down. Plonk.
Stephen E Arnold, September 12, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Quote to Note: Ecosystem Is Where It Is At
August 21, 2011
Quote to note: I was flipping through posts in one of my Overflight files today and read “HTC Pledges Support for Google.”
Here is the passage I noted. Mark the date, August 20, 2011. In the next six to 12 months, this quote may be a touch stone:
Chou [HTC boss] says “it’s not the operating system, it’s the ecosystem,” adding “we think we can find a way to differentiate to add value, but at the same time leverage our partners, Google and Microsoft, since we have such a great relationship with them.”
My view? Watch and wait. I think I will check out my copy of The Art of War. I remember reading something along these lines:
All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near. Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder, and crush him.
Nah, not relevant.
Stephen E Arnold, August 21, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Quote to Note: Google Motorola
August 16, 2011
Quote to note: I don’t have much light to shed on the purchase of Motorola by Google.
The Roman army’s testudo. Great strategy as long as the enemy did what Roman commanders expected. The unexpected? Well, the testudo still makes for interesting footage in movies like The Gladiator. Image source: A happy quack to http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php?topic=2975.1410
I have been flicking through the inputs and outputs from pundits of all persuasions. One write up—“The Truth about the Google Motorola Deal: it Could End Up Being a Disaster”—contained a statement I wanted to capture. Here it is:
… a big rationale for making this deal seems to be about buying mobile patents–and, thus, “defending” Android from Apple’s and Microsoft’s attacks. It seems safe to say that, six months ago, investors and partners did not realize that Google was going to have to shell out $13 billion to “defend” Android, let alone start competing with its hardware partners.
I have highlighted the two key words and phrases in this passage.
My focus is search. But as enticing as mobile search is, these two words do not suggest to me that Google is focusing on its core competency. Tactical moves, surprising investors and hardware partners, and moving into the digital equivalent of the testudo—fascinating. Do I have thoughts about fragmentation, Google’s management capabilities, or the litigation that Motorola brings along with its original SMS technology? Nope. Think the turtle and what happened when Rome’s allies got frisky.
Stephen E Arnold, August 16, 2011
Sponsored by The New Landscape of Search
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