Nstein: Searching for a Better Search
November 8, 2008
Nstein Technologies [http://www.nstein.com/en/] digital publishing specialist Diane Burley presented a webinar titled “Searching … For a better Search!” on November 6, 2008. The point was to teach media companies to evaluate how search works on their web sites, address the pros and cons of search strategies like link lists or search boxes, and show how sites might be losing readers. Ms. Burley reviewed case studies to illustrate the differences between active and passive search; how to use semantic analysis to improve search; useable ideas for improving stickiness; and real-world examples of media companies using internal and external search. Has returned to its content processing roots?
Jessica Bratcher, November 7, 2008
Ballmer’s View of Android
November 8, 2008
Steve Ballmer, according to ZDNet Australia here, has little to fear from Android, Google’s open source mobile phone operating system. Suzanne Tindal’s article summarizes remarks Mr. Ballmer made at an annual investment conference sponsored by Telestra. Ms. Tindal presents the highlights of Mr. Ballmer’s talk in a series of quotations. You will need to read her article to get the flavor of Mr. Ballmer’s view and attitude toward Google and its mobile adventures. However, one comment, attributed to Mr. Ballmer, caught my attention. Ms. Tindal reported Mr. Ballmer as saying:
“They [Google] can hire smart guys, hire a lot of people, bla dee bla dee bla, but you know they start out way behind in a certain sense.
I think it was the “bla dee bla dee bla” that seemed memorable. Google has been circumspect in the information I have gathered when it comments about Microsoft. I think the GOOG enjoys making a modest move and then waiting to see if Microsoft reacts, sometimes with considerable gusto, to a tiny Google input. I cannot recall a Googler characterizing Microsoft’s technology as “way behind” or using “bla dee bla dee blah” in a presentation I have watched either in person or on YouTube.com.
Microsoft has made Google’s enterprise initiatives higher profile than they would have been in my opinion. Google does a so so job with sales and marketing. The Google brand is widely recognized, but few know that Google is in the email archiving business and offers bare bones email search for some enterprise customers. Almost no one in Harrods Creek knows that Google’s pricing for its GB 7007 is set up to make an upgrade a no brainer and a first time purchase pretty expensive. Yet Microsoft’s putting Office in the “cloud” has been explained as a way to keep competitors from snagging this business. The comparison is not that Zoho is challenging the Office suite of software. The comparison is between Microsoft and Google.
Now the mobile operating system. I listen occasionally to Paul Thurrott’s podcast which is available on iTunes and on Mr. Laporte’s Web site here. Not more than a week or two ago, I thought I heard Mr. Thurrott suggest that Microsoft should start over with its Windows mobile software. When a respected journalist makes such a radical suggestion, I had my personal hypothesis confirmed. I have fiddled with mobile devices running Windows mobile. I found that I had to click icons to do pretty basic phone things; for example, make a call. I also discovered that on both and HP and Treo device, the responsiveness was not well matched to my expectations. I gave up, dismissing the system as desktop Windows slapped on a phone. That’s not what a phone type device requires.
I think it is too early to know if Android is a hit or miss. Some of the applications for the G1 device available from T Mobile are interesting. I like the Apple iPhone, but it’s on screen keyboard is almost impossible for me to use. I don’t plan on visiting Hot Hot Hot Nails and getting plastic artificial fingernails glued on so I can hit the tiny keys. The applications don’t resonate with me either. I am accustomed to the BlackBerry device.
I think mobile device operating systems and mobile interfaces are in their infancy. It’s a phone, and I want to tell it what I want. No one has pulled off that feature to my satisfaction at this time. Therefore, I think Microsoft, Google, and Nokia have a long road to travel.
Mr. Ballmer’s comments are theater for investors. For me, the casual dismissal of Google is not warranted. Furthermore, I think Microsoft has quite a challenge with its own mobile operating system. Those 10 year olds are growing up and their needs will drive the market. My thought is that a more balanced statement might be, “Google’s first effort is good, but the company has a long road to travel. We all do. It’s a horse race that is ultimately decided by what today’s 10 year olds buy in three or four years.” The “bla dee bla dee blah” statement is a throw away dismissal, not a reflection of the reality Apple, Google, Microsoft, Motorola, and Nokia have to live with.
Stephen Arnold, November 8, 2008
Microsoft Fast: Confusion over NXT and Folio Billing
November 8, 2008
I did a bit of spelunking with the improved search service for Google Groups. If you haven’t tried it out, click here and give it a whirl. In the course of my tests, I came across an interesting thread about Microsoft Fast and its renewal policies for Fast NXT licensees. NXT is a product Fast Search acquired in the pre Microsoft, pre police raid days. I don’t want to explain what NXT does or does not do. You can get up to speed by clicking here and scanning the information on the Fast Search Web site. NXT consists of Folio, which is a long in the tooth content management system.
The thread I discovered on Google Groups can be found here. If the link doesn’t work, just navigate to Google Groups and enter the query “Folio User Groups”. The disclaimer for this series of snippets is that these may be a spoof or doctored. You will have to verify the information that I have located via the Google Groups’ search engine. Beyond that, I am not sure what to make of these points.
Set Up
The seed post is by a person from Canada. You can learn a bit about him here. His post here asserts that he received an invoice, a follow up which he interpreted as annoying, and and, as he stated on September 10, 2008:
I told them to sue me… It is quite insulting to be accused since 1. M&S was paid every year the past many years even though they failed on their part to even produce ONE upgrade every 12 months for their software; 2. if anyone did break any contract it was them when they announced unilaterally that they canceled views; 3. I have been selling/using views since the early 1990’s. We have been FBP and OM whatever they called it then partner and then were unilaterally flushed when they decided to change their distribution pattern; 4. We are a Folio Publisher and views is a software we love dearly, but we are now forced to look for a replacement since it was discontinued unilaterally.
Follow Up
After some posts from other NXT Folio licensees, an individual identified as Jim Moser posted a reply. You can find some information about Mr. Moser here. Mr Moser allegedly wrote the person in Canada saying:
…our [Microsoft Fast] accounting department was simply following up on an invoice. Since it hadn’t been paid and we hadn’t heard from you, we wanted to confirm your intention. This isn’t a new onerous policy started by our acquisition by Microsoft; it’s just good business practice. I’m sure that you, as a business owner, follow up with your customers to ensure payment.
Many of our customers are set up on an auto-renewal process for Maintenance and Support. This process helps ensure that our customers receive seamless M&S [maintenance and support] by (hopefully) preventing accidental lapses in M&S [provisions]. Standard contracts going back to the original Folio Corporation provided for this. Those contracts also have a standard 60-day notification requirement should you choose to not renew. This gives us a chance to appropriately update our systems.
I am certain our accounting department did not “accuse” you. I am also certain that we can find a way to work this out. It does get more complicated once an invoice is issued, but it can still happen.
Please note that we continue to offer Maintenance and Support services for the Folio and NXT products. Maintenance includes correcting defects, delivering software patches. Support includes access to our support staff, who continue to answer questions, provide work-arounds, log defects where appropriate, and help our customers with deployment and functionality questions.
If you have additional concerns, please bring them up with me directly. [Emphasis added by Stephen Arnold to highlight points he found interesting to him. Mr. Moser’s spelling errors fixed for readability as well.]
The bold faced snippets caught my attention. First, the notion of “following up” is given an extra apologia with the gratuitous “simply”. When a customer gets dinged for payment, the vendor wants its money. The “simply” doesn’t make this a routine business business practice. Something is a amiss. I noted the inclusion of “it’s just good business practice”. Hey, there. Didn’t this company’s Oslo office experience a police visit during which the police removed business files and records as part of an active investigation which may be related to improper financial practices. What the heck is “a good business practice” for a company that has the cops sifting through its records as part of a financial investigation. I have to tell you that my pin feathers quivered when I connected–perhaps inappropriately–the police raid with “simply” and “good business practice”. In my freshman rhetoric class in 1962 Dr. Josephine Pearce told us about “cognitive dissonance”. I am not sure if this an example of cognitive dissonance or not. The September 2008 words and the police action in mid October 2008 agitated this old goose.
Second, I am quite surprised with the “certain”. When a person is certain, I think that there is zero chance for error. I have been working since I was 15 years old, and I have learned one thing. I am unable to be certain about one person does. Unless I am there and paying attention or the interaction is captured in some reproducible way, this type of “certain” means zero. In this context, I think the Microsoft Fast Mr. Moser assumes or believes that no person trying to collect a bill would accuse a customer of not paying. I don’t have direct experience being dunned for a late payment. Being an unemployed goose does have its advantages. But I have been on site in a collections agency as part of a project. I have listened to the calls made by the 95 percent performers; that is, the collection professionals who get the money 95 out of 100 cases. I heard some pretty interesting statements. If were on the receiving end of a 95 percenter’s calls, I would probably have my attorney deal with the caller’s employer. Pretty tough talk as I recall.
Knowledge Tree: Just There Search
November 7, 2008
On November 6, 2008, a person told me that the addled goose should take a gander (no pun intended) at Knowledge Tree’s document managmenet software. My information about Knowledge Tree here was that it was another open source software player. I poked around and discovered a feature list here. The company has an extensive line up of partners who install, customize, and support the product in most major population centers. You can find the list of partners here.
On November 4, 2008, the company issued a news release here explaining that the company had signed on as an Intel partner. This particular Intel program ‘validates software security, interoperability, and Intel multi-core processor compatibility. This benefits software vendors by reducing support and development costs, whilst providing end users with increasing confidence in the security and quality of software optimized for Intel platforms.’
The San Francisco based company asserts:
KnowledgeTree is document management made simple: secure, share, track and manage the documents and records your organization depends on with ease.By leveraging an active and innovative open source community, Knowledge Tree provides an easy to use and production-ready enterprise document management solution for use by corporations, government institutions, medium to small business and many other organizations. KnowledgeTree’s open source architecture allows organizations to easily customise and integrate their document management system with their existing infrastructure, providing a more flexible, cost-effective alternative to proprietary applications.
I fiddled with the system, ran some basic queries, located information. The behavior of the system suggested that the underlying search plumbing was Lucene, not a negative by any means.
The reason I mention this system is that open source continues to be a hot topic in a country without vowels in its name. The logic is that extensibility and freedom from vendor lock in is important for some organizations.
The other hook that snagged my attention with the smooth integration of search into the main program function. Search is ‘just there’. As a result, users are getting what is an embedded search function that can provide acceptable access to content processed by the system. For many organizations, this approach is acceptable.
If you want to look at how software vendors will address the problem of search, take a look at Knowledge Tree. I will keep my eye opened for other vendors of systems with ‘just there’ search.
Stephen Arnold, November 7, 2008
The Google Hiring Freeze Rumor
November 7, 2008
I am in a cold, rainy, far away place, and at lunch I heard about a Google hiring freeze. I find it mildly interesting that a rumor that affects people in Silicon Valley finds its way to this remote place. Google sneezes and the world wonders if the GOOG is getting pneumonia.
The rumor today appears to come from The Register. You can read the story here. Decide for yourself if it is true. Because I am alone with my computer and a better connection than I have in rural Kentucky, I flicked through my compendium of Google personnel and cost saving rumors. If you have any opinions about these rumors, please, use the comments section to share what you think is useful information.
First, there was the rumor of the childcare cut. I stayed out of this issue because child care, health care, educational leave, and related job related perks are often management quagmires. Child care is really a hot topic. Changing a jungle gym can trigger hours of meetings.
Second, there was the rumor about changing the plans for housing on the Moffett Field land. Once again there’s mostly dirt and weeds on the Moffett Field land, so plans are probably in the weird never never land construction jobs go when architects are architecting and the bosses are deciding on dark ivory or parchment for the interior base color.
Third, there was the rumor of no more new Googlers. As hot a topic as this was, it was supported by the segregation of Google rentals from the Google full time equivalents. Reports on this are confused. I can’t tell if the lack of sufficient ping pong tables is a temporary crisis or a firm line of demarcation between classes. I think of Roman senators with the colors on their togas to make sure no citizen would forget who got to sit close to the action in the arena.
Why the worry about a hiring freeze? What Google does is the new tea leaves. The GOOG is maturing and getting more disciplined about its management processes. The sufficiently smart are still hired. As the brain pool gets more shallow, the crazy pace of the post IPO era has to slow.
My bet is that Google is taking multiple actions to control spending. Is this bad? Probably not. Do I care if Google becomes more mature? Nope. Just part of a maturing business in lousy financial climate. Even Googzilla’s have to watch their diet, eat wisely, and avoid risky behavior.
Decide for yourself, however. I am an addled goose.
Stephen Arnold, November 7, 2008
Google and Reliability Data
November 7, 2008
Google dipped into its data files on October 30, 2008, and assembled reliability and uptime data. I found the Official Google Blog post interesting because Google does not spray data wildly into the Web-o-sphere. The post was called ‘What We Learned from 1 Million Businesses in the Cloud,’ and you must read it here. The point of the write up was to assert that some downtime is normal. Compared to the downtime of other high profile systems, the Google downtime is very modest. I believe this. The only issue I continue to ponder is what does unschedued downtime do when Google enterprise customers cannot access their email, the documents, Chrome components, or their personalized Google pages? For more on this issue, click here. The most interesting bit of information in the write up was the chart here that compares downtime of Gmail to Microsoft Exchange. Google tosses in a couple of other systems as well, but the real comparison is what Google presents at Microsoft Exchange data. Click here for the chart. Google paid a third party to analyze data from a one million business sample. I believe almost everything Google says, but I trust the open source documents available from the ACM, the USPTO, and the SEC. Without a hard copy of the third party report, we have numbers. I think Google is making a valid point, but these are numbers out of context, and you can make up your own mind about their validity. I am a semi gullible goose who remembers one holiday the phrase, ‘Hello, goose, want to come to dinner?’ I skipped dinner and lived to write this news item.
Stephen Arnold, November 7, 2008
SharePoint Guidance
November 6, 2008
I have been at a conference for the last two hours. It’s SharePoint this and SharePoint that everywhere. Microsoft has cranked the adrenaline dosage and the conferences attendees are hopping. The presentations so far this morning are how to make SharePoint perform a trick; for example, index email or index a database table outside of a site. I wanted to point the attendees to MSDN’s link to “Patterns and Practices SharePoint Guidance.” I couldn’t get an opportunity. I am posting the link to this document here so you can locate this reasonably useful resource. Save yourself some time and headaches and get the straight dope from Microsoft.
Stephen Arnold, November 6, 2008
Ask: Yet Another Play for a First Impression
November 6, 2008
Author’s Note: This post will not render correctly in Internet Explorer 7.0. I am looking for a fix.
My newsreader pointed me to “Ask.com Speeds Up Its Searches” on the IOL Technology Web site. The author was Rachel Metz. The article’s main point is that Barry Diller’s Ask.com has been tweaked to make it display results more quickly. The most interesting statement in the article was:
Ask.com, owned by InterActiveCorp, encountered the repeat-visitor problem after launching a version of its search engine, Ask 3D, in June last year. With Ask 3D, the site moved away from showing search results as a long list and sorted them into three vertical panels, one of which included photos and other multimedia content related to users’ queries. Ask 3D was well-received, chief executive officer Jim Safka said, but it was too slow at downloading search results. “A lot of people tried the site, but wouldn’t come back.”
A year, maybe 18 months ago, I had dinner with two people from a third tier consulting firm. One of the consultant’s comments lodged in my mind. The keen thinker said, “I think Ask.com is doing a very good job. I use the service because I find it more useful than Google.”
Quite useful for 11 year olds. Not so useful to me.
After this comment, I make Ask.com a regular stop on my swing through Web search engines. I come back to ask, so I am a repeat visitor. The problem is that I don’t use Ask.com, and it has zero to do with the interface. Speedier performance, related results, and skins don’t mean much to me. I learned in September 2008 that some middle school students find Ask.com a useful resource.
I don’t even know a middle school kid, so I can’t begin to think about an online search from that point of view. I made a couple of inquiries and learned that a middle school assignment is a personal narrative or a biography of an important person such as George Washington. I ran the query “George Washington” on Ask.com, Live.com, and Yahoo.com. I skipped Google because everyone I know uses Google for most searches. I wanted to see what the also-rans were doing to win me over.
Enterprise 2.0 Too
November 6, 2008
I don’t read many consultants’ reports. I am busy writing my own reports and studies. My co-authors do their best to alert me when a consulting firm tackles the search, text mining, and content mining space. Today one of my colleagues showed me a Web page with a chart from a recent Forrester report “Enterprise 2.0.” I was puzzled by the term. With more organizations facing significant financial pressure, the notion of a company not able to make it as an “Enterprise 1.0” outfit trying to leap to “Enterprise 2.0” struck me as silly. My colleague pointed out that “Enterprise 2.0” means an organization that wants to use “Web 2.0” technology to improve business processes and competitiveness. That did not help me one tiny bit. I think “Web 2.0” is even sillier than some of the other buzzwords I encounter; for example, folksomony (which I am not sure how to spell). My goodness, what’s wrong with describing an organization’s language use using a phrase such as “language use”. I know how to spell language use, and I even know that language use provides a path into understanding how an organization perceives itself and the outside world.
I looked at this diagram for a full two minutes. You can see a representation of this diagram in Larry Dignan’s “Enterprise 2.0: Progress Is Mixed but Experimentation Is Cheap” in his ZDNet blog post here. He’s more open minded than I am, so you may make more headway with your colleagues recycling Mr. Dignan’s thoughts. This addled goose thinks that chasing chimera when bread and butter systems don’t work is hazardous to one’s career and paycheck. Mr. Dignan includes links to recent Forrester reports that trot out the Enterprise 2.0 sound truck.
I am reluctant to reproduce the diagram because it is the work of consulting firm poised to strike dead the likes of McKinsey, Boston Consulting, Bain and Booz, Allen. A firm with this much intellectual fire power can reduce my goose nest to a charred ruin so I want to steer clear of legal laser beams. You can see the diagram by clicking this link.
Several comments:
- A collection of services does not make a failing or faltering business into a surviving business. The notion that one or more wikis, one or more widgets, or one or more fora (the Latin plural of forum, not the dreadful forums, please) makes something Enterprise 2.0 makes me chuckle. Any service applied without thought to a flawed business does zero to alter what makes the business flawed.
- The ragtag grouping of services and applications that have to do with communication is undisciplined. The unifying characteristic of the services listed on the graphic is not evident to me. Picking services that appear to be popular is fine. Say this. Picking services because a Web site has high traffic and one or more of these functions is a pragmatic way to sort horses and Web sites. Say this. To present services without expressing the red thread hooking each to the main argument leaves me without useful guidance.
- The timeline does not make sense to me. I can’t figure out the curves because I have not seen the metrics or the underlying data. I am giving Forrester the benefit of doubt because in my world, there is underlying data and nifty outputs that help me make sense of the numbers. But the x axis is impressionistic, and I am not certain that a service has a life cycle. Humans have been talking for a few years. Just because a human talks into a mobile phone or types an SMS message doesn’t change the talking function. The medium is secondary to the talking.
- Where is search? I think finding “stuff” in this Enterprise 2.0 world, assuming it exists, becomes important. Is the Enterprise 2.0 content protected from spoliation and discoverable? I can think of other questions, but I’m happy to let this one carry the burden for me.
I urge you to read Mr. Dignan’s write up. I like his work. I suggest you buy the Forrester reports or hunt for the information on Google News. You need to make up your own mind. For me, I want to flap my wings so I don’t fly over the dangerous stuff. In this case, my goose instinct is to gain altitude and change direction. No Enterprise 2.0 life cycles, time lines, and buzzwords for me. If I run into any McKinsey or Bain people, I will alert them that their commercial success is over. Forrester, turbo charged to an Enterprise 2.0 machine, is coming to eat their Consulting 1.0 lunch.
Stephen Arnold, November 6, 2008
Stephen Arnold, November 6, 2008
Sponsored Research Reveals Payoff Metrics
November 6, 2008
SAP, as I have noted, is paddling its robåd in waters roiled by customer resistance to some new prices and increasing pressure from upstart alternatives to the industrial strength R/3 system. Aberdeen, a highly regarded consulting firm, authored ‘”Do More with Less: Merging Enterprise Applications with Desktop Tools” on with some support from SAP and Lawson (a maker of business software, not just human resources software). A summary of the report is here.
What I found interesting in this report were the facts highlighted in the news release; for example:
- Integrated technology delivers a 21% increase in gross margin in a 12 month time span
- Decisions are made 27% faster or what the Aberdeen management gurus and guruettes call ‘time to decision’
- And this quote from the news release: ‘technologies like enterprise search allow the Best-in-Class to spend 63% less time in non-productive tasks which include searching for and manipulating data’.
Metrics in search and related disciplines are difficult to verify. Aberdeen’s data exist in this news release is a similarly disembodied form. If I get a copy of the SAP and Lawson underwrite this study, I will look at the sample size, the data analysis method, and the context in which Aberdeen places these data for its paying customers and me, the addled goose.
Big companies, in my opinion, assume that the notion of explaining where a number comes from is silly when preparing a news release. I do not issue news releases very often, and I suppose my PR maven omits data tables.
Nevertheless, these Aberdeen numbers warrant several high level observations. Note. I am not ‘picking on’ Aberdeen, SAP, and Lawson. I am offering a personal opinion about a common practice in consultant news releases: using numbers to get editorial pick up. And it worked. I am writing about this news release in my Web log!
First, if the data are as substantial as they seem to be, why isn’t this type of pay off causing a stampede to the front doors of SAP, for example. The softening of SAP’s guidance, the annoyance of the SAP customers, and other issues suggest that the return is not commensurate with the cost. I may be an addled goose, but if I pay a reasonable price and get a big payoff, I am a happy goose, and I will do the quacking for the vendor.
Second, if the speed of decision somehow correlates with the efficacy of the decision, then I am all for speed. The problem is that in my pond, going fast may be the wrong thing to do. Here in Harrods Creek, I can decide to rush to the mailbox every morning at 8 am to see what my post mistress has delivered to me. But since she does not deliver mail until 3 pm each day, the speed of my decision is essentially irrelevant. The key to a good decision is context, accurate information, and judgment. Speed may have little or nothing to do with whether a decision is good or bad. Therefore, this goose wonders, ‘Why make a decision faster if a higher value cognitive function in incomplete?’ In the sophisticated world of SAP and Lawson, speed may mean more than it does to the goose in Harrods Creek, but I am skeptical about speed with or with out seemingly precise metrics.
Finally, a lousy search system can be a problem regardless of integration. Here’s another down home example. I index what is on my servers in my log cabin office next to the pond. The data I need are not available from a third party like Aberdeen or from the Internet index on Google. My phone is out of order. My fax is dead. In short, I am sitting alone and without a way to get the needed information. I root through what I know. Deprived of context and common sense, I can craft an uninformed paragraph even though I have an integrated system and I have my own subset of data and I have what is in my goose brain. My thought is, ‘The presence of a good or bad search system may have little or no bearing on the time I spend searching integrated information with an integrated system, manipulating the data, and analyzing the interesting numbers.’ Search is important, but if the context is wrong or the data incomplete, speed, integration, or whatever other factor I toss in invested does not make baloney into prime rib.
In my opinion, consultants and dinosaur companies are trying their best to justify the high cost of their systems. Savvy customers know that if the business process is flawed, the software will just make lousy business processes perform faster, not necessarily better.
I know that slapping numbers on independent factors that are not co related while out of context to boot may boost sales. A word of advice: vendors, please, don’t come to my goose pond to make a sales pitch with these faux data. The geese may take the vendors for an invigorating paddle across the pond.
Stephen Arnold, November 6, 2008
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