Neofonie Technology Underpins Labdoo
August 10, 2012
Neofonie GmbH, based in Berlin, Germany, is a long-term player in search; the company has been in the market since 1998 and created the early German search engine fireball.de. Their technology is now being used at Labdoo.org, home base for the Labdoo project, a 501(c)(3) organization. The project’s About page explains its goals:
“A laptop is a door to education, providing children free access to open source education tools and electronic books through the Internet.
“In the richer countries, every year more than a hundred million laptops are replaced by new ones. This number continues to increase, yet most of the children in the poor regions of the world still lack access to education.
“The goal of Labdoo is to use grassroots, decentralized, social networking tools to efficiently bring excess laptops to the children in the developing world without wasting additional Earth resources.
“Join Labdoo and use the social network tools to bring a laptop to a child!”
A worthy cause, to be sure. Though the project won’t be officially launched until early next year, its Web site is up and running. The organization encourages visitors to use its tools to build their own “mini-missions and hubs.” Doing so, it emphasizes, will help further the development of their platform.
Neofonie began as an offshoot of the Technical University of Berlin. They make it a point to meet, and to innovate beyond, market demands. The company produces enterprise search as well as portal and vertical search products for both Web solutions and mobile apps.
Cynthia Murrell, August 10, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Microsoft and Google go Social with Search
August 9, 2012
There is good news for those information seekers who want the social rabble to provide insight on their results. Microsoft and Google are both rolling out features to extend social networking capabilities in their search services.
Bing will now include tips and recommendations from Foursquare users in search results and Google will be allowing searchers to include a link to share results directly to their Google+ page.
An article on ComputerWorld, “Bing and Google Deepen Social Integration in Search,” explains the developments of the continuing social integration. About Google, the article states the new share button will allow users to post links to their Plus page without leaving the results page. The changes in Bing’s world are explained as well:
“Bing will display tips and recommendations shared publically to Foursquare about businesses or other locations relevant to a user’s search query and location, Microsoft said. The search engine displays the Foursquare content in its social sidebar, which launched this spring. The tips and recommendations will be included in the ‘people who know’ section, which doesn’t require the Bing user to be signed in to his or her social networks.”
The changes show that all companies, including the big guys, are struggling to determine how to best integrate social content with search. The competition is strong and no clear winner seems to be emerging. Perhaps that is because some people are not prepared for the full integration of social networking within the rest of their online business.
Andrea Hayden, August 9, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Social Media and Business: Boom or Bust?
August 7, 2012
Now here’s a Gartner prediction which may not resonate with Olympic athletes kicked out of the games due to their social media activities.
In fact, according to EMSNow’s article “Gartner Predicts That Refusing to Communicate by Social Media Will Be as Harmful to Companies as Ignoring Phone Calls or Emails Is Today” lacking in social media skills can swiftly plunge a business into a downward spiral.
When companies do not acknowledge online customer complaints… well, hades hath no fury like the customer scorned. Ignoring one unhappy comment can evolve into a social media carnival where the company clown gets pie thrown in their face all over the internet.
According to the article, there are 3 easy steps to take to prevent an epic social media failure:
- Participate. It is important that organizations don’t let a fear of someone saying something bad about them stop them from participating in social media.
- Don’t assume all comments require the same level of attention. Develop an appropriate response for the different types of interaction your business faces.
- Plan for an increase in social commentary and adapt communications practices to cope. This will require changes to job descriptions, performance metrics and business processes.
Deleting an angry comment may seem like the easy solution, but no good will come of it. Consumers want satisfaction and a polite communication can start paving the way to reasonable resolution in most cases.
This gosling does not need a crystal ball to predict that social media will continue to have a major effect on businesses in the future.
Jennifer Shockley, August 7, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Craigslist Alters Its Licensing
August 7, 2012
There is a new twist in free classified ads, and this one may cause a few posters’ to pull a muscle. Baligu’s article “Craigslist Now Asks for Exclusive License When Posting” advises us to take a look at the small print when posting on Craigslist in the future.
The popular post up anything site has changed the way users submit content and it looks like they took lessons from some unlikely sources.
In order to complete the process one clicks on the ‘continue’, but now that simple gesture confirms that craigslist is the exclusive licensee of your content. You have officially given them the exclusive right to enforce copyrights against anyone copying, republishing, distributing or preparing derivative works without Craigslist’s consent.
Sound familiar? For comparison, here is Yelp, Facebook and Google’s language, in that order:
“As such, you hereby irrevocably grant us world-wide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sub licensable, transferable rights to use Your Content for any purpose.”
“You grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook.”
“When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, reproduce, modify, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content.”
See the similarities? Once you click that button, your content is no longer ‘your’ content. One could almost say the sites we utilize, actually utilize us more. Ya gotta love that community spirit of the internet. For some reason…I am not cheering.
Jennifer Shockley, August 7, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
How I Know Facebook Faces Challenges
August 6, 2012
The big tip off is the story in USA Today, “4 Reasons Investors Don’t Like Facebook.” The story appeared in the dead tree edition on August 2, 2012. Another clue is the clumsy handling of Facebook developers. This fumble was given that “real” journalism twist in “Schadenfreude, Anyone? In Wake of Facebook Bullying Claims, Google+ Chief Vic Gundotra Woos Developers.” In case you don’t remember, schadenfreude suggests enjoying another’s discomfort. But for me, the bright yellow flashing light is the Barron’s story “UBS Hit by Facebook Loss; Vows Legal Action Against Nasdaq.” Definitely not a good thing when cousins shoot at one another with real bullets.
Can Facebook get its act together? My hunch is that social media push back is likely to take a toll on Facebook and probably some other social media companies. When one is sitting in the dorm without much desire to study coefficients of friction, fiddling with Facebook is a nifty distraction. Working as an intern allows some time to connect with friends. However, once one realizes that time is a scarce resource, Facebook and other social media lovers may start looking for a new hook up.
What I find fascinating is that Google and Microsoft Bing don’t want to accept that social media may not be the innovation to ignite these firms’ online revenues. Google has suggested that Google Plus is the new Google. Microsoft is a me-too outfit, so social content is getting attention in Redmond. What happens when social drops to a utility function?
The search giants are going to have to focus on relevance and finding high value content. Facebook’s challenges, therefore, are going to be on deck to cause headaches for the search services in my opinion.
Stephen E Arnold, August 6, 2012
Sponsored by Augmentext
Is There a Stalking App?
August 4, 2012
This next article is not about search. . . it is about stalking. CNet News reports, “Stalkbook: Stalk Anyone, Even if You’re Not Facebook Friends.” The dodgy service, developed by MIT grad Oliver Yeh, starts with a simple concept: cache the login information of Facebook friends to see friends’-of-friends pages that would otherwise be hidden. Yeh is building on this idea to develop a roster of such logins so that, eventually, pretty much anyone will be able to see anyone else’s Facebook pages. Oh, great!
Writer Emil Protalinski observes:
“Technically speaking, it is possible to do. He would have to build a very large network of individuals willing to use his app for such purposes, cache all the information he can, all while avoiding Facebook’s wrath as more and more users start using Stalkbook.
“Unfortunately for Yeh and fortunately for Facebook’s users, Stalkbook goes against Facebook’s terms of service (Statement of Rights and Responsibilities). In the Safety section of Facebook’s TOS, point number five clearly states: ‘You will not solicit login information or access an account belonging to someone else.'”
The app is not yet live, and Facebook officials are aware of its existence. When Protalinski asked the social networking site for comment, a spokesperson pointed him to their Data Use Policy. Yes, Facebook’s terms-of-use shout at someone like Yeh, “you must not do this!”
What a relief! There’s no way this thing could get off the ground illicitly, right?
Cynthia Murrell, August 4, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Facebook Advertising and Business Model Flawed
August 2, 2012
It seems there is more bad news for social networking king, Facebook. In addition to new lows in its share price and rough second-quarter earnings, a newly released study suggests that Facebook’s business model may be broken.
EyeTrackShop, a firm that measures audience attention, released a study that tracked user attention to ads on Facebook’s website and apps. Users had a particularly bad recall for ads that had been seen on the iPhone and generally neglected the ads overall. The article on ReadWriteWeb, “Facebook’s Mobile Strategy is Flawed, Eye-Tracking Study Indicates,” shares more on the study’s results:
“During yesterday’s call, Facebook executives revealed that more than half of its users regularly access Facebook through mobile sites. That raised concerns among analysts and investors, as nearly 85% of Facebook revenue comes from advertising, which the company has been struggling to implement on mobile platforms. The executives stressed that while their mobile strategy is in its early stages, early tests suggest that the limited number of mobile ads that have rolled out have performed well and delivered a return on investment to advertisers.”
For a company that relies so heavily upon paid advertising, this is certainly bad, as well as surprising, news. We think that a problem of this magnitude could have been noted earlier on and are left to wonder: Perhaps Facebook has other flaws as well?
Andrea Hayden, August 2, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Google Big Gun Discusses Authorship Program
August 1, 2012
Have you noticed the little author profile pictures that have begun popping up in Google results pages over the past year or so? If you are curious, you may want to see Search Engine Journal’s “Google Authorship: An Interview with Google’s Sagar Kamdar.” One of many Googley efforts at social search, Authorship is an program for verifying Web page authors. Writer Grant Crowell reports:
“Kamdar explained to me that the Authorship program was based on the premise that content associated with a real identity is often of higher quality than content published anonymously. . . .
“Of course, one of the important reasons that Google implemented the Authorship program is to help them identify duplicate content. Some authors have had problems with others ranking higher than them in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) for their own original content. Authorship is supposed to push the original author to the top of the rankings when someone does a search for their article.”
That’s great! But wait just a moment– Google’s method is to have authors point their pages to their Google+ profiles. One could be excused for viewing this as yet another way to push Google+ onto the world. Google would stand to gain if every author without a Google+ account took on a patina if inauthenticity. Not so good for a writer like me, who is too stubborn to bow to the Google+ takeover (so far, at least.)
From the interview, we learn that Authorship does not, as of yet, directly factor into the search ranking algorithm. Instead, it is one of several “social signals” that are used to weight search results. The write up notes that the inclusion of an author photo can be a valuable tool; people like to click on pictures. Such are the observations of an SEO pro.
Cynthia Murrell, August 1, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Microsoft and Yammer: Extending SharePoint Functionality
July 31, 2012
Yammer is what an enterprise social network tool; organizations implement it to spur collaboration between users. On the Yammer homepage we found a new application which permits Microsoft SharePoint Integration. After reading the specs, we found on the Microsoft blog about “Yammer-The Next Step for Social Networking In Schools?”
According to the post, Microsoft recently purchased Yammer. The post explains Yammer’s basic functions, the dashboard mirrors Facebook’s design with hints of Twitter. The post digs into how Yammer would be used in schools, basically the same way it would for any company: staff would use to communicate between departments, share content, etc. It can also be a boon for students too:
“We know that group work is a great way to encourage students to engage with their peers, but this isn’t easy when they all use different social networks, clouds and systems. By joining Yammer, students can create secure groups via which they can communicate their ideas, ask questions and share files, as well as allowing for their competitive side to come out through ‘Leaderboards’, which show data about who has received the most likes, replies and much.”
Students can perform group work, receive studying help, share content, and even praise each other within Yammer. While it can be a tool of food for students, it can also make cheating and plagiarism easier if not monitored. Yammer should install an app that will be able to detect plagiarism.
The surge of interest in social content is growing in government agencies, commercial organizations, and educational institutions. However, indexing and making this content
findable can be a challenging task. The tools an organization uses require tight integration with
a search system. Mindbreeze provides capabilities to make social content easily findable within a SharePoint environment. A Yammer style can enhance productivity. Mindbreeze offers a range of social and collaborative features and has the engineering expertise to resolve almost any search and retrieval issue. Check out the Mindbreeze social collaboration Web page for more information.
Whitney Grace, July 31, 2012
Sponsored by Mindbreeze
Crushing Teen Communication. Oh, Dear!
July 30, 2012
Mashable’s headline may be a little sensationalistic, or not, depending on whether you consider email to be social media. The site exclaims, “Without Social Media, 18% of Teens Would Stop Communicating.” (The infographic that goes with the piece is here.) The write up cites a recent survey from marketing company AWeber which asked American high school and college students about their communication habits. Writer Emily Price tells us:
“According to the survey, 90% of teens are on [Facebook], and an astounding 93% of teenagers use mobile phones – the same amount that use email. 74% of teens are YouTube users, and 47% use Skype to keep up with others.
“Facebook and Email own almost equal parts of teens’ hearts. With teenagers going for both when they wake up in the morning, while they’re in class, and even while they’re on vacation.”
The study went on to ask respondents what they would do if the unthinkable occurred: cell phones, and the technology to recreate them, have disappeared from the Earth. In that event, only six percent would consider using a landline or the postal service to keep in touch. Eighteen percent vowed the hardship would push them into a virtual oubliette, from which they would never communicate again.
Consider this, though. As my beloved publisher so delicately asks, is it a loss or is it a gain when eighteen percent of teens no longer share their thoughts with the world?
Cynthia Murrell, July 30, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
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