Open Text Excellence: Oh, the System Did It
September 5, 2014
This is the outfit that once employed the name surfer Dave Schubmehl. He is the IDC expert who sold information on Amazon without my permission. Once he bailed, I assumed Open Text would improve.
Nope. Wrong.
I received this in the mail today.
OpenText <UKMarketing@opentext.com>
3:04 PM (3 hours ago)
to me
If your email program has trouble displaying this email, view it as a web page:
http://now.eloqua.com/es.asp?s=459&e=364560&elq=e8df3eefea2d4395ac3aa3fd70a82281We would like to give you our sincere apologies
Dear Stephen ,
As an unfortunate consequence of a system problem, we have been made aware that an email titled “OpenText UK Partner Day” has been accidentally sent to a wider audience than expected. You received this in error and we would ask that you ignore the email.
Best regards
OpenText UK Communications Team
Not only do I live in Harrod’s Creek, Kentucky, I have never attended an Open Text event. I do know that Red Dot used the Autonomy search system and that Red Dot performance was—ahem, well, let’s see—processing queries in minutes at one client location, long enough for staff to get a coffee…outside the building.
Also, I know Open Text has to support BASIS, Bray’s SGML Search, BRS Search, and probably some other systems. My, isn’t this too expensive to do well?
Anyway, Open Text apologizes for its spam and erroneous communications. Nice stuff. I like the passive voice. Who wants to assign responsibility for spam? Anyone? Oh, a system problem.
Stephen E Arnold, September 5, 2014
A New Look for Computerworld.com
August 29, 2014
You are familiar with Computerworld, and you may visit the Computerworld.com Web site. The emulators and name surfers somewhere in the IDG Enterprise combine wants more eyeballs. That’s why I saw this news story from the professionals at Marketwired. Note: Not “marketwire.”
The title? “Computerworld.com Integrates Responsive Design Technology and functionality Enhancements in Site Relaunch.” The “real” news story reports:
The award-winning site incorporates responsive design technology to create a universal experience by scaling editorial and advertising content to the user’s screen size, whether they are accessing Computerworld.com with a smartphone, tablet or desktop.
I thought that blog themes like those readily available for WordPress, Joomla, and other content frameworks did the responsive thing automatically. The notion of “responsive design” is getting bright lights at “the leading enterprise technology media company”, however.
I suppose on a slow news day or when an IDC unit cannot publish my information without my permission or the other impedimenta that marks professional behavior, the crackerjack experts at IDG have to dig deep and gut through the really tough news. The story reports:
The editorial voice, content and design of Computerworld.com remains unique to the brand, while functionality has been aligned across IDG Enterprise sites including back-end capabilities enhancing search functionality and digital asset management for displaying more images and video content. The reader experience is further enhanced by large more legible type and fully integrated social media tools. Ads and promotional units are highlighted in a “deconstructed” right rail optimizing effectiveness and native advertising will be threaded intuitively throughout the site.
From whence does the content come from? Well, here’s an example of how IDG maintains its alleged “leading” position:
“Computerworld.com is well known for its superb tech news. What may be less obvious to website visitors is all the other great content Computerworld serves up for senior technology leaders,” said Scot Finnie, editor in chief, Computerworld.
Interesting since the consulting outfit bandied my name about like a tennis ball between mid 2012 and mid July 2014 without fooling around with contracts, sales reports, edit cycles, etc.
Now what about Computerworld.com? Today’s Computerworld.com has 64 objects on the home page, uses 30 images, and expects my wonderful Windows phone to render a page that is a svelte 1656946 bytes. Ooops. Don’t forget that the images pumped to me today total 1612438 bytes. You can see a report by navigating to www.websiteoptimization.com.
Fascinating news about the responsive design innovation. I am surprised that IDG elected to share this secret to online success. Is it possible that Computerworld.com invented responsive design following in the impressive footsteps of Al Gore’s Internet system and method?
Well, as long as revenues rise, the long slog to responsive design will have been worth it.
Stephen E Arnold, August 29, 2014
Radicati Group: Yet Another Quadrant
August 28, 2014
Every time I see my story about Dave Schubmehl’s surfing on my name, I think about the paucity of innovation among the low- and mid-tier consulting firms. It is not sufficient to lack creativity. Success appears to require surfing on the insights of others. For more on the Schubmehl surfing angle, please, navigate to “ “Meme of the Moment” and “IDC and Reports by Schubmehl.” For ethical issue related to some firms’ actions, see “Are HP, Google, and IDC Out of Square.”
Please review the Marketwired story “The Radicati Group Releases Enterprise Content Management – Market Quadrant, 2014.” This analysis is not like the original Boston Consulting Group’s grid analysis from the late 1970s. That method was based on such data as market share, return on investment, revenue, and other “hard” information.
This “quadrant” seems quite similar to the Gartner Group’s “quadrant” now the subject of a legal action by Netscout. For the details of the Netscout allegation, you will find Netscout’s view of the situation at http://wp.me/pf6p2-aAo.
The Radicati approach eschews dogs, stars, cows, and question markets for:
- Mature players
- Specialists
- Trail blazers
- Top players.
Are these categories connotative and subjective? Can a trail blazer be a top player or mature player? Oh, what’s a player? Hmm.
The idea is that the Radicati analysts have created a way to map enterprise content management vendors against these categories. The hope, I assume, is that a potential licensee of one of these systems will use the Radicati’s research as a guide to purchases.
I also find it interesting that the “Radicati Market Quadrants” phrase is a service mark. Like the IDC surfing on my name issue, the inspiration from BCG’s notion is not referenced. Will potential purchasers confuse low- and mid-tier consulting firm’s quadrants with those produced by blue-chip Boston Consulting?
Nah. Just another example of the challenges consulting firms face in today’s business climate. If you are interested, there is a helpful explanation of the BCG approach at http://bit.ly/1pa5m4A.
That’s what many of these “quadrants” suggest: The work of a student trying to improve a mark. In today’s environment, doing what is expedient seems to be a popular approach. Content marketing is one way to become visible I assume.
Another, more difficult path, is to craft an original question to answer and then perform research and analysis to help answer that question.
Wow. What consulting firms have time and the expertise to tackle investigations in this manner? I can name some who avoid this approach like the plague.
Stephen E Arnold, August 28, 2014
Is Search Too Hard?
August 26, 2014
I find the readers who send me links to the UK Daily Mail stories helpful. Are these referrers easily fooled?
The story in question has a Google friendly headline:
‘It’s all been a big lie!’ Obama administration lawyer now admits ‘missing’ Lois Lerner emails WERE backed up but claims it’s too hard to search for them”
The US government is a busy beaver when it comes to search. You can explore USA.gov at your leisure or seek information on myriad dot Gov Web sites without my inputs.
Here’s a passage from the write up. You determine if it is on the money:
‘The Department of Justice attorney told the Judicial Watch attorney on Friday.’ Fit ton said during a Monday afternoon Fox News broadcast, ‘that it turns out the federal government backs up all computer records in case something terrible happens in Washington and there is a catastrophe, so the government can continue operating.’ The catch, he added, is that the DOJ attorney also claimed ‘it would be too hard to go and get Lois Lerner’s emails from that backup system.’
This search and retrieval stuff seems to be difficult. Perhaps these folks should turn to a real expert like Dave Schubmehl, the Arnold surfer for real insight?
Stephen E Arnold, August
Public Relations Worker Density
August 19, 2014
I read “PR Workers Outnumber Journalists in the US.” This write up surprised me for two reasons. I thought that the ratio for PR people to “real” journalists was higher than five PR types to one “real” journalist types. Second, the sample does not seem to include low tier and mid tier consultants who may be PR folk wearing the garb of shaman.
Qualifications for PR professionals vary widely. I recall the halcyon days when I was supposed to provide oversight to a company’s PR outfit. The firm was Ketchum, Macleod. The PR professionals I encountered were friendly sorts and very good at billing. How does one bill a client for 160 hours and handle several other accounts? Magic, I assumed. The pros were adept at bridge, offering to take me out, and confusing my deadlines with other people’s deadlines. It all ended happily. I met with a former Marine and chatted about the magic of billing. Happiness ensured. Did I mention that the PR pros had worked at college newspapers, rock radio stations, and interpersonal networking. Interesting work indeed.
Are PR professionals engaging in a variant of All Hallow’s Day festivities. Image source: http://bit.ly/YtNmwU
The data on which the article is based does not appear to include “rentals.” These are folks who are positioned as experts and generate content. I suggest you read the rather interesting legal document about Gartner Group at http://slidesha.re/1pPsY21.
Another thought that struck me is that outfits like IDC use third party content, edit it, and put their “experts” name on them are engaged in quasi PR. See http://bit.ly/1thUZAJ. In the case of the Schubmehl affair, IDC sold edited and cheerful versions of my research for $3,500. (My attorney was able to stop the sale of these documents carrying the name of the IDC expert, Dave Schubmehl in July 2014.) Are these documents gussied up PR? Are these documents sweetened to facilitate sales? Are these documents the work on which Pat McGovern built his company? PR? You figure it out.
The point is that if one includes the data set in the “Outnumber” article and mix in the “experts” who sell third party endorsements, the number of PR purveyors goes up. Five to one is, in my view, conservative. A different methodology might inflate the ratio. Seven to one? Nine to one? I don’t know. Five to one seems conservative.
The point is that when organizations and individuals need money, almost anything goes. Heroin? No problem. Failing to pay postage? No problem. Surfing on another’s reputation to further one’s own career? No problem. Generating PR dressed up like the All Hallow’s Eve celebrants? No problem.
Stephen E Arnold, August 19, 2014
Even Content Marketers React to Pay to Play Allegation
August 18, 2014
I find CMS Wire quite interesting. A number of the articles are by consultants and some seem quite vendor centric. In general, it is a useful way to keep track of what’s hot and what’s not in the world of content management. Like knowledge management or anything with the word “management” in its moniker, I am not sure what these disciplines embrace. Like the equally fuzzy notion of predicative analytics, I find that the aura of meaning often at odds with reality. Whether it is the failure of certain professionals to “predict” problems with the caliphate or whether it focuses on predicting which start up with be the next big thing, the here and now are often slippery, surprising, and, at times, baffling.
Not in “How Vendors learn to Play the Gartner Game.” This is a darned good write up and it introduces a bound phrase I find intellectually satisfying: “the Gartner Game.” I understand Scrabble and checkers. More sophisticated games are beyond my ken. I am not able to play the Gartner Game, but I can enjoy certain aspects of it.
The article explains the game clearly:
Now, in fairness, just because someone gives you a wad of cash — even in the form of extra business — it’s no guarantee you’ll write something favorable. Trust me on this: Back when news was still reported in daily papers and reporters were wooed with more insincerity than a contestant on The Bachelor, it was customary for sources to send gifts.
My own brush with Gartner-like firms was a bit different. I did not expect to see a report with my name on sold on Amazon from late 2012 to July 2014. Why? I provided content/research to IDC, a Gartner competitor. IDC took the information, created reports, and sold those reports. I received no contract. No sales reports. When one of the documents turned up on Amazon, I realized that an IDC expert named Schubmehl was surfing on my work.
I wrote a short commentary about the apparent erosion of certain business practices. In that article, I found a thread connecting the HP problem with the post office, the Google executive’s brush with heroin and a female not involved in Kolmogorov analyses, and IDC’s Schubmehl. In each case, executives made decisions that probably seemed really good at the time. Over time, the decisions proved to be startling. I mean the post office and postage. Horrific. I mean the Google wizard who ended up dead on a yacht while his wife took care of the kids. Professionally clumsy. I mean an “expert” who writes reports taking another person’s information and using it to close information centric deals.
I don’t know much about the world of mid tier consulting firms. I worked for a number of years at a pretty good outfit, Booz, Allen & Hamilton. I did some work for other consulting firms as well. I do not recall a single instance of a failure to pay postage, a colleague flat lining from heroin, or a professional on our team using another’s work or name to make professional hay.
None of these actions surprise me. I am getting older and I suppose I am able to cruise forward in Harrod’s Creek without worrying about the situational decisions that produce some interesting business situations. Exciting stuff this world of mid tier consulting and the unbounded scope of action some executives enjoy. Wow. Postage, heroin, and using another’s name to look informed. Amazing.
I will expand on this notion of “loose governance” in one of my columns. This notion of “governance” is an intriguing topic in knowledge management.
As Einstein said:
“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.”
Stephen E Arnold, August 15, 2014
Who Wrote What? Will an Algorithm Catch Name Surfers?
August 17, 2014
I read “New Algorithm Gives Credit Where Credit Is Due.” The write up sparked a number of thoughts. Let me highlight a couple of passages that made it into my research file.
The focus of the paper, in my opinion, are documents intended for peer reviewed publications and conferences. The write up did not include a sample of the type of “authorship” labeling that takes place. I dug through my files and located a representative example:
This is a paper about stuffing electronics on a contact lens. Microsoft was in this game. Google hired Babak Parviz (aka Babak Amir Parviz, Babak Amirparviz, and Babak Parvis). The paper has four authors:
- H. Yao
- A. Afanasiev
- I. Lahdesmaki
- B. A. Parviz
The idea is that the numerical recipe devised at the Center for Complex Network Research will figure out who did most of the work. I think this is a good idea because my research suggests that the guys doing the heavy lifting in the lab, with Excel, and writing were Yao, Afanasiev, and Lahdesmaki. The guru for the work was Parviz. I could be wrong, so an algorithm to help me out is of interest.
One of the points I highlighted in the write up was:
Using the algorithm, which Shen [math whiz] developed, the team revealed a new credit allocation system based on how often the paper is co-??cited with the other papers published by the paper’s co-??authors, capturing the authors’ additional contributions to the field.
Okay, my take on this is that this is a variation of Eugene Garfield’s citation analysis work. That is useful, but it does not dig very deeply into the context for the paper, the patent applications afoot, or the controls placed on the writers by their employers or their conscience. In short, I need some concrete examples or better yet access to the software so I can run some tests. Yep, just like those that mid tier consulting firms (what I call azure chip consultants) do not do. For reference see the Netscout legal document or my saucisson write up.)
The second point is that the sample strikes me as small. I know the rule of thumb that one well regarded researcher used was 50 in the sample, but there are hundreds of thousands of technical papers. Many are available as open source from services like PLOS One. Here’s the point I noted:
the team looked at 63 prize-??winning papers using the algorithm. In another finding, the algorithm showed physicist Tom Kibble, who in 1964 wrote a research paper on the Higgs boson theory, should receive the same amount of credit as Nobel prize winners Peter Higgs and François Englert.
I think the work is interesting, but it is in my opinion not ready for prime time.
I know that one content processing firm almost totally dependent on the US Army for funding has been working to identify misinformation, disinformation, and reformation. So far, the effort has yielded no commercial product. Other companies purport to have the ability to “understand” content. Presumably this includes the entities identified in the content object. Progress has stalled. Smart software is easier to write about in a marketing slide deck or a proposal than actually deliver.
That’s why authorship remains something a human has to chase down. Let me give you an example. I provided research to IDC, a mid tier consulting firm in 2012. From august 2012 to July 17, 2014, IDC marketed reports that carried my name, two of my research assistants’ names, and an IDC “expert’s” name. Dave Schubmehl, the IDC “expert” in search is listed as the “author.”
Now is he?
I am confident that in his mind and in IDC’s corporate wisdom he is the man. The person who justifies surfing on another’s name illustrates a core problem in authorship. You can see examples of Dave Schubmehl’s name surfing at this link. The sale of one of these documents on Amazon was an interesting attempt to gain traction for Dave Schubmehl in the high traffic eBook store. See “Amazon May Be Disintermediating Publishers: Maybe Good News for Authors.” I include a screen shot of the Amazon “hit.” My legal eagle successfully got the document removed from Amazon. I am not an Amazon author and don’t want to be.
Hopefully the algorithm to identify the “real” author of a series of $3,500 reports will become a commercial reality. I am interested to learn if there are any other mid tier consulting firms that have used others’ content without getting appropriate permissions. How many “experts” follow the IDC path of expediency?
For now, name surfers have to tracked one by one. Shubmehl and Arnold are now linked. Arnold is the surfboard; Schubmehl is the surfer. Catch a wave is the motto of many surfers.
Stephen E Arnold, August 17, 2014
Silobreaker Highlighted in SC Magazine
August 13, 2014
I have been a fan of Silobreaker’s online system and services for almost a decade. Unlike free online services, Silobreaker provides access to third party content as well as online information. An organization can work with Silobreaker in a variety of ways. The firm provides specialized services to process content for organizations as well as offering licensing deals to meet the needs of business information professionals and government entities.
The SC Magazine article “Soft Intelligence Is Important Too: Silobreaker.” I noted several passages in the story by Peter Stephenson as important to me in my work. The first snippet that I created observes:
With intelligence, especially cyber intelligence, the name of the game is situational awareness. That comes from reading lots of news items, blogs, social media, etc. In fact, Silobreaker does that well – to the tune of around 50,000 sources, more than 300 specific major malwares, thousands of vulnerabilities (from the CVE), and tracking 200-plus hacker groups. Then it applies proprietary algorithms to figure out what it has and to make that content available for a variety of queries, some automated and some manual. Specific target groups – such as various industry sectors – can be followed in conjunction with this raw data, which allows the setting of watch lists.
I am not too keen on the phrase “soft intelligence.” When data contribute to action, the service that provided information delivers something I would not characterize as soft. However, the comment is a good one. I would note that when Silobreaker includes a consultant’s report, what I call mid tier content marketing or saucisson by experts from outfits that emulate IDC-like “reports”, the Silobreaker display provides a context of other information.
I also noted:
Silobreaker can be employed as a SaaS service (Silobreaker Premium) or as a server in one’s enterprise – behind a firewall – as Silobreaker Enterprise Software. In either deployment, the key to the company’s success is in its suite of proprietary algorithms and its deep Internet search capability. We have tested the SaaS version with excellent results and have been able to correlate Silobreaker open source intelligence (OSINT) with bits and bytes from such sources as IP Viking and the SANS Internet Storm Center. That, added to monitored data at our Advanced Computing Center has provided an excellent picture of cyber activity and cyber activity trends. There are multiple ways to collect and analyze Silobreaker data. For example, you can easily create your own dashboard and include only those things that are important to you. You might watch trends within your own industry, trending malware, trending attacks, etc. You can relate those back to your particular business environment. So, we can watch trending attacks, hacker ops and malware that relates particularly to the banking industry, for example.
This is a helpful description of Silobreaker. I would point out that Silobreaker incorporates a number of features that other systems available to organizations struggle to implement in a context sensitive way; for example, a map that pinpoints an entity in a specific geographic area.
I too find Silobreaker’s trending functions quite useful. SC Magazine says:
Trending is the key analysis tool. Things happen. They don’t usually happen in isolation, but sometimes they do. What is important, though, are the trends that we can use predicatively to help erect proactive defenses. Silobreaker generates trend information using heat and time series. These show, graphically, the trends over whatever time period you want. Heat shows within one day or one week at time series set by you. The system uses a 360-degree analysis approach that looks at the interactions between trending items, rather than looking at them in isolation.
Again I would point out that the “last known location function” and the “at a glance” reports that can be used in a meeting are also outstanding. Silobreaker includes a robust searching system too. Very important. Recommended.
For more information, visit www.silobreaker.com.
Stephen E Arnold, August 13, 2014
Quote to Note: Big Data Getting Even Biggerest Super Fastly
August 11, 2014
I love quotes about Big Data. “Big” is relative. You have heard a doting patent ask a toddler, “How big are you?” The toddler puts up his or her arms and says, “So big.” Yep, big at a couple of years old and 30 inches tall.
“If You Think Big Data’s Big Now, Just Wait” contains a quote attributed to a Big Data company awash in millions in funding money. Here’s the item I flagged for my Quote to Note file:
“The promise of big data has ushered in an era of data intelligence. From machine data to human thought streams, we are now collecting more data each day, so much that 90% of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone. In fact, every day, we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data — by some estimates that’s one new Google every four days, and the rate is only increasing…
I like the 2.5 quintillion bytes of data.
I am confident that Helion, IBM’s brain chip, and Google’s sprawling system can make data manageable. Well, more correctly, fancy systems will give the appearance of making quintillions of whatevers yield actionable intelligence.
If you do the Samuel Taylor Coleridge thing and enter into a willing suspension of disbelief, Big Data is just another opportunity.
How do today’s mobile equipped MBAs make decisions? A Google search, ask someone, or guess? I suggest you consider how you make decisions. How often do you have an appetite for SPSS style number crunching or a desire to see what’s new from the folks at Moscow State University.
Yep, data intelligence for the tiny percentage of the one percent who paid attention in statistics class. This is a type of saucisson I enjoy so much. Will this information find its way into a Schubmehl-like report about a knowledge quotient? For sure I think.
Stephen E Arnold, August 11, 2014
When a Search Vendor Says Fuzzy
August 9, 2014
Short honk: You may have heard a search or content processing vendor use the word “fuzzy” or “fuzzify” to describe a smart system. If you have, you may want to know what may be behind the jargon curtain. For fuzzy insights (intentional word choice, gentle reader) check out “Binary Fuzzing Strategies: What Works, What Doesn’t.” If you are not sure what “works” means, feel free to contact the saucisson at the IDC-type consulting firms. Illumination is only a payment away. If you choose another route, get your math T shirt on and check out https://code.google.com/p/american-fuzzy-lop/wiki/StatusScreen.
Stephen E Arnold, August 9, 2014
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
