Facebook Productivity Tip
December 31, 2010
Listen up, Facebook users. Bogged down by the number of links shared by your Facebook friends? Well fret no more, TheLikeWall is here in an effort to save you time. Simply visit the website and login with the same details used for your Facebook account. The Like Wall will take tally of all the links your Facebook friends are sharing and rank them by the reactions other people have already recorded. So the most popular links are seated at the top of the list, allowing the less important ones to fall to the fray, thus saving you countless hours by knowing what isn’t worth looking at. There is not much to this… literally. Visit the website for yourself and see.
This service sounds useful enough. I’m afraid I cannot report I have conducted any tests or offer a proper review; I don’t have a Facebook account. My personal solution to wasting less time on Facebook is to never visit Facebook, but that’s just me.
Sarah Rogers, December 31, 2010
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Affinity Shopping and Free Choice
December 23, 2010
With the holiday shopping season here, retailers try to improve their e-commerce systems, including navigational ease and relevancy of products offered to buyers. Market Watch states in “Retailers Embrace Internal Site Search for Accuracy, Relevancy, and Profitability” that retailers have turned to the Aberdeen Group report: Retail E-Commerce Search: Accuracy, Relevancy, and Profitability in the Age of Choice to help them “address rapidly shifting customer affinities.” E-commerce system vendors underwrite the “free” and independent and objective analysis.
“Consumer and business analytics resources allow retailers to leverage the search process as a key customer touch-point. The more information taken into consideration regarding previous activity and site behavior, the more likely an up-sell will be. This saves time for the consumer and increases profitability for the retailer.”
By using customers’ analytical search data, retailers will improve their search results. Retailers are depending on this data to help increase their profit margins for this year. All I can say is get it quick after you take a wild and crazy survey with words like “affinity” in the questions.
Combine this with Google’s “contextual discovery” and shopping becomes something my great grandmother would not have recognized. Would she have made her own decisions about sox?
Stephen E Arnold, December 23, 2010
Alpha Spy for US
November 12, 2010
According to the article “One Spy to Rule Them All: Top Spook Launches Push for Real Power” James Clapper, the director of national intelligence has reach a preliminary agreement with Defense Secretary Robert Gates over the control of $53.1 billion dollars of the intelligence budget. I noted this passage in the write up:
You might think the director of national intelligence actually runs the spy world. But that would make too much sense. In fact, as long as there’s been a “community” of spy agencies, the Defense Department has kept the intelligence budget (now totaling $80.1 billion annually) under the military thumb.
This will allow Clapper the ability to direct funds to spying operations that take priority and deny the funding of unsuccessful projects. This ends up being a win-win situation for all parties involved. Clapper gains monetary control over his domain, Gates doesn’t have to worry about $53.1 billion dollars when he has to cut the defense budget, and the American people are able to see a greater transparency within government functions.
My view. Sigh.
Leslie Radcliff, November 12, 2010
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Coveo Connects
November 1, 2010
Knowledge and information are directly related to a company’s success. Coveo taps on this aspect as a leading provider of enterprise search and customer information access solutions. The PR-USA.net article “Coveo Announces New Information Indexing Connectors Including Support for Microsoft SharePoint 2010,” tells the story of how “Coveo offers a richer, more integrated view of enterprise knowledge and information compared to what’s available with Microsoft’s native search.”
The article further discloses that through its Enterprise Search 2.0 approach, it is possible for Coveo to “bring the benefits of unified information access to customers faster, and less expensively, than is possible with traditional solutions including SharePoint Search or Microsoft FAST.” Since Coveo dynamically indexes the data and presents it in a unified view, it helps the organizations with instant value of the information and knowledge stored in form of structured and unstructured data across the enterprise, in any system without moving data. Thus, the extended Coveo offers superior functionality and integration. Our recommendation: connect with Coveo.
Harleena Singh, November 1, 2010
How to Cope with Google: Change Your Name, Just Move
October 26, 2010
I find Math Club folks darned entertaining. I recall learning from someone that Google’s top dog suggested that one could deal with privacy issues by changing one’s name. No problem, but not exactly practical. Today (October 25, 2010) several people mentioned to me Dr. Schmidt’s suggestion regarding Street View’s imaging one’s home. The recommendation was, according to “Schmidt: Don’t Like Google Street View Photographing Your House? Then Move,” even more impractical than changing one’s name. In today’s real estate market, most folks struggle to make payments. The cost of moving is out of reach even if there were a compelling reason to uproot oneself. The idea of moving because Google is making snaps of one’s domicile is either pretty funny (my view) or pretty crazy (the view of one of the people in my office).
So which is it? Colbert Report material or an answer that could get you stuck in a hospital’s psychiatric ward for observation?
I side with the Math Club. Dr. Schmidt was just joking.
What’s not so funny is the mounting legal friction that Google faces. My concern is that the push back could impair Google’s ability to do deals. The issue is partially trust and partially mind share. With lawyers wanting discovery and depositions, the two Ds can get even the A student in Math Club in academic hot water. That’s bad for Google, its partners, and its stakeholders. Competitors know Google has lots of cash, but with Apple and Facebook surging, Google can no longer rely on controlled chaos to converge on a solution. Lawyers are into procedures and often lack a sense of humor.
Just move. Man, that’s a hoot. Getting a cow on top of a university bell tower will not elicit a chuckle from me. But “just move.” I am in stitches. Absolutely hilarious. But there is that other point of view… the hospital… the observation thing. Hmmm.
Stephen E Arnold, October 26, 2010
Google: No More Never Complain, Never Explain
October 23, 2010
The Straits Times reported “Google Sorry for Lapses.” Is this a change in method? I recall learning from one of my college professors at the cow town school to which I was admitted, “Never complain, never explain.” Now Google is apologizing, which combines complaining and explaining. If the write up is accurate, the Google may now be recognizing that it has created the equivalent of a ceramic brake slowing the Googlemobile to a snail’s pace. For a Googzilla, getting smoked by a snail is painful indeed. I opine that such friction may be worse than sitting out the senior prom in high school to work on a problem in partial derivatives.
Here’s the passage that caught my attention:
Mr Eustace [Google wizard and adult in charge of rocket science] provided Google’s most detailed description yet of the private data on unsecured wireless networks scooped up by Street View cars as they cruised through cities around the world taking pictures. ‘While most of the data is fragmentary, in some instances entire emails and URLs were captured, as well as passwords,’ he said. ‘We want to delete this data as soon as possible, and I would like to apologize again for the fact that we collected it in the first place. ‘We are mortified by what happened, but confident that these changes to our processes and structure will significantly improve our internal privacy and security practices for the benefit of all our users,’ Mr Eustace said.
Several observations:
- What about that phrase “most of the data is fragmentary”? “Data” is a plural but that matters not to the Google. The “most”? Well, that is more problematic and apparently ambiguous.
- With so many smart lads and lasses, how can such a mistake get propagated across the years and multiple versions of the scampering little data gobbling vehicles? Interesting to me, but I am not mortified. Google is. Ooops.
- After 12 years, a couple of alleged stalkers, and an Odwalla beverage delivery truck full of legal hassles, the Google is fixing up its “internal privacy and security practices.” I do like the categorical affirmative. Too bad the multiple exceptions create a bit of a logical issue for this goose.
In short, complaining and explaining perhaps?
Stephen E Arnold, October 23, 2010
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Access to Search Outside the US
September 23, 2010
This is not specifically about “beyond search”. The article is about “actually searching.” If you are in certain countries, access to mostly unfiltered Web sites can be tricky.
If you want to access all that you couldn’t for various reasons, then there’s LifeHacker.com’s “Top 10 Ways to Access Blocked Stuff on The Web.” It offers tips like getting quickie user/pass combo you can use to log in on just about every site on the net, or tricks to work-around with the browser’s user agent, for checking out Gmail’s new iPad interface on anything but iPad.
The site suggests the old trick of copying and pasting the URL onto Google for the blocked pages, ways to access Gmail when it is down, or how to always get BitTorrent speeds, and access sites taken down by traffic. You also learn to remote control computers, access country-blocked streaming TV, and roll your own proxy to access blocked sites by using PHProxy on the local web server setup on your computer. We find the site information a valuable reference, quite handy for searching information in certain countries.
Our suggestion: download and keep handy if you travel far and wide. We are not advocating any action that would violate a rule, law, regulation, or custom. Information, however, is often just darned useful for its own sake.
Harleena Singh, September 23, 2010
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i2, Inc. and Palantir
September 19, 2010
In a motion filed Monday Aug. 9, 2010, i2 filed a complaint explained in “Media Advisory from i2.” The plaintiff, www.i2.co.uk, makes allegations related to i2’s intellectual property. You can access the legal documents via Scribd. i2 and Palantir are involved in content processing, data management, and various analytics processes. More about i2 is here. More about Palantir is here. Years ago I did some work for i2 and learned that the firm’s technologies were widely used in intelligence, law enforcement, and related market sectors. Palantir is more of a newcomer. Palantir received an infusion of venture funding in 2010.
Stephen E Arnold, September 19, 2010
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Another Google Issue
September 19, 2010
Short honk: I don’t have much to say about this series of news stories and their write ups. I thought Google’s Summer of Anguish was over. Guess not. Why? Check out these titles. You may want to read the stories, but I just skimmed them:
- Google Engineer Fired for Spying on Teenagers
- Ex-Googler Allegedly Spied on User E-Mails, Chats
- Google Fires Engineer for Privacy Breach
Not even a gentle honk from Harrod’s Creek. Maybe this will be an endless summer for the Google?
Stephen E Arnold, September 19, 2010
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Are Google and IBM Disagreeing about Security?
September 3, 2010
Google and IBM have some ties; for example, the effort to get certain “big data” programming skills injected into computer science programs. However, I noted an article on ITProPortal that contained a hint of possible discord. Point your brower to “Google Not Happy with IBM Security Report.” The blog reported that Google “dismissed the security statistics cited by IT services giant IBM and has challenged the accuracy of the report.” You can see Google’s statement in “Vulnerability Trends: How Are Companies Really Doing?” In this Google blog post, Google said:
the data behind these [industry security] reports is commonly inaccurate or outdated to some degree. The truth is that maintaining an accurate and reliable database of this type of information is a significant challenge. We most recently saw this reality play out last week after the appearance of the IBM X-Force® 2010 Mid-Year Trend and Risk Report. We questioned a number of surprising findings concerning Google’s vulnerability rate and response record, and after discussions with IBM, we discovered a number of errors that had important implications for the report’s conclusions. IBM worked together with us and promptly issued a correction to address the inaccuracies.
Minor ripple? Probably. Enterprise security is a key concern in organizations. With Google’s stepped up efforts in its enterprise unit, one would expect Google to take a strong stance.
Stephen E Arnold, September 3, 2010
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