Quote to Note: AOL Top Dog on Flat Revenues
February 26, 2012
This may be online. You can try to access the story “Arianna’s Work Husband” at www.nytimes.com. In this write up from the Times’s magazine for February 26, 2012, ran a story which was “condensed and edited,” the top AOLer, Tim Armstrong allegedly said about AOL’s financial performance:
So flat is up for us.
I find this quote clever (see my essay explaining exogenous complexity and clever output on February 24, 2012). I also find it fascinating because it echoes the belief that the world is flat from the semi-clueless ancient world and the New York Times’s columnist, Thomas L. Friedman.
The only issue for me is that revenues are supposed to go up. Maybe the stakeholders of AOL have a different viewpoint?
Stephen E Arnold, February 26, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Quote Cache
February 25, 2012
We’ve found a useful source of quotations at Dennys Funny Quotes. The site collects quotes on subjects from cats to music videos to politics. Anything, really. The tagline reads:
“Dennys Funny Quotes: Laugh at life, politics, the universe: irreverent, satire, photos, cartoons.”
There really is a lot here, but it is better for browsing than for looking for something specific. It is a real challenge to find anything in particular, as the topic links are scattered around the site rather than presented in a comprehensive list. There is a search field in the upper left, but you’d have to know what is already there to target a search with any accuracy.
Oh, and each click produces a full-page ad you must click past. Annoying. Give it a whirl when you have a few minutes to kill. You might stumble upon the perfect quote to tuck into your pocket for your next social event.
Cynthia Murrell, February 25, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Cracking Technology Start Ups
February 1, 2012
Quote to Note: If you have an MBA and are dreaming about making big money in technology start ups, you will want to read “New Identified Research Reveals Engineers Far More Likely than MBAs to Build and Run Companies.” My interest is search, which is a spectacularly complex technical process. I have watched companies run by MBAs crash and burn. An English major with a knowledge of medieval Latin would probably have done an equally poor job. But MBAs!
Here’s the quote I noted:
We culled through 36 million professional profiles in the Identified database and found 3,337 founder/CEOs have an advanced engineering background compared with 1,016 MBAs. The ratio of undergrad business and engineering founders/ CEOs is about even (9,461 versus 9,334), a significant shift occurs in the number of leaders who have advanced degrees.
Not all will succeed, of course, and you will want to read the entire document which is available at this link. I don’t know for how long, however.
Stephen E Arnold, February 1, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
The China Market: Apple and Google
January 30, 2012
Quote to note: I read the Fast Company story “Apple Could Sell 40 Million iPhones In China…” The guts of the story is an estimate—probably crazy—that Apple will sell beaucoup iPhones in China. Here’s the snippet I jotted down in my paper notebook:
Apple will seek out tie-ups with China Telecom and China Mobile to sell up to 40 million iPhones in China alone in 2013.
Underneath this estimate I wrote, “Are these 40 million phone sales which Google has lost?” Interesting question related to the notion of getting a nation state to change how it runs its railroads. I think some of them crash, but 40 million is an interesting number, if accurate. Can Google get back into China? One hopes.
Stephen E Arnold, January 30, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
The Google Business Model Revealed
January 29, 2012
Quote to Note:
I just read “Will Google Have to Start a Patent War to Get $9bn of Value from Motorola?” I find much of the write up somewhat interesting and silly. The purchase of Motorola has yet to prove it was a wise move. Nevertheless, there was one statement which now finds its way into the Quote to Note folder. Here you go:
Google’s business model – everywhere – is to disrupt by driving the cost of services down to zero, and monetizing them by selling ads against them. Even if it goes after all sorts of companies aggressively with those Motorola patents, I can’t see it charging per-handset for Android.
Sounds good. The problem is that the model does not apply to Google’s enterprise products and services. But why worry about details?
Stephen E Arnold, January 29, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Quote to Note: Google and Its Modest Understatement
December 29, 2011
Short honk: I am tuckered out. Big day in Harrod’s Creek, but I took time to read “Tom Anderson”. Sorry, no title it is a blog post, err, a Google Plus post. Here’s the quote I noted:
It’s not that Google+ has decided to do things differently, it’s just that they’re ahead of the game and doing things better.
Impressively modest. MySpace is a cesspool, and Singapore is a fine place. Oh, yeah. Pharma ad free, no improper pix, and harsh punishment for spitting gum.
Stephen E Arnold, December 30, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
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
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