Google and Hollywood in the 1920s
November 17, 2009
Short honk: In Google: The Digital Gutenberg I discuss the way in which those sharp pencil, strong handshake fellows Louis Burt Mayer and Samuel Goldwyn ran their businesses. If your knowledge of Hollywood lore is murky, think “control” and “vertical integration”. You can get a glimpse of the challenges rich media faces when you read “YouTube Unveils Tool to Connect News Organizations with Citizen Journalists”. I have scanned a number of write ups about this digital “train roundhouse” but none of them focuses on the point that struck me when I read Google’s patent documents and technical papers about the firm’s “matching” innovations. Think in terms of having an “individualized Google” generate your own programming line up. Not enough? Envision your wanting to hire a person to make your video. No problem because Google can connect a person looking for rich media talent with that buyer. Distribution? Google’s own system. Search? Already in place. Monetization? Two choices: you do it yourself or allow Google to pump ads into your space. Either way you get money. I could go on, but I think the folks obsessing about traditional publishing may want to cast their eyes at the future of rich media. Books are a pleasant diversion but another disruption is building momentum. Don’t think Google can be like Louis and Sam? Ask your local telco wizard about Google and telephony. Same strategy. Different theater, and the show will be playing on the computing devices of the children of today’s TV, studio, and cable executives. Just my opinion.
Stephen Arnold, November 17, 2009
Oyez, oyez, National Endowment for the Arts, I was not paid to point out that the Google is moving to disrupt and reshape another information sector.
Clop Cloppity Clop Clop: The Sound of Google in Education
November 14, 2009
I don’t want to belabor the obvious, but educational publishers may want to keep a close eye on the Google. The firm has been gaining traction in education at an increasingly rapid pace since 2006, the pivotal year in case you have been following my analyses of Google. If you are unaware of the Google as a one stop shop for education, you may want to read “Gone Google at Educause 2009”. A key passage in this write up was in my opinion:
Lots has happened over the past year especially: more than 100 new features have rolled out in Google Apps, we’ve engaged well over six million students and faculty (a 400% increase since this time last year), launched free Google Message Security for K-12 schools and have integrated with other learning services such as Blackboard and Moodle. These developments are just the beginning. According to the newly-released 2009 Campus Computing survey statistics, 44% of colleges and universities have converted to a hosted student email solution, while another 37% are currently evaluating the move. Of those that have migrated, over half — 56% precisely — are going Google.
Course materials? Coming in saddle bags strapped to Googzilla. Clop Cloppity Clop Clop—One of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse heading your way?
Stephen Arnold, November 14, 2009
I wish to report to the Defense Commissary Agency that I was fed one donut at my father’s assisted living facility. However, writing this article and the payment of a small donut are in no way related. The donut was better than the one at got at McDill too.
Exalead Nabs ACM Award at the Multimedia Grand Challenge
November 5, 2009
Last year, I had an opportunity to test drive the Exalead video search system Voxalead. I admit that several Exalead engineers bought me lunch and asked about computer use in Harrod’s Creek. I was sufficiently impressed with the Exalead’s engineers to make a short video about the service. At that time, few in the US were aware of Exalead’s system for converting video or any rich media into searchable content. Once converted a user can query the content and see a results list with the exact point in the video relevant to the query available with a mouse click. No more serial hunting.
The lunch was good but the technology was better. Upon my return to the US, I received a number of questions about the technology. I learned earlier this week that ACM awarded Exalead an award for this invention. Exalead told me:
Voxalead News lets you search for keywords inside videos, rather than simply searching limited external information like titles or descriptions. A tremendous timesaver, Voxalead further lets you jump right to the point in the video in which your search term is used! The Voxalead demonstration currently offers search in four languages (English, French, Mandarin Chinese and Arabic) across a select set of news sources.
Since the award, Exalead has received inquiries about the technology from organizations in media, publishing, eDiscovery, competitive intelligence, and social networking.For more information, visit the Multimedia Grand Challenge 2009 Web page. You can also test drive Voxalead News and other Exalead innovations at the Exalabs site.
A happy quack to the Exalead team. Next time I am in Paris, I want another free lunch.
Stephen Arnold, November 5, 2009
The US Army is officially notified that I wrote this article because I liked that Exalead lunch and because I still think Voxalead is one of the most useful rich media search systems I have tested. Yes, a one star French meal makes this goose quite fat and happy, thank you.
Google and Its Video Ecosystem
November 2, 2009
The Guardian’s “Google Seeks to Turn a Profit from YouTube Copyright Clashes” is one of those “close but no cigar” write ups about the GOOG. The point of the story is that Google can work with copyright holders to monetize videos on YouTube.com. The idea is that content can generate cash and the copyright owners become Google partners, not enemies. The article references Google’s digital fingerprint technology which is disclosed in one of Google’s open source documents. The story had an interesting factoid:
At the moment YouTube says it streams 7bn videos a week and only 1bn of those are monetized. Of those 1bn, a third make money through the ContentID system.
The point that is omitted is that Google’s method makes it possible for a copyright holder to use Google as an integrated motion picture company just like those the Hollywood moguls of old assembled in the analog days. Google does it digitally and shifts the monetization load to copyright holders if those folks want to take control of the process. Check the eyeball count for YouTube.com here.
Stephen Arnold, November 2, 2009
Not a penny for this write up, trusted US Postal Service.
User Generated Video Stats
October 26, 2009
The flawed world of video search is getting bigger and quickly. Good news for companies able to index rich media are these data. You will want to buy the full research study described in “User Generated Video 2005 – 2008: Mania Meets Mainstream”. Conducted in 2007 and published in 2008, I think the data may be stale, but I found the data useful as a benchmark. (I was curious about an “old” item turning up as news in my newsreader, but not sufficiently curious to research the odd time delay.)
For me, the interesting data points were:
- It’s estimated YouTube added 831,147 videos to its library in 2007 (net of all video removals). Note: this figure is close to the one million videos uploaded each day to Google that I heard at the end of 2008 from a person who seemed to have some confidence in his research capabilities.
- The market grew by an estimated 70% in 2007, up from a total 13.2 billion views generated in 2006. Note: seems like a robust figure which may be getting a boost from mobile devices with video capability.
- The market is forecast to grow at 52% in 2008, and reach 34 billion views, as indicated by straight line linear regression analysis of current market data. Note: this is spreadsheet fever, but a number is a number.
In terms of search, I think current video search struggles to keep pace with the flow of content. To locate videos, the same query must be run across different services.
For more current information about the volume of video transfered by Google, read “YouTube Gets Record 10B Video Views“. Yep, 10 billion. That’s a number too.
Stephen Arnold, October 26, 2009
Social Security needs to know that I was not paid for this write up.
Light Bulb Goes On: Google Is in the TV Biz
October 19, 2009
On my diagram of the businesses that Google is disruptive, I have a big label on motion pictures, videos, and television. Most of those in my lectures on Thursday (October 15) and Friday (October 16) just did not see the connection between Google and “real” rich media. I suppose those doubters are in a state of denial. Take the Guardian’s story “C4 Deal with YouTube Will Let Users Watch Full-Length TV Dramas Online. Deal Highlights Shift in British Viewing Habits.” The story reported:
The deal will see about 50 hours of Channel 4 programming made available on the Google-owned videosharing website soon after airing on TV in a move designed to get it on the front foot as traditional broadcasters scramble to develop revenue-generating online content distribution strategies. For its part, YouTube is seeking to move beyond short clips, often produced by members of the public, to offer full-length TV shows and other higher quality video content. The three-year deal with YouTube will see the broadcaster provide its content, including 3,000 hours of archive programming of shows such as Brass Eye, Derren Brown, Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares and Teachers, free. The partners will share income on advertising around Channel 4 content, though details of the revenue split were not revealed.
What is not in the story is the context of the move by Google. Why not? In my opinion, this move is simply another Google beta test and is—after all—just one TV outfit.
So denial. Understatement. Lack of context. These are the three flaws in most analysis of Google. I want to point out that taking a look at what Google is doing is not too useful. When these deals are announced, it is too late for some of Google’s competitors to take action. Sure, competitors can negotiate their own deals, but these knee jerk reactions trigger some unpleasant consequences; namely, dealing with the costs associated with digitizing, serving, and storing chunky data like video. Google’s advantage is scale at costs below what knee jerk outfits will incur. Thus, the context of this Google deal has some grim implications for competitors:
First, Google can ramp up video and do it quickly and more economically than most firms. Click here for one view.
Second, with Google’s third party payer business model, the lure of the Google approach may be enticing to rich media outfits with an appetite for new revenue options.
Third, the lack of context for Google’s actions means that those who join in the Google video content push are likely to see one thing when Google is doing something quite different.
Intrigued? This is a marketing blog, so you have to buy Google: The Digital Gutenberg to get more info on how Google is moving information access to a metalevel. Click the ad at the top of this Web page.
Stephen Arnold, October 19, 2009
The cab driver was nice to me as I wrote the first draft of this article. Compensation enough I suppose.
Image Search Headache Removal Service
October 18, 2009
Searching for images giving you a headache? We just might have found a golden goose.
Along with the data explosion on our hands comes a related problem: image explosion. There are just as many graphics out there as there are files, I bet, and searching through them is just as difficult a prospect, even not even more so. Graphics like .jpg, .tiff, .gif and others don’t necessarily have embedded data–so there’s nothing to catch in a search–and graphics that do carry some form of metadata end up top of the search pile.
Beyond Search was working on a recent project and needed a picture. Our top dog’s comment: “I just had an Easter egg hunt for an image. What a mess.” He’s referring to the mess of figuring what pictures can or cannot be used with securing rights. The Internet is just as visual as it is textual, and more images than you think actually belong to someone. But how do you know? And on the owner’s part, how do you know if your image is being ripped off?
As I learned in my years in journalism, you can’t just pick a pretty picture, slap it on a page (paper or pixel), and publish it. There are such things as digital rights. Yes, someone owns that picture. In a few cases, it may be a free-use image. In some cases, it may be free-use image that use can use if you give them credit. But in many cases, it is a copyrighted image–and you need permission or need to pay to use it. So when you enter your search term “blooming moonflower” into the browser box, beware that list of 1,443,873,899 images that is returned.
We were recently contacted by a representative of PicScout, http://www.picscout.com, a company that deals in image copyright solutions. She sent us a press release about several worldwide companies joining the effort to help safeguard digital rights. Her comment: “Until now, image ownership online was disregarded and disrespected, to say the least. Now that every image has the potential to be visibly associated and directly connected with its licensor or owner, value is restored.”
And it occurred to me that search is intrinsically involved in that effort. From a PicScout press release: “In 2008 an online survey from KRC Research, undertaken for iStockphoto, revealed that 33 percent of Americans use downloaded digital content, but nearly 30 percent are unaware that permission is required for its use.” In general, PicScout’s products produce a list of “tens of millions of images” that display online with the universal information symbol if a surfer is using the ImageExchange Firefox add-on (you can apply to beta test it at http://imagex.picscout.com). And ta-da! You can see right away which images you may or may not use without checking first. How simple is that?
So here’s the scenario: Say ordinary Joe Schmo goes to Google Images and does a search for “pretty pony” to use in a home-grown PR campaign. The GOOG does its thing and returns a billion search results. Joe chooses one and goes on his merry little way… until ImageTracker catches up. Joe fell into the digital rights trap. Any search browser will return results, and unless you have some serious search savvy (and if it’s possible at all), there’s likely no way you can refine your search results to keep that from happening. Well, PicScout’s got that fixed for you.
Now, keep in mind, I’m a lowly duckling dealing with this technology, so this is how I understand it to work. PicScout already had a program called ImageTracker, which searches and finds images based on the algorithms it employs for image identification, as a part of the Image IRC platform. The IRC is what programs the images with metadata (licensing information, owner, etc.) so that ImageTracker will work to police infringement. Those two products are connected by the ImageExchange Add-on, which lets you, a person searching for an image, connect with the owner.
It’s a nifty little idea, quite simple, and it can go a lonnnnnnng way to solving your image search nightmares. So if you deal with online images a lot, you might check PicScout out.
Jessica Bratcher, October 18, 2009
The PR lady did not even thank me for this item. Sigh.
Google Wants to Be a Media Company = Content Delivery Network Rumors
October 15, 2009
Barron’s is one of those business newspapers that blends caution with molecules of nouns to whip investors into a frenzy of uncertainty. Barron’s “Akamai Rallies on Rumor of Google Bid” is an interesting write up. CDNs or content delivery networks are complicated. Akamai has proprietary technology, legions of ISPs on board, and nifty methods for getting popular content to a user quickly. An investor type, who actually bought me lunch at Taco Bell, floated this idea past me. I pointed out:
- Akamai is sophisticated outfit
- Akamai has plumbing in place and on-board ISPs who get financial and bandwidth benefits from their support of the Akamai methods. These involve the injection of smart bits in packets and some other magic
- Video is becoming the method of communication in the emerging semi literate world of the US of A
- Companies with a plan to be a media giant can benefit from owning an Akamai or similar outfit because it generates revenue and provides a convenient way to slash certain operational costs.
Barron’s said:
Briefing.com notes that AKAM calls are seeing buying interest this morning amid “GOOG for AKAM chatter.” I’m not sure that Google really wants to be in the content delivery network business, particularly given a spreading view on the Street that AKAM’s results could be hurt by intensifying pricing pressure in the CDN market. But clearly, somebody believe the rumor.
See fan and back peddle. Fan and back peddle.
With churn the name of one popular game on Wall Street, I sure don’t know if Googzilla is going to gobble up the staff and the technology at Akamai. Google has its own CDN in place, but with the volume of rich media that will be coming down the road in the months ahead, this type of acquisition makes sense to me. Akamai has technology, ISP relationships, plumbing, and people. Did I mention really good people?
Stephen Arnold, October 15, 2009
Sadly no one paid me to write this article. The investor on Friday bought me a chicken thing with a made up name, though.
Upping the Ante in Real Time Open Source Monitoring
September 22, 2009
ReadWriteWeb’s ReadWriteStart ran a thought provoking profile on September 21, 2009, “Robo.to: They’re Watching the Social Web in Real Time – But Will It Pay?” You will need to read the original article. I want to highlight one segment of Jolie O’Dell’s write up and then offer a comment. Ms. O’Dell wrote:
Robo.to is an app that allows users to create soundless, 4-second video clips. These can be used as video avatars, sent as social-web calling cards, attached to all manner of links or geographical data, or simply updated with a line of text as one would update any other status-based message service. Of course, the videos and text can be automatically forwarded to the usual lineup of social networks. What the newly launched TV mode allows for is topic-based surfing of all Robo.to content. “It allows you to watch hashtags,” Flemings explained. “As bits of content bubble up, you can follow that along with the video posts. Users go into TV mode through search or by clicking on a topic. People tend to lost about half an hour when trying this out, because it’s fascinating to watch what people are doing.”
My view is that this type of content innovation is important for three reasons:
First, the volume of social content in video form is going to increase. Right now, accessing that information is a new challenge to innovators and entrepreneurs. Second, the fact that I love print is irrelevant. The mini-video format is going to be a big deal. I watch young people with a Flip or an iPhone 3GS making videos. The writing is on the wall and even I see it. Third, the current access tools have not been optimized for large flows of these video content objects. This means rapid evolution and opportunity.
Just my opinion which was triggered by Ms. O’Dell’s timely work. A happy quack to her.
Stephen Arnold, September 22, 2009
Is SAPIR Vapor?
September 16, 2009
eWeek ran a story that intrigued me. The title: “IBM, European Union Unite on SPIR Multimedia Search Engine”. SAPIR is an acronym for Search in Audio Visual Content Using Peer to Peer Information Retrieval. I like the acronym. It reminded me of Edward Sapir, a noted linguist, and the Latin sapere, which means wise. The question I had was sparked by this passage in the eWeek article:
SAPIR indexes the content of each image and clip using descriptors such as text, color, layout, shapes, or sounds, to help users find comparable images. For example, SAPIR scans a digitized photograph or the bit streams in an MP3 sound file, even if they haven’t been tagged or indexed with descriptive information; this is because SAPIR automatically indexes and ranks multimedia content users upload to the Web for easy retrieval. In a demo, Mass showed how a search on the keyword “dolphin” returned dolphin photos of similar colors and shot angles that users had uploaded to Flickr. After clicking the “similar” link on top of one of the photos, eWEEK saw photos that resembled the dolphin photo in color and shape but did not necessarily include dolphins.
I saw a demo of an image recognition system in Japan when I lectured at Kasai Institute of Technology many moons ago. It worked – sort of. I have also reviewed facial recognition software for a couple of outfits. Great if the person for whom I looked was stationary, looking directly at the CCD, and was not wearing a hat, sporting sunglasses, and distorting his face in a scowl, snarl, or charming grin.
The notion of a demo is very different from a system that has to process images in the wild and return useful matches. My thought is that IBM revs its public relations engine, makes a few phone calls, and sends out suitably rumpled IBM lab wizards. The result is an acronym like SAPIR, but at this point I think SAPIR rhymes with vapor from the Latin root that means steam. Example: the tea pot’s spot spewed vapor from the boiling water.
I recall reading in January 2009 that European researchers “achieved a break through by developing a power image recognition application with mass market appeal.” You can read that story on Science Daily. The technology was MOBVIS and I have lost track of the technology. I think it is easier to issue a news release than to get software to figure out that a photograph is “about” something. For example, I took a picture of Tess and Tyson for this Web log. What is the image “about”? Two dogs or the point that when we sit through a vendor’s demo, the Beyond Search team is ready for a nap. Slippery stuff matching the “image” with the “meaning” in my opinion.
Stephen Arnold, September 16, 2009
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