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
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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
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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.
Intel Stream Number 3: An Interview with Mats Bjore, Silobreaker
November 3, 2010
Our third podcast in the Intel Stream series is now available. In addition to five news stories, you can listen to Mats Bjore, founder of Silobreaker, explain his firm’s next=generation information platform. A former McKinsey consultant, Mr. Bjore developed Silobreaker to make a wide range of information available in an easy-to-use discovery system. The news stories for this week cover open source business intelligence, a Coplink sale by i2 Ltd. to the San Antonio police, CNN’s surprising assertion that Microsoft has lost its consumer appeal, and more. You can access the podcast at this link or by navigating to the ArnoldIT.com rich media index page.
Stephen E Arnold, November 3, 2010
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Anti Search in 2011
November 1, 2010
In a recent meeting, several of the participants were charged with disinformation from the azurini.
You know. Azurini, the consultants.
Some of these were English majors, others former print journalists, and some unemployed search engine optimization experts smoked by Google Instant.
But mostly the azurini emphasize that their core competency is search, content management, or information governance (whatever the heck that means). In a month or so, there will be a flood of trend write ups. When the Roman god looks to his left and right, the signal for prognostication flashes through the fabric covered cube farms.
To get ahead of the azurini, the addled goose wants to identify the trends in anti search for 2011. Yep, anti search. Remember that in a Searcher article several years ago, I asserted that search was dead. No one believed me, of course. Instead of digging into the problems that ranged from hostile users to the financial meltdown of some high profile enterprise search vendors, search was the big deal.
And why not? No one can do a lick of work today unless that person can locate a document or “find” something to jump start activity. In a restaurant, people talk less and commune with their mobile devices. Search is on a par with food, a situation that Maslow would find interesting.
The idea for this write up emerged from a meeting a couple of weeks ago. The attendees were trying to figure out how to enhance an existing enterprise search system in order to improve the productivity of the business. The goal was admirable, but the company was struggling to generate revenues and reduce costs.The talk was about search but the subtext was survival.
The needs for the next generation search system included:
- A great user experience
- An iPad app to deliver needed information
- Seamless access to Web and Intranet information
- Google-like performance
- Improved indexing and metatagging
- Access to database content and unstructured information like email.
Short List of Image Search Tools
October 29, 2010
Short honk: One never knows when this type of list will be needed. “7 Image Search Tools That Will Change Your Life” provides descriptions, some screenshots, and links to seven image search tools. My life has not been changed, but a happy quack to Brain Pickings for the information. One example:
Retrievr at http://labs.systemone.at/retrievr/
Stephen E Arnold, October 29, 2010
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Google TV Fail Predicted
October 28, 2010
I am not sure I agree with MSNBC. I mean how objective can anything with either a hint of Microsoft or Comcast, but “Google Tamed Text, but Video Is Biting Back” is a must read. The author explains why the text-meister is having some problems with video. The write up even drags the dead fish of YouTube’s past through one paragraph. Nice touch.
Here’s a passage that caught my attention:
Now, with a new set-top box called Google TV, the company is trying to circumvent the usual channels again, and getting caught in the act. Ideally, Google sees the box’s software as a video equivalent of the Google Reader news program — you just tell it what you like, and all the freshest content will be there when you fire it up. But already, NBC, CBS and ABC have formally blocked Google TV’s Web browser from accessing the video content on their websites. This means that anyone who hopes to enjoy “everything … you’re accustomed to doing online” via Google TV will have to go without the lion’s share of popular TV content — even the full shows that are indeed available “free” online. Informally, other blocks are in place: Google TV includes a link to HBO GO in its “Spotlight” section, but when any Comcast customer visits that link, they are told to go to Fancast, Comcast’s own streaming service. Hop over to Fancast, and you’re told that the browser is not supported. Will Comcast ever let Google TV’s browser stream its content? I suppose that depends on who pays what to whom.
I am no TV or rich media goose. When I want to watch a sports program and my wife is recording one of her faves, I have to ask her how to make the weird switch channels or cancel recording message go away. But the MSNBC post speaks about those who are TV savvy. The argument advanced sounds reasonable.
Stephen E Arnold, October 28, 2010
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