Al Jazeera and Its US Reach
January 24, 2012
We were surprised, then resigned. Has the US slipped lower on yet another yardstick of achievement?
Al Jazeera English, an international 24 hour English-Language news and current affairs TV channel headquartered in Doha, Qatar, has now reached 250 million homes — 5 million of those being in the U.S.
The Los Angeles Times reported on this startling milestone in the article “Al Jazeera English Now Reaches 250 Million Households.”
We learned:
Five years after its launch, there are 130 countries that carry Al Jazeera English, but in the U.S., the channel has limited availability; it can be found on cable systems in Washington, D.C.; New York; Burlington, Vt.; Toledo, Ohio; and, recently, Chicago and in Los Angeles on KCET. And while the U.S. makes up a fraction of the quarter-billion households, it is a major source of AJE’s Web traffic, totaling 40 percent, according to the network.
The fact that Al Jazeera English has such a large web following in the United States despite its limited availability, leads me to think that a significant shift has taken place.
Jasmine Ashton, January 24, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Google Does Real Time Again
October 28, 2011
Google+ Rolls Out Real-Time Search and Hashtag Support
On October 12, Google Plus rolled out two new features; both allow users to create custom news streams based around topics being shared and build upon the search functionality of the network. The first feature, a real-time search, finds results from Google+ posts that are related to the search term a user enters. As new posts are created centering around the search topic, the user is notified and a real-time stream of posts is begun. ZDNet’s article, “Google+ Real-Time Search: The Social News “Ticker” tells us more about the changes:
… Google engineer Vic Gundotra – who posted the news from his Google Plus feed – notes that it’s a great way to keep up with real-time news events, such as a speech, a court trial or a sporting event. Basically, it’s a real-time news ticker for niche topics. The second feature – hashtag support – essentially turns any hashtag in a post into a searchable term that can be used as another way to create feeds and real-time streams.
This is a catchy notion. I’m interested to see if Google+ will begin integrating all social networking posts into their search results. What they’re doing right now isn’t groundbreaking; Twitter already offers the exact same feature. However, it would be groundbreaking to be able to follow trending topics on all the major social networking sites as they correlate to breaking news.
But Google did real time before. What’s “real time”? Whatever Google wants it to be I suppose from a marketing viewpoint.
Stephen E Arnold, October 28, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Lucid Imagination: Open Source Search Reaches for Big Data
September 30, 2011
We are wrapping up a report about the challenges “big data” pose to organizations. Perhaps the most interesting outcome of our research is that there are very few search and content processing systems which can cope with the digital information required by some organizations. Three examples merit listing before I comment on open source search and “big data”.
The first example is the challenge of filtering information required by orgnaizatio0ns produced within the organization and by the organizations staff, contractors, and advisors. We learned in the course of our investigation that the promises of processing updates to Web pages, price lists, contracts, sales and marketing collateral, and other routine information are largely unmet. One of the problems is that the disparate content types have different update and change cycles. The most widely used content management system based on our research results is SharePoint, and SharePoint is not able to deliver a comprehensive listing of content without significant latency. Fixes are available but these are engineering tasks which consume resources. Cloud solutions do not fare much better, once again due to latency. The bottom line is that for information produced within an organization employees are mostly unable to locate information without a manual double check. Latency is the problem. We did identify one system which delivered documented latency across disparate content types of 10 to 15 minutes. The solution is available from Exalead, but the other vendors’ systems were not able to match this problem of putting fresh, timely information produced within an organization in front of system users. Shocked? We were.
Reducing latency in search and content processing systems is a major challenge. Vendors often lack the resources required to solve a “hard problem” so “easy problems” are positioned as the key to improving information access. Is latency a popular topic? A few vendors do address the issue; for example, Digital Reasoning and Exalead.
Second, when organizations tap into content produced by third parties, the latency problem becomes more severe. There is the issue of the inefficiency and scaling of frequent index updates. But the larger problem is that once an organization “goes outside” for information, additional variables are introduced. In order to process the broad range of content available from publicly accessible Web sites or the specialized file types used by certain third party content producers, connectors become a factor. Most search vendors obtain connectors from third parties. These work pretty much as advertised for common file types such as Lotus Notes. However, when one of the targeted Web sites such as a commercial news services or a third-party research firm makes a change, the content acquisition system cannot acquire content until the connectors are “fixed”. No problem as long as the company needing the information is prepared to wait. In my experience, broken connectors mean another variable. Again, no problem unless critical information needed to close a deal is overlooked.
Endeca Clicks into Real Time Search with DataSift
September 26, 2011
Endeca, known for its e-commerce software, is pairing with DataSift, a provider of aggregated social data feeds at Web scale. Their partnership will produce visualizations and advanced analytics on semi-structured content in real time. Benzinga covers the latest in, “Endeca and DataSift Team to Analyze the Real Time Web.” The write up asserts:
Pairing Endeca Latitude®, an Agile BI platform, with the breadth of social data like Facebook, Twitter, and WordPress as well as other popular social solutions, enables organizations to react to the “big data fire hose” alongside internal data, for marketing analytics, customer intelligence, CRM and competitive intelligence. Endeca and DataSift will demonstrate their joint offering at O’Reilly’s Strata Conference on September 22-23 in New York.
DataSift’s granular and modular sifting abilities combine with Endeca Latitude’s intuitive interface to produce a product that is both powerful and cost-effective. The yet unnamed offering will help companies mine the business value out of the gushing well of new social data.
Our view is that “latency” exists across the six major types of “real time” solutions. What does “real time” mean? Well, it means different things depending upon the application. Some solutions are mind bogglingly expensive. Think Thomson Reuters’ feeds of financial data on certain investments. Others are pretty leisurely; for example, what is trending in the world of Lady Gaga. Interesting tie up. No solid definition of latency yet. We are watching and waiting. You know. Latency.
Emily Rae Aldridge, September 23, 2011
Alerts When Search Is Hit and Miss
August 21, 2011
Search seems like the answer to Every Man’s information needs. It is not. Not by a long shot.
If organizations cannot search by individual as to who needs information, they will invariably push content onto a whole group of people. AFV-News reported “U.S. Army Deploys AtHoc IWSAlerts Emergency Mass Notification System.”
Businesses, schools, universities, and military groups all employ the usage of emergency alerts, providing mass notifications to everyone in their system. Fort Jackson brags that their AtHoc alerts span 25,000 personnel and dependents.
AtHoc IWS Alerts offer control from a unified Web-based console, which allows Fort Jackson to send alerts to cell phones, landlines, smart phones, SMS text and email. It’s not just Fort Jackson—AtHoc services more than 1.5 million Department of Defense, more than any other provider.
We learned about AtHoc’s capabilities and infrastructure from the AFV-News article:
[The] system integrates with the post’s existing Internet Protocol network services, which means reduced infrastructure and maintenance costs. Personnel accountability is accomplished through the bi-directional capability, allowing responses to notifications in real-time. Network alert delivery and response can be tracked, ensuring that targeted recipients have received and responded to alerts.
While alerts for dangerous situations and testing can save lives and are obviously a necessity, mass alert systems also unfortunately end up in too many unnecessary inboxes.
Megan Feil, August 21, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
IBM May Need a More Robust Classification Solution
August 18, 2011
According to talk around the water cooler, some IBM content and search units are poking around for a classification “solution”. We think the rumor is mostly big company confusion since IBM already has software available to assess and address an organization’s content classification needs through the use of several components. According to the IBM website:
Most unstructured content is either trapped in silos across the organization or entirely unmanaged “content in the wild.” A majority of that unstructured content can be deemed unnecessary – over-retained, irrelevant, or duplicate – and should be either decommissioned or deleted.
As we understand it, one licenses the Classification Module and/or Content Analytics software to prevent the previously stated problem and to provide content classification.
Sounds great like the ads for IBM mainframes and the promotional information about
But a disturbing question to the ArnoldIT goslings who wear blue IBM logos: What if this stuff costs too much and does not deliver on the fly classification for real time processing of tweets and Google Plus public content?
Maybe an IBM box of parts with an expensive IBM engineering team is not exactly what some outfits require? Perhaps IBM should look around and maybe snap up one of the hot players in the space. IBM has been announcing partnerships with a number of interesting companies. We track Digital Reasoning and and think its technology looks very promising? IBM is in a good position to have an impact in the data analysis space, but it needs tools that go beyond its in house code and Cognos and SPSS methods in our opinion.
Jasmine Ashton, August 19, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com, publishers of The New Landscape of Enterprise Search
Social Content Feed Tool from Know about It
August 2, 2011
When all your Facebook, Twitter, and other social streams become so convoluted, you might miss out on that link, photo, or music video you would’ve loved. You’ll never know – until now…maybe. Marshall Kirkpatrick looks at the new start-up, Know About It, in “New Service Sniffs out Secret Gems from across Your News Feeds.”
The service brings in all your subscribed content from major social networks, then offers a number of different ways to sort what it finds. My favorite is the filter called “Potentially Missed – links from people who don’t share a lot of links.
Know About It explains on its Web site they collect all the links passing through your social streams and perform a “bunch of analysis on each one to determine which are most likely to be of interest to you.”
Sounds helpful. The idea of sorting all your inbound information in a variety of ways is appealing. You can also look at the service’s recommendations based on your expressed interest or get a personalized email digest.
Mr. Kirkpatrick has not yet tested the service but likes the idea. What isn’t mentioned? Privacy. So what is the ‘bunch of analysis’ and where do all those links end up? Advertisers? If the start-up is successful, time will tell. But with the social web moving at a never-ending pace and growing, social media users wanting to sort their feeds likely won’t mind too much. We think these types of tools are likely to grow in importance as free real time search becomes a difficult service to monetize.
Philip West, August 2, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com, publishers of The New Landscape of Enterprise Search
Synthesio Releases New Social Media Monitoring Tool
May 22, 2011
More social media monitoring. “This New Dashboard Lets You Monitor Social Media Conversations About Your Brand Everywhere describes a dashboard called Unity. The solution is from Synthesio, and it could quickly become an essential marketing tool.
Unlike TweetDeck, Unity is not free. However, the cost may be worth it. The article points to two components that put this app far ahead:
- “It monitors much more than Facebook or Twitter, in particular it crawls user forums, which is trickier and in practice is often much more important for many brands;
- It works in over 30 languages. Synthesio has teams of translators around the world and around the clock that monitor conversations in many languages and make it all accessible to marketers in one dashboard.”
For your money, you get information about how to customize your dashboard. Regular analytic reports are available for an added cost. Such monitoring of the real time environment may soon be essential for companies to stay competitive, “or well”, bring the future home today..
Cynthia Murrell, May 22, 2011
Digital Reasoning Continues to Expand
May 16, 2011
Move over Palantir and i2 Ltd. Digital Reasoning is expanding due to its rapid growth. As reported in MSN’s “Digital Reasoning Introduces Federal Advisory Board,” the data analytics leader has created a board to guide its push into the federal market. We learned:
With the federal government’s increased focus on cloud computing, (Digital Reasoning’s) flagship product Synthesys® provides a unique Entity Oriented Analytics solution that enables government agencies to tap into the power of big data. The Advisory Board represents a team with unique insight into the requirements of Big Data, text analytics and intelligence solutions for government agencies.
The board members are: Gen. William T. Hobbins, who retired as Commander, U.S. Air Forces in Europe; Bob Flores, founder and president of Applicology Inc., who spent 31 years in the US intelligence community; Anita K. Jones, who managed the Department of Defense’s science and technology program; Capt. Nick Buck, who spent 15 years in National Security Space, including 10 years in the National Reconnaissance Office; and Mike Miller, currently president of M4 Associates and previously VP of Juniper Networks’ Public Sector Division where he was responsible for all business with Juniper’s Public Sector customers in the US. This kind of talent should be valuable guiding Digital Reasoning’s federal sector strategy.
We have tracked this Franklin, Tennessee, company since its inception. To get some insight into the firm’s approach, you may want to read these two interviews ArnoldIT.com, the owner of this news service, conducted with Tim Estes, the founder of Digital Reasoning. The February 2010 interview explores the core technology of the firm and how it differs from other vendors’ methods. The December 2010 interview probes the new version of the firm’s flagship technology.
Stephen E Arnold, May 16, 2011
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Twitter Firehose News
April 15, 2011
There is a tweak to the Witter and Mediasift partnership. You can read about it in the DataSift write up “Twitter Partnership”.
Mediasift and Twitter have agreed to a partnership that has the potential to change how marketers and companies understand conversations about their products as well as how they choose to market them to target audiences. By utilizing the advanced DataSift software they are able to break down “tweets” into a language that is easily understandable and searchable and is still quite cost effective with it’s “pay per use” subscription. The article said:
As a company we have been very fortunate to have access to the Twitter Firehose for quite some time. This has enabled us over the past two years to refine our thinking, leading to the incarnation of DataSift.
DataSift compiles multiple social media feeds and additional data sets to create a common abstract layer which provides meaningful insight into much of the chaotic and unstructured data from the outlets. It took nearly 18 months to complete the DataSift platform but it has already seen a huge outpouring of company and marketing support with more than a billion requests per month.
Important stuff for the real time crowd.
Leslie Radcliff, April 15, 2011
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