Njouba: A New Metasearch Engine
September 18, 2008
In a conversation today, I learned about a new Web search engine. The system is Njouba, possibly operated by Ben Ahmed or in Roubaix, France. My research yielded this information. If anyone has more information, please, post it using the comments section to this Web log. With a little poking around, the service may be the work of a sharp programmer responsible for a number of useful services, including an MP3 search engine here.
The About section of the Njouba Web site says,
Njouba is an intelligent Search engine designed for crawling the Web, indexing documents containing information you’re looking for (by specifying keywords) that enables you to find specific information.
I ran several test queries and the results seemed to track with Google’s results. One feature I liked was the tabbed interface which makes narrowing the query to a particular type of content easy. Image search seemed to be inoperable when I tested the system on September 16, 2008, from Paris. The book search returned unusual results for the query “William Shakespeare”.
You can access the system here, and I will add it to my list of metasearch engines.
Google: Artificial Intelligence Activity
September 18, 2008
Google Blogoscoped’s “Google on Artificial Intelligence” provides an interesting compendium of comments about the search king’s smart software. You can read the essay here. The meat of the write up is that the company has had an on going interest in AI or artificial intelligence. Google Blogoscoped references an “internal Google document” published in 2006, which is described here. If you are interested in this subject, you will want to read both of these news items. For me the most interesting point in the blog post was this link to a compendium and quotes. My own research provides a different slant on this topic; namely, the company has had a long interest in finding ways to embed computational intelligence in a wide range of Google operations. The terminology used to describe these innovations does not rely on distinct phrases such as “AI”, “artificial intelligence,” or “machine intelligence.” When Google’s patent documents are searched for common phrases such as these, the result sets are disappointing. Google’s terminology is less direct, using, for example, such terms as “janitors”. Determining the sweep of Google’s use of smart software is a challenging task for some researchers.
Stephen Arnold, September 17, 2008
VivoWare: Yet More Social Enterprise Search
September 17, 2008
Vivisimo told me that it was delivering social enterprise search. I poked around and decided that Vivisimo allowed a user to insert a customer tag (index term) into a document. Now VivoWare asserts that it is a social enterprise search system. You can read the VivoWare explanation here. The VSES (VivoWare Social Enterprise Search) system. The system combines search and social networking. VSES was developed in partnership with Venexus.
VivoWare is an ISP moving into search. The company says:
VivoWare, Inc. was incorporated in Raleigh, North Carolina. VivoWare is a Search Service Provider (SSP) that develops, integrates, and provides social enterprise search solutions. VivoWare’s unique search technology enables businesses and their employees find more relevant information.
VivoWare here explains that it can index and search information in content management systems, file systems and shares, Intranets, RSS feeds, and Web sites. The company’s system also searches image files, standard office documents, and XML. Information about the firm’s technology is here. I have not experimented with the system, but it looks like a federating system with collaboration and “social” functionality provided by Venexus. You can learn more about this company here.
VivoWare and Venexus are deep into the Microsoft mind set. Prices start at $2,500. Oh, when I searched for pricing, the site search engine returned a null set. You can locate pricing on the drop down menu on the site’s home page. I am delighted that one of my two or three readers alerted me to this company, but I have to take a pass on making a definitive statement about the VSES engine at this time.
What is interesting to me is that an Internet services provider is jumping into social search. I spoke with two ISPs in Kentucky and search did not resonate with them.
If you have experience with the VSES system, post a comment using the form at the foot of this article.
Stephen Arnold, September 10, 2008
Microsoft’s SharePoint in a Post Chrome World
September 17, 2008
CNet ran an interesting story on September 9, 2008 with the fetching title “Microsoft’s Response to Chrome. SharePoint.” The author was Matt Asay, a fellow whose viewpoint I enjoy. For me, the key point to this article which you can read here was:
Microsoft, then, has not been sitting still, waiting to be run over by Google. It has been quietly spreading SharePoint throughout enterprises. SharePoint opens up enterprise data to Microsoft services, running in Microsoft’s browser. Unlike Google, however, Microsoft already has an impressive beachhead in the enterprise. It’s called Office, and most enterprises are addicted to it. In sum, if Google is aiming for Windows, it’s going to lose, because the table stakes are much higher. For Microsoft, the game is SharePoint. For the rest of the industry, including Google, the response needs to be content standardization.
The battle between Google and Microsoft pivots on content. SharePoint is Microsoft’s content standardization play. I think this argument is interesting, but a handful of modest issues nagged at me when I read the article:
- SharePoint is a complicated collection of “stuff”. You can check out the SharePoint placemat here. Complexity may be the major weakness of SharePoint.
- SharePoint search is a work in progress. If you have lots of content even if it is standardized, I find the native SharePoint search function pretty awful. I find it even more awful when I have to configure it, chase down aberrant security settings, and mud wrestle SQL Server performance. I think this is an iceberg issue for Microsoft. The marketing shows the top; the tech folks see what’s hidden. It’s not pretty.
- Google’s approach to content standardization is different from the SharePoint approach Mr. Asay describes. The GOOG wants software to transform and manipulate content. The organization can do what it wants to create information. Googzilla can handle it, make it searchable, and even repurpose it with one of its “publishing” inventions disclosed in patent documents.
I hear Mr. Asay. I just don’t think SharePoint is the “shields up” that Microsoft needs to deal with Google in the enterprise. Agree? Disagree? Help me learn, please.
Stephen Arnold, September 10, 2008
Google Solves One Asia Pacific Telco Problem
September 17, 2008
In early 2008, one of the firms with whom I work set up a series of Google telco briefings. These were quite interesting for me, but I think the telco executives were baffled by Google’s long history of telco-related inventions. The company nailed a quality of service invention a year after opening its doors. Yes, telco has been on Google’s very big brain for almost a decade, maybe longer.
A story, largely ignored by the trade journals, appeared on TelecomAsia.net that reported Google’s progress on what one telco executive told me was, and I am quoting from memory, “An almost impossible problem for the best minds in the telephone industry and almost certainly beyond Google’s capabilities.”
Well, the telco executive–not surprisingly–seems to have be incorrect if the TelecomAsia.net story is accurate. You can read “Google-Backed LEOsat IP Backhaul Project Is Go” by John C. Tanner by clicking this link. I verified this link at 10 pm Eastern on September 9, 2008, but some of these news sites roll off their content in order to protect their interests. (Your interests, dear reader, don’t count.)
The telco double talk is tough to penetrate. Let me simplify. Google is getting in the telco business in Asia. You can dig through the details that Mr. Tanner does an excellent job presenting.
Let me offer several comments;
- Google doesn’t seem to be particularly concerned about getting in the high speed connect business in the Asia Pacific region.
- The “problems” appear to be solved. Just as Google “owns” its own high resolution satellite for geospatial imagery, Google owns its own undersea cables.
- Telco assumptions about Google remain shallow.
My question is, “Who’s going to regulate Google outside the US and across the region empowered by the GOOG’s new backhaul initiative?” Any ideas? The World Court? The UN? There are two stellar outfits ideally positioned to understand the whys and wherefores of Googzilla.
Stephen Arnold, September 10, 2008
How Smart Is Google’s Software?
September 17, 2008
When you read this, I will have completed my “Meet the Guru” session in Utrecht for Eric Hartmann. More information is here. My “guru” talk is not worthy of its name. What I want to discuss is the relationship between two components of Google’s online infrastructure. This venue will mark the first public reference to a topic I have been tracking and researching for several years–computational intelligence. Some background information appears in the Ignorance Is Futile Web log here.
I am going to reference my analysis of Google’s innovation method. I described this in my 2007 study The Google Legacy, and I want to mention one Google patent document; specifically, US20070198481, which is about fact extraction. I chose this particular document because it references research that began a couple of years before the filing and the 2007 granting of the patent. It’s important in my opinion because it reveals some information about Google’s intelligent agents, which Google references as “janitors” in the patent application. Another reason I want to highlight it is that it includes a representation of a Google results list as a report or dossier.
Each time I show a screen shot of the dossier, any Googlers in the audience tell me that I have Photoshopped the Google image, revealing their ignorance of Google’s public patent documents and the lousy graphical representations that Google routinely places in its patent filings. The quality of the images and the cute language like “janitors” are intended to make it difficult to figure out what Google engineers are doing in the Google cubicles. Any Googlers curious about this image (reproduced below) should look at Google’s own public documents before accusing me of spoofing Googzilla. This now happens frequently enough to annoy me, so, Googlers, prove you are the world’s smartest people by reading your own patent documents. That’s what I do to find revealing glimpses such as this one display for a search of the bound phrase “Michael Jackson”:
The highlight boxes and call outs are mine. What this diagram shows is a field (structured) report or dossier about Michael Jackson. The red vertical box identifies the field names of the data and the blue rectangle points your attention to the various names by which Michael Jackson is known; for example, Wacko Jacko.
Now this is a result that most people have never seen. Googlers react to this in shock and disbelief because only a handful of Google’s more than 19,000 employees have substantive data about what the firm’s top scientists are doing at their jobs. I’ve learned that 18,500 Googlers “run the game plan”, a Google phrase that means “Do what MOMA tells you”. Google patent documents are important because Google has hundreds of US patent applications and patents, not thousands like IBM and Microsoft. Consequently, there is intent behind funding research, paying attorneys, and dealing with the chaotic baloney that is the specialty of the USPTO.
STR: More and Better Self Service Business Intelligence
September 16, 2008
When I was at university, the advanced statistics course meant learning SAS. I remember my feeling when I finished the course. I had been beaten into a “SAS person.” Today, some university graduates don’t want to wrestle with statistics again. Most people, in my opinion, forget the chi squared test of homogeneity after the final exam.
Recognizing that organizations need access to crunched data in a meaningful form, Space Time Research has labored to create self service business intelligence. The company’s strategy seems to be working, and I know that the number herders recognize that a challenge to the SPSS and SAS approach is building.
Space-Time Research is one of the global leader in self-Service business intelligence for government. The company–based in Australia–has offices in the US and the UK. The STR SuperSTAR Platform is an end-to-end solution providing self-service analytics and business intelligence, interactive web publishing, privacy and confidentiality protection, mapping and visualization. The company has released a new version of its SuperSTAR Platform. The release includes a Data Control Application Programming Interface (API) that provides a ‘plug and play’ approach to privacy and confidentiality mechanisms. The API allows use of STR integrated techniques, accepted protection and confidentiality products, or custom confidentiality rules. These techniques and rules are applied to ad-hoc queries on unit record and aggregate data when a request for information is processed. You can read ARnet.com’s take on the new version here. The MarketWatch write up is here.
You can download a two page brochure that provides more information about the self service interface. Click here. You may have to register to get the download to work. Take a look. Cloud-based business intelligence is going to gain importance. More information about STR is available at the company’s Web site here.
Stephen Arnold, September 16, 2008
Google’s Sky Darkens with Wings of Legal Eagles
September 16, 2008
The European Union has shifted its laser beams of investigation to Google. Microsoft must be chortling with the news. You have many ways to get the inside scoop on this inquiry. I liked Silicon.com’s summation. You can read “EU to Probe Yahoo!-Google Advertising Tie Up” here. For me the most important point in the story was this comment:
The Commission spokesman said there was no deadline for the investigation in Brussels.
I don’t know much about law in general and EU inquiries in general, but what I saw the words “no deadline”, I thought, “Yikes, probers can poke around for months, even years.” When governmental agencies gear up for a “no deadline” inquiry, the likelihood of uncovering mountains of information that can be interpreted in many different ways becomes a certainty.
My thinking is that Google might conclude the Yahoo deal is too much hassle and walk away. Let’s assume this happens.
First, I think the EU will keep its lasers on Mr. Google. The group working to gather information won’t go gently into that good night. At this point, I think the EU will keep on probing and sifting no matter what Google does with regard to Yahoo. Committees can find many interesting issues to weigh and then measure against applicable guidelines, regulations, and laws. Therefore, it’s open season on Mr. Google for the foreseeable future.
Second, if Google leaves Yahoo at the alter, what will Yahoo do? It’s bold play to get hackers to generate revenue appeals to my teen age self. But the 65 year old side of that self thinks, “Yahoo may be pushed off the cliff and into the clutches of gravity.” The “gravity” to which I refer is the pre crash 2000 notion of “zero gravity” Web companies. I think Isaac Newton and his mythical apple remind me of what may happen to Yahoo unless a fairy godmother rescues the company. Yahoo costs are tough to control and the loss of Google revenue may be too much for the Yahooligans to bear.
I see the EU investigation as a turning point for Google and possibly for Yahoo. What do you think? Mr. Google wows Brussels. Yahoo surges when cut free. Let me know because I see Google’s sunny day occluded by the wings of legal eagles.
Stephen Arnold, September 16, 2008
Chrome: Full Metal Jacket Ecosystem
September 16, 2008
Economic Times, September 12, 2008, reported that Google’s Sergey Brin sees Chrome as a challenger to Microsoft Windows. The story “It’s Not Just IE, Google Is Eyeing Windows’ Desktop Pie Too” by Stephen Wildstrom (Business Week) is here. For me the key part of the article is that it puffs up a beta browser into a big bazooka. The article chastises Google for a flawed initial effort. I agree. But the most important statement attributed to Sergey Brin, one of Google’s founders, was:
“What we want is a diverse and vibrant ecosystem…We want several browsers that are viable and substantial choices.”
Let’s take this at face value. Why will the existence of multiple browsers help Google achieve its objective?
- What’s the rush? Internet Explorer and Firefox have market share. Google is sufficiently realistic about the speed of migration from one browser to another. Google is taking a long view.
- The Google browser is not a browser. I know this is a different position from the millions of words written about Chrome. My research suggests that Chrome is a way for Google to bring control to certain applications and operations; namely, an icon on the desktop that launches a cloud based service. To the user, there’s no browser present.
- Google’s patent documents for the Programmable Search Engine suggest that Google will build its own data stores from bits and pieces of existing data. If this is an accurate reading of the PSE February 2007 patent applications, Google wants to become the semantic Web and probably “the Internet”. Chrome is a puzzle piece, not the solution to the puzzle.
- Chrome adds steroids to some 95 pound weakling issues with Google’s current enterprise offerings. Think “air lock” between the organization and the Google cloud.
Agree? Disagree? Send me your facts.
Stephen Arnold, September 16, 2008
Infobright: Sun Sees the Light
September 16, 2008
I wrote about Infobright in May 2008. Predictably mainstream trade publications and most technical Web logs ignored the story. The idea of figuring out rough sets and applying their mathematics to data storage is less exciting than writing about Google and Microsoft. You can read about the Warsaw connection here.
Today news reached me in the Netherlands that Sun Microsystems has pumped $10 million into Infobright. I also learned from Network World’s Chris Kanaracus that
Infobright is adding the open-source Community Edition to its existing enterprise offering. The latter product provides features such as faster data-loading, support for text and binary loading, a product warranty and indemnification.
Data management is emerging as a top concern. Forget search. Unless you can corral the proliferating digital information, finding information is quite difficult. Why is this important? Sun seems to be reacting to Google’s increasing scope. I anticipate more Sun moves that will help the company respond to Google’s increasing appetite for the enterprise.
Stephen Arnold, September 16, 2008
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