Microformats Primer
November 27, 2008
You probably know everything there is to know about microformats. If you are a bit shaky on this approach to making stupid documents a bit smarter, you can read about these conventions for using descriptive class names to add semantics to content. Click here for more information. Emily Lewis, A Blog Not Limited, has created a series of articles about microformats. You can access them here. A happy quack from a non Thanksgiving goose to Ms. Lewis for her work.
Stephen Arnold, November 27, 2008
Google: No Semantic Search
November 27, 2008
A happy quack to the reader who sent me a link to “Google Not Interested in Semantic Search.” You can read the short article on Tech Startups 3.0 here. The source of the statement is Marissa Mayer. In the article Ms. Mayer makes clear that Google is not chasing the natural language processing juggernaut. The article reported that Google can do semantics with Google’s “large amounts of data.” In my opinion Google is dragging a large, quite smelly red herring across this topic. If you are curious about Google’s interest in semantics, you may want to look at the five patent applications filed in February 2007 by Ramanathan Guha. You will need to brush up on Dr. Guha’s background; for example, he was involved in writing the W3C semantic documents, and his technology delivers what Google calls “context.” Ms. Mayer is separating Google’s approach to semantics from Microsoft’s approach. My thought is that Google’s method of communication is designed to keep Google the warm fuzzy company everyone used (not the tense) to love. I don’t buy this statement for a devalued US penny. What about you? If you can locate a copy, I contributed to an analysis of Google’s semantic technology published by Bear Stearns in 2007. Too bad the company is history. The report suggests that Ms. Mayer is doing some wordsmithing if the Tech Startup’s story is on the beam.
Stephen Arnold, November 27, 2008
Getting Ready for the SEO Grilling
November 24, 2008
For the last 20 years, I have been attending and participating in the International Online Show. The show is now in the capable hands of Incisive, a UK based company. Each year, there are one or two sessions that catch my attention. The show next week in London promises to be interesting for me. I am giving a talk about the future of search and participating in a panel about search engine optimization. I can summarize my endnote in one word: Google. My talk explains how Google will have more impact in the enterprise search market than it did in 2008. If you want to know how and what, you will have to attend or wait until I post a summary of the speech. I don’t make a PowerPoint deck available before my talks. I prefer posting a PDF of my speaker notes and letting those interested link to that version of my remarks.
But SEO. That is the session that could cause me to gulp another blood pressure pill.
SEO: Consultant Heaven
I want to be crystal clear: SEO is a practice that annoys me. The reason is that content and correct code are what I value. SEO is a package of hocus pocus designed to create the sense that tricks will cause a Web page to appear at the top of a results list. Since most people don’t create substantive content, most Web sites don’t provide the indexing systems with much to process. Other outfits use a content management system like the ancient Broadvision or the remarkable Vignette. These systems generate Web pages that some Web indexing systems cannot process. Other people create Web pages with scripting errors. Sure, my team and I make scripting errors, and we try to fix them. If we can’t, we create a page without the offending function and live with the simplified presentation. Other companies pay 20 somethings from Cooper Union to create Web sites entirely in Silverlight, Flash or Adobe AIR. When a Web indexer or crawler hits these sites, the indexing system may not have much to work with or have to work overtime to figure what the site is “about”. I could list some other flaws in Web sites, but you get the idea. Click here for a listing of SEO experts.
Will you be the victim of an SEO consultant’s hold up?
Now people who are clueless about what good content is or what resources are required to create good content, don’t show up in a Google, Yahoo, or Live.com (maybe a new name is coming soon) results list. You can see this problem by running a query for “financial services.” You don’t get much meat because the phrase “financial services” has been co-opted by the SEO consultants.
SurfRay Update 2
November 23, 2008
When I was in Denmark a week ago, I picked up some information about SurfRay. The problem is that the items are either unconfirmed or contradictory. I can tell you that the people with whom I spoke were passionate about SurfRay. Some of the individuals who shall remain nameless because i don’t need any inputs from attorneys and tire kickers were quite optimistic about the company.
One person said:
We are working hard to make improvements at SurfRay. Some of the products are much in demand, and we have big opportunities.
i spoke with a couple of people who were annoyed at the company, but I want to keep the annoyance info in perspective. I can’t get a fix on enough data to figure out if the annoyance is the normal sort of grousing or if there is more to the sniping. Read through the comments on this Web log and you will get a sense of the frustration some feel toward SurfRay.
I fielded a number of rumors, but I am reluctant to mention them in this Web log post. With the financial noose tightening around the neck of a number of companies, my hunch is that the economy is not helping out the SurfRay outfit.
I did speak with one customer of Ontolica on my last trip to Europe. The fellow mentioned that he liked the product but he wanted an update. Development hassles when combined with a tough financial climate can be a volatile mixture.
I am on the fence with regard to SurfRay. If you have any factual information, please, use the comments section of this Web log to tell me what you know. I don’t feel comfortable with personal comments about managers, but I delight in observations about software which are anchored in technical facts.
As I get more information about SurfRay that I can validate, I will share it. In the meantime, we need to keep SurfRay at the top of our search and information access mind. There are too many people reading SurfRay
Stephen Arnold, November 23, 2008
Technical Decisions by Non Technical People
November 23, 2008
The article “Top Scientist Rails against Hirings” ran in the Washington Post on November 22, 2008, here. i worked in Washington, DC for many years. Going to a technical meeting at which most attendees had degress in social work, liberal arts, and political science was so much a part of the Washington gold fish bowl, I never thought about the implications of a person who could plan a well balanced meal making a decision about the software infrastrucutre for the House of Representatives. I used to say to anyone who asked about so and so’s leadership skills, “It is what it is.” But the article by Juliet Eilperin and Carol D. Leonnig stuck with me, an intellectual cracker with peanut butter in manner of speaking.
The comment that snagged me was:
“It’s ludicrous to have people who do not have a scientific background, who are not trained and skilled in the ways of science, make decisions that involve resources, that involve facilities in the scientific infrastructure,” said James McCarthy, a Harvard University oceanographer who is president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. “You’d just like to think people have more respect for the institution of government than to leave wreckage behind with these appointments.”
Dr. McCarthy seems to be a modern day Don Quixote, tilting at wind mills adjacent the Potomac River. I agree with him, but the practice of people with training in Andrew Marvell’s religious metaphors making decisions about technology reaches beyond the Beltway. I find the same management method in commercial and non profit organizations. Today everyone is qualified to comment about technology. More significantly, these folks decide about search, content transformation, interfaces, and server infrastructure.
Worked like a champ in the government, and it is demonstrating its impact in the commercial sector as well. In my opinion, we need more engineers, mathematicians and scientists making management decisions and fewer people who know how to organize a wedding.
Stephen Arnold, November 23, 2008
InfoSphere and Sandstone Tie Up
November 20, 2008
A happy quack to the reader in Sweden who alerted me to InfoSphere’s new partnership with Sandstone SA (Luxembourg). InfoSphere AB, founded in 2001, is a commercial business intelligence and security consulting firm. Sandstone is a private (OSINT)open source intelligence service or.
The partnership will provide each company with sales, service, and consulting services. Frank Schneider, chief executive for Sandstone said:
The partnership with Infosphere is part of the Sandstone strategy to seek out the best partner organizations to compliment and extend their capability, thus building an OSINT Network of Excellence with global reach.
The Sandstone team is made up of experienced former officers from various intelligence agencies and government services. Governed by a strong code of ethics and moral values, Sandstone provides services focused on financial compliance, business intelligence, KYC, due diligence, political analysis, foreign asset location, and opportunity creation. Sandstone serves clients throughout Europe, the Middle East and Africa as well as in the United States.
InfoSphere has contributed to the Silobreaker.com service which I have reviewed in this Web log. You can read an interview with the founder of InfoSphere here. In my opinion, the deal between these two open source firms will make more open source services and information available to organizations seeking ways to build revenues and competitive knowledge. InfoSphere has been growing rapidly with services ranging from OSINT to online services to high-value content. I continue to be impressed with the InfoSphere operation; it is a company on the move.
Stephen Arnold, November 20, 2008
Complexity Is Definitely the Way to Go
November 20, 2008
My newsreader flagged “Enterprise Mashups Need Complexity to Create Value”, an article by Gil Yehuda. I surmised that Mr. Yehuda landed a think tank type job. I was right. He works at the mid-tier consulting outfit Forrester Research. I think that Forrester has an “in” with ZDNet, so the article appears as part of “The View from Forrester Research”. The point of Mr. Yehuda’s write up is:
… each data mashup is interesting, the right combination can transform my work behavior. There’s a who, what, when, and where, that all have to intersect onto a map and onto a calendar.
The idea, I think is to take multiple mash ups, use them as building blocks, and create mash ups of mash ups. In Mr. Yehuda’s opinion, these meta mash ups deliver:
data streams that matter most to me, (e.g. my CRM data), along with other streams and network information, it results in new information. The triangulation of these data sets means that I could predict whom I meet and what to do when I plan my trips. Moreover, my manager would be able see where the team’s travelers are now, and where they will be in the near future. My sales manager could see which of us will be traveling nearby other clients, and she may want take advantage of the proximity opportunities. Travel still happens, but we can get more value out of each trip. Enterprises like to hear that.
The conclusion to the write up is:
I have renewed faith in the relevance of mashups to enterprise computing. It’s just more complex than splashing a data set onto a map. That’s OK, enterprises are used to leveraging complexity to create value. And mashups can be the building blocks to enable their success.
I have mixed feelings about M. Yehuda’s argument. In a very general sense, I think that applications will combine data to deliver solutions. For IDC, Sue Feldman and I described Google’s dataspace work. Take it us, creating a dataspace to make meta mash ups work is not trivial. Some thorny problems have to be resolved, and I don’t think most organizations will have the appetite, the technical expertise, or the resources to handle the data management issues such as transformation themselves.
Instant potatoes, like facile consultant assertions, are a side dish with empty calories, not the main course.
However, on a more “here and now” level, I think Mr. Yehuda is 25 percent right. First, how can I accept him as an expert in Enterprise 2.0 when I don’t know what that means and when Enterprise 1.0 outfits are struggling. Mr. Yehuda must not correlate stock prices and quarterly reports with an organization’s ability to embrace Enterprise 2.0 technology. I do. Companies in the financial gutter won’t be doing much Enterprise 2.0 thinking until those firms can pay their bills and keep the lights on. Second, what the heck is knowledge management. I write a column for a publication called KMWorld, and I am upfront about my lack of understanding what this buzzword means. My current view is that it doesn’t mean much beyond information applied to decisions in an organization. Finally, people who “connect the dots” make me nervous. The dots have to be related in a meaningful way. Grabbing a range of applications that can run in a browser is not connecting dots. The collection is an impressionistic arrangement. I am not convinced that Mr. Yehuda is a management Marc Chagall based on his essay.
Let me urge you to read his article and make your own decision. My thoughts are:
Google Version 2.0 in Research and Markets Catalog
November 19, 2008
The “world’s largest market research resource” is now reselling the 2007 study Google Version 2.0. You can read Research and Markets’ profile of the study, examine a sample of the 250 page report, and review the table of contents here. In the last six months, interest in this analysis of Google’s technology has spiked. If you have an interest in the technical underpinning for some of the services Google has recently launched, you will find this study a useful resource. The information in the study comes from Google open source publications; for example, patent documents and technical papers. In addition to the discussion of the nuts and bolts of Google’s hottest and most suggestive technologies, the book describes the business implications of these technologies. Google does not commercialize its many inventions, but it is important to think about Google’s technical capabilities in a broader context than a purely engineering frame. The information in the study is more germane to today’s Google because the GOOG has been expanding its services and products at an increasingly rapid rate into markets adjacent to core Web search and advertising.
Stephen Arnold, November 2008
Microsoft and Pricing
November 19, 2008
I saw a new story in Seattle Tech Report here that Microsoft is making is OneCare security service free. A short time later I came across Microsoft’s own news release about this pricing change here. Bundling or giving away services free is not a new idea in software. The notion is to give customers a taste and then sell them more has worked many times. In the Microsoft news release, the company says:
Windows Live OneCare will continue to be sold for Windows XP and Windows Vista at retail through June 30, 2009. Direct sales of OneCare will be gradually phased out when “Morro” becomes available. Regardless of their method of purchase, Microsoft will ensure that all current customers remain protected through the life of their subscriptions.
The marketing technique is little more than shareware or freeware with a catch.
Then I remembered that Microsoft was reducing prices for its Dynamics products. The prices for its cloud services for Exchange and SharePoint were quite competitive as well. Even the Zune, according to CNet news is getting new features and a lower price. You can read “Microsoft Chopping Zune Prices” here.
The question I asked myself, “Will Microsoft’s price cutting and no fee initiatives extend to Microsoft Fast enterprise search?” My hunch is that the Fast ESP search technology may become more affordable in the months ahead. Here’s my reasoning:
- A number of high profile vendors have rolled out more robust content processing solutions that “snap in” to SharePoint. Examples range from Autonomy to Coveo to Exalead to Interse to ISYS to dozens of other vendors. Companies who want to “work around” SharePoint search problems have an abundance of options. Microsoft Fast may have to use severe price cuts to keep customers from getting out of the corral
- As the economic noose tightens on organizations, some vendors may offer a two-fer deal; that is, sign up now, get one year free and pay only for the second year. This approach may be quite appealing in some organizations. In fact, in a recent review of Google prices for the US government, one could easily conclude that Google is keeping this option available to its resellers. The idea is to get shelf space or the camel’s nose into the tent.
- New players may be willing to install a proof of concept for little or no money. These upstarts may provide “good enough” solutions that allow an organization to solve a tough content processing problem without spending much money.
I see the present economic climate forcing some Darwinian actions and Microsoft Fast may have to move quickly or face escalating competition within the Microsoft ecosystem. After spending $1.2 billion for a Web part and a police raid, there may be some strategic pricing changes Redmond may have to consider to adapt to the present enterprise market for search and content processing. If you are a Microsoft champion, please, help me understand if my analysis is on track or off track. Use the comments section and bring along some facts, please. I have enough uninformed inputs from my pals Barry and Cyrus to last the winter.
Stephen Arnold, November 19, 2008
Hewlett Packard: 4th Quarter Friskiness
November 19, 2008
Hewlett Packard reported that its fourth quarter looked pretty good. You can read the November 18, 2008, report here. This San Francisco Business Times story mixed some bitter with the sweet with the headline “HP Extends Holiday Shutdown but Offers Upbeat Earnings Report.” The shutdown allows employees to be with their families and it also conserves cash, which for many companies is scarce. One source close to HP activities told me that Exalead, the French information infrastructure and content processing company, has signed a deal for Exalead to become the first information access vendor to join the HP Business Intelligence Partner Program. This is an HP initiative to deal with terascale information access implementations. HP bought Exstream Software for $1.0 billion earlier in 2008 and now the company is pushing into the business intelligence market. As more information becomes available about Exalead’s role in business intelligence with HP, I will try to document the trajectory of this deal. Exalead’s business intelligence demo that I saw in Paris was quite impressive.
Stephen Arnold, November 18, 2008
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