Microsoft Media Madness: Bing Movie Search
December 4, 2010
Will Microsoft ace the Google in movie search? After watching a teen fiddle with the a Google TV in a big box store, that’s a tough question. Meh.
“Bing updates its movie search” on Cnet touts the Microsoft search engine’s revamped cinema page with its larger list of reviews and clips and driving distance to local theaters. With more prominent graphics, it’s much prettier than Google, I’ll give it that. However, in my city I get a much larger list of local theaters, right on the movie’s main page on Google, so I don’t have to click again. I know where the cinemas are in my town, and I usually have some idea of what I want to see, so for me the Google search works a little better.
Cnet’s argument is:
Bing’s revamped movie page is now similar to the one offered by Google.Searching for a movie at Google also shows you local show times, links to reviews, and a video of the movie’s trailer all in one spot. But Bing offers a greater variety and number of reviews and a wider selection of trailers and other clips.
Not really that exciting, in my book., but Bing does have that little extra oomph with the eye candy, which I’m sure many will find appealing.
Alice Wasielewski, December 4, 2010, 2010
Cisco Tandberg Open Source Dust Up
December 4, 2010
Cisco has been pushing, quite aggressively, into different markets. The company’s financial outlook needs a helper app. I listened to the Cisco open source talk about Lucene/Solr in October 2010 at the Lucene Revolution Conference. The information was interesting and did not equip me to determine if “Tandberg Illustrates Stupidity of Software Patent Policy” is accurate or not. The write up asserts that Tandberg, a unit of Cisco, has “invented” a video processing method. An open source developers suggests that Tandberg may have embraced open source with more familiarity than some expect.
I am really not concerned with this matter. What interests me is the possibility that other alleged open source friendly outfits will try to patent open source innovations. I keep having dreams about open source becoming the walled garden of tomorrow.
Worth watching in my opinion because Cisco Tandberg may be quite clever with the help of patent regulations of course.
Stephen E Arnold, December 4, 2010
Freebie
Google, France, and a Sacred Link
December 2, 2010
Short honk: Lots of chatter about Google just deciding to pay for content deals. The original approach seems to have been less than optimal. The new method is to write checks. Most folks are chasing the Miramax thread. I found “Google Signs France Artists Deal to Cool Tensions From Copyright Battles” more indicative of the Google Plan B. Will it work? I was tracking Google’s chit chat with Catch Media, a plays-anywhere outfit with some good-as-gold rich media content deals in place. According to the “we write checks in France” insight, I found this passage from the Bloomberg story interesting:
Google, the owner of the world’s largest search engine, is trying to build stronger relationships with regulators and copyright holders in France, where it has attracted scrutiny over its mapping, book-scanning, and advertising systems. Google Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt this year pledged to build a “European cultural institute” and a research and development center in Paris after meeting with President Nicolas Sarkozy. While the YouTube deal won’t produce large amounts of cash for artists in the short term, it re-establishes “the sacred link between the fortune of the work and the fortune of the author,” Laurent Heynemann, president of the 50,000 member SACD group, said at a Paris press conference. “The Internet is not a jungle, and an economic model is possible.
Heads of state: the country of France and the country of Google. And, the best phrase, “sacred link”. I like that elevation to even higher powers than mere heads of state and heads of publicly traded US companies. I keep asking, “How’s that Google TV working out for you?” No one in my office has much of an answer.
Stephen E Arnold, December 2, 2010
Freebie
Microsoft and the Game Angle on Search
November 30, 2010
I recall that the RAND outfit used game playing by humans as a way to inform software. Instead of artificial intelligence, the system sucked down what humans did and used that. I think I learned about this method when I was a freshman at the loser university I attended.
Proving that history tends to repeat itself, Microsoft is working on a new way to search for images. “Microsoft’s ImageFlow Turns Picture Search Into a 3-D Game” details some features of this new product.
ImageFlow is a game-centric search that places users in a star field of search results. Using their mouse or keyboard, users navigate further into the star field to drill down in the results. Traveling up or down in the star field shows results along the color-to-black-and-white scale. Traveling left to right brings results for related search queries; for example showing images of Janet Jackson with the results for the original search query of Michael Jackson.
This idea, if we understand the source article, has some warts.
Who’s to say that when I search for pictures of Michael Jackson, the next thing I want to search for are images of Janet?
Google is already making strides in improving image searches, and Microsoft is itching to catch up. Possibly their next effort will be a reimagining of something else that we’ve already seen.
Stephen E Arnold and Laura Amos, November 30, 2010
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The Price of Catch Up in La La Land
November 29, 2010
The Math Club may be ready to break open its piggybank. The cash may be what’s needed to get into the Los Angeles “business”. The lawyers can do fancy math. Not Google style math, of course. The Hollywood math can make other moguls cry and drive tissue paper personalities to their shrinks in droves.
Navigate to “Hollywood’s Big Hope: Google Shows Up With Suitcase Full of Money. It Could Happen!” Here’s the passage that caught my attention:
You can see why Hollywood would be pushing for a deep-pocketed suitor to show up. And you can see why Google has been resistant to that idea: If it starts writing checks to Hollywood, then every content player, everywhere, will expect the same thing. And Google has always insisted that it’s not in the content business, period.
Money works in La La Land. The problem is that as America’s youth become increasingly challenged when asked to read third grade level content, lean back entertainment is the new calculus. So what happens when Hollywood lawyers meet the Math Club? Access is going to cost a lot. Oh, the Hollywood way involves servitude, obeisance, and often a 20 minute work out on the casting couch.
The Google may have some challenges ahead. After letting some interesting acquisitions slip away, time may be running out. Amazon is in the movie business. Apple’s big Jobs is the new Walt Disney. And Netflix? Well, it may be easier for Netflix to do Google stuff than for Google to do Netflix type deals.
Search is yesterday. Oh, that song is on iTunes now.
Stephen E Arnold, November 29, 2010
Google TV: Are Pundits Over Reacting?
November 28, 2010
I fiddled with a Google TV. Worked okay. Not for my 89 year old father, but for the most part, Google has implemented some of the ideas expressed in the firm’s voluminous patent applications issued since 2005. True, the commercial content is not there, but you can access YouTube, which is according to some attention deficit disorder researchers is the largest repository of video content available.
I read “Google TV Already In Trouble? Sony Offering 25% Off Blu-ray Google TV Units” and noted this passage:
Price cuts never speak well to a product’s success and so Google TV may be in some serious trouble here. I already stated along with most every other reviewer that the feature set is half-baked, the units are overpriced, and now this lower price seems to say that consumers aren’t biting even though there’s a commercial for the Sony units nearly every 20 minutes during prime time TV. Sigh. If Google can’t disrupt big media, who can?
My view is that Google is the Microsoft for the 21st century. I expect the service to be much better around Version 3 or so. Google may be taking out its check book because nothing produces content like money for media moguls. This group of managers may think Python is a snake, not a programming language. But money is money, even to media moguls. And the over reacting? Nah, just trying to cope with Google Instant and the new normal in objective search results.
Patience, grasshopper. Patience.
Stephen E Arnold, November 28, 2010
Freebie, unlike some media content
New York Times States Obvious about Google TV
November 24, 2010
Short honk: I am a subscriber to the gray lady in print too. Over the years, I have chuckled at the pontifications. I even argued with a former famous New York Times writer—former as in no longer there—about the vapidity of the write ups about Google. I noted a rubber spatula daub in “How To Watch The Daily Show on Google TV.”
That [Viacom’s and other TV outfits’ blocking of Google TV] represents an interesting dilemma for Google TV: The platform needs a critical mass of users to have an impact on viewership numbers for sites like Comedycentral.com — but it may have a hard time getting to that level if most of the TV content available on the web today is blocked.
Quite an insight. Be still my heart.
Stephen E Arnold, November 24, 2010
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Google and Complexity
November 19, 2010
Quote to note: I almost feel bad for Google. Facebook integrates email into its social messaging. Google is still trying to find a way to get the Math Club invited to the prom. Now the Google TV earns one of those New York Times-type reverse back flip with a twist belly flops. To get the context for Google TV, point your browser at “Google TV, Usability Not Included”. [If the link goes dead, you will have to birddog the original article at Starbuck’s or on the NYT’s own Web site.] The write up “reviews” the lean back with your controller and enjoy an insufficiently aged mash up of TV and Web. I am not much of a TV person, so I can’t relate to what Google has created or devoted so much development time. The number of Google rich media patent applications is interesting in itself. Googlers, when not thinking about the distribution of primes watches TV, looks at Web sites, and does all matter of content grazing. I pretty much do one thing at a time and find my limited intelligence stretched to its limit when I try to do two things at once.
Here’s the killer point in the write up in my opinion:
This much is clear: Google TV may be interesting to technophiles, but it’s not for average people. On the great timeline of television history, Google TV takes an enormous step in the wrong direction: toward complexity.
The point is that Google is working overtime to find a way to pump up its revenue. Now the company is big and growing, but the “next big thing” seems to be located down the road or across the street, not in the Google’s expansive manse.
Forget Google. The economy is no good. Overly complex systems in the enterprise or in the grubby hands of consumers is not where the action is. At a recent conference, the principal knock against established enterprise software was that it was too tough to figure out, too expensive, and too complicated. Our neighbor asked me to fix the family’s Windows 7 machine. I told the neighbors to buy a Mac. Who has time or energy to figure out how to troubleshoot software arguably more complicated than IBM CICS?
As we head into 2011, my hunch is that the big story is not the success of Roku or Netflix. The increasing complexity of Google’s products and services has become a defining characteristic of the company. I don’t know how to get “clean” search results any more when I run a query. Exalead, DuckDuckGo, and Blekko are getting more of my time. Google TV gets none of it, and probably not too much of my neighbors’ time either. When I want to watch a TV show, I just look in the newspaper or the cable TV guide. To do Webby things, I have other gizmos that work just fine; for example, my Toshiba NB 305 or my iPad. Complexity is no longer a benefit to me.
Stephen E Arnold, November 19, 2010
Freebie
Google and Video Content
November 14, 2010
Short honk: The YouTube blog reported that YouTube is sucking down a lot of video. What’s “a lot”? How does 35 hours of video a minute sound. That works out to 2,100 hours of video an hour. The rest of the math I will leave to you. You can read the news in “Great Scott! Over 35 Hours of Video Uploaded Every Minute to YouTube.” This blog is titled “Broadcasting Ourselves.” The chart below shows the intake of video at the Google.
The other side of the video business is non-YouTube content. I noted “Fox Blocks Google TV” which informed me that Fox has joined ABC, CBS, and NBC in blocking “Google TV from accessing their content online.” As crappy as network TV shows are, the top dogs at these commercial outfits seem to be unwilling to roll over for a Google mouse pad or a T shirt.
I am not a TV person. Video to me, including my own lame efforts, is serial, annoying, and mostly crap. In the race to the bottom of the intellectual barrel, I am not sure who is ahead. Google with 2,100 hours of dross flowing into YouTube each hour or the 500 channels of D minus info pumped out by the “real” television industry.
Quite an honor to win this content I surmise. Will the US economy will rebound with this type of competitive effort? Meh.
Stephen E Arnold, November 14, 2010
Freebie
Intel Stream 4 Now Available
November 10, 2010
The fourth podcast in the Intel Stream series is now available for download from ArnoldIT.com. This week, Dr. Tyra Oldham, LAND SDS and Stephen E Arnold discuss IBM’s surprising additions to Cognos 10, open source business intelligence, neuromarketing and sentiment analysis, and the upside and downside of blog content, and more. This week’s show features an interview with Oleg Shilovitsky, CEO and co-founder of Inforbix. His firm has pioneered a search and content processing solution for manufacturing and design engineering firms. You can read an interview with Mr. Shilovitsky in the Search Wizards Speaks section of the ArnoldIT.com Web log.
Stephen E Arnold, November 10, 2010
Sponsored by LAND SDS and ArnoldIT.com.
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