Overflight: Google’s Web Logs Aggregated
November 17, 2008
Overflight is now available on the ArnoldIT.com Web site. Click here to access the splash page. Google publishes more than 70 Web logs. When Dave Girouard made a comment at the Web 2.0 conference about Google Apps as a platform, this was old news. Via the Overflight service, the ArnoldIT.com analysts “knew” about this functionality and were able to relate the various posts about a hackathon and Google’s enterprise ambitions days before the Web 2.0 conference. Prior to the dissolution of several of the financial institutions to which ArnoldIT.com provided open source intelligence, we heard repeatedly, “You guys seem to be ahead of the curve when it comes to Google.” You can see how useful Overflight has been. Just click here and read about my two Google studies written in 2005 and 2007. The information revealed in these analyses are just now finding their way into the Google information mainstream.
That’s true and part of the reason is what we had been doing for a number of clients, including Threat Open Source Intelligence Gateway, which is not a public service. We also used these tools for projects when vendors wanted to know what type of activities one or more companies were likely to pursue.
Overflight is an RSS aggregation service. The service that is now publicly available aggregates the headlines from Google’s 74 Web logs. We group the most recent headlines using the same categories that Google favors. Our for fee service offers more bells and whistles, but now you can navigate to www.arnoldit.com/overflight and see at a glance what Google is publishing on its own Web logs. For example, click on one of these headings and you will be able to browse by individual Web log the latest headlines:
- Google wide, which is Google’s umbrella term for general Web logs. Most of the information that you read about the company in many well known news services appears on these Web logs first
- Google products, which is a collection of Web logs about specific products. Most of the postings are signed by product managers, but these posts go through Google’s internal clearance process to help ensure that the product comments are in sync with the corporate game plan
- Google ads, which is a round up of the advertising and and advertiser related Web logs. At ArnoldIT.com, we don’t pay much attention to advertising, but millions of people live or die because of the success of their Google ads. We noted that Google’s ad Web logs contain quite interesting references to certain little known innovations such as “matching”. You will be able to read more about these technologies in my forthcoming Google and Publishing study for Infonortics, Ltd.
- Google developer, which is a particularly interesting collection of Web logs that provide information about “where and how the rubber meets the road” when creating applications for the Google application spaces. Adhere Solutions, owned by my son, finds these posts quite interesting. The technical information is often unknown by Google’s public facing marketing and sales professionals.
- Google region, which is a collection of Web logs that provide information germane to Google’s segmentation of its global markets. Many of these Web logs are in English but some are not. You will need to use Google Translate to make sense of the postings. Our commercial version of Overflight automates the translation for you.
Why am I making this service available? There are three reasons:
- A number of people have discovered that my studies of Google (more information is here) are two or three years in front of Google. I thought that it would be easier to put up a version of Overflight to show people how open source intelligence can reveal significant information before the high profile media outlets or the big buck, dead tree tech writers reveal a scoop that is to me “old news”.
- I funded a new award at the JBoye 08 conference to acknowledge individuals who are putting actionable intelligence in the hands of European information and technology professionals. At the JBoye 08 conference, I explained that I wanted to “give back” cash, recognition, and tools. I am nearing the end of my career, and I don’t really feel the need to keep the Google Web log collection under cover any longer.
- Google has spawned an amazing number of news services, stories, and Web log postings. Frankly, I was tired of seeing information that was stale. Many of the stories appear on the Google Web logs and then these are recycled as breaking news. I decided to put the source in front of people so individuals can decide if they want to get Google information that is a bit fresher.
Keep in mind that Google would like to convert this addled goose into paté. If a Web log or Web logs disappears, we will try to work around a glitch. At this time, I plan to leave the service up for at least six months. If there is interest in the service, I may make available some additional content processing tools. I have no “search” function activated. If you think that would be helpful to you, post a comment.
If you wish to criticize the service or make suggestions, please, use the comments section of this Web log. If you are cut from the same cloth as Barry and Cyrus, two people who offer assertions, not hard facts, be aware that specifics are what makes this goose happy. If you don’t find the service useful, don’t use it.
If you want to talk with my team about our open source intelligence services, feel free to write me at seaky2000 @ yahoo dot com. Put “overflight” in the subject line. In a lousy economy, good intelligence can make the difference between a successful organization and an unsuccessful organization. Napoleon’s alleged statement is appropriate today, “The right information is nine tenths of any battle.”
Stephen Arnold, November 17, 2008
Google: Product Results in Search Results
November 17, 2008
A happy quack to the reader who alerted us to what appear to be a test of new Google results features. The user’s query appears to be passed against the products listed in Google Products. The display uses the "universal search" method of embedding additional results in the laundry list. In the example shown below, the user searches for "pavers"; that is, bricks in American English. The system generates a list of results. The Shopping Results provide hot links to companies listing their goods in Google Products and the prices for the displayed products. Note that the ad matching points to advertisers with pavers but not companies listed in the nested results. A link to a video about "pavers" appears in the results list. When Hillary Clinton was running for president, similar functions were implemented on the results for a query for "Hillary Clinton". The reader who alerted us to this "pavers" query pointed out that the integrations of products in search results was, to him, a new function on the Google.co.uk site. Here’s a screen shot with the features the reader called to our attention:
If you see other Google features, please, send them along. I will include them in this Web log.
Stephen Arnold, November 17, 2008
Prices for First Microsoft Cloud Services
November 16, 2008
Update November 18, 2008 More cloud pricing here.
InfoWorld reported that some Microsoft cloud services will be available on Monday, November 17, 2008. You can read “Microsoft to Launch Online SharePoint, Exchange on Monday” here. The article does not address who is eligible to buy, the minimum purchase, or how this service will fit into certified partners’ hosted offerings. I continue to be skeptical about the manageability of hosted SharePoint and its performance. You may be a SharePoint fan, but I am firmly on the fence because the costs associated with getting the darn thing to deliver on the marketing promises are too rich for some of my customers. In my opinion, the most interesting part of this InfoWorld article is not the absence of answers to my questions. The pricing is quite aggressive; for example:
- Office Communications, $15 per user per month
- Hosted Exchange, $10 per user per month
- SharePoint, $7.25 per user per month.
My reaction is that Microsoft wants to snag as much cloud market share as possible and put pricing pressure on anyone who cares to challenge the $65 billion giant. Google will have its paws full. Amazon has already introduced its Windows service. Salesforce.com has pointed out some of the challenges Microsoft faces. We’ll see soon enough.
What I want to see is a hosted Microsoft Fast search system that handles billions of documents.
Stephen Arnold, November 16, 2008
Useful Primer on How to Sell Software
November 16, 2008
I am not too keen on business books. I know. I know. Martin White and I have just written a business and management book called “Successful Enterprise Search Management (Galatea, 2008). Just because I write books doesn’t mean I have to like my own work. That’s why I have a superstar coauthor like Mr. White. The kind people who read early drafts of the book and made quite helpful suggestions suggest that Mr. White and I have done pretty good word. One person indicated that our 200 plus page study was a “benchmark volume”. I hope the person was not writing this from a dentist’s chair after a dose of laughing gas.
The point is that I don’t read much of the baloney that passes for management advice. I worked at Booz, Allen & Hamilton before the company became a body shop and evidenced schizophrenic behavior toward its different businesses. Moms love those flashy MBAs degrees from upscale universities. For me, I learned to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets when those kids explained how to “save” a business. Look up the history of John Deere to understand that to which I refer.
Please, navigate here and then here to see the two part article by Dennis Byron. His “The Software Channel: Lessons Learned from How the Biggest IT Spenders Acquire Enterprise Software.” You will find the write up quite interesting and useful. As the economic noose tightens around the neck of some search and content processing companies, Mr. Byron reminds us of the importance of understanding procedures. I don’t agree with a few of the points in Mr. Byron’s analysis, but that is small potatoes because he has delivered a very good main dish.
The key points in his write up for me were:
- His diagram of how the software channel works is quite useful
- He provides a summary of tips about how an established software channel can help a software developer
- He summarizes some of the new pricing and deal options that are becoming evident for the last part of 2008. Some of these will carry over into 2009.
I downloaded his article, and I think I may make some changes to his channel diagram. A happy quack to the reader who alerted me to this article in IT Business Edge.
Stephen Arnold, November 16, 2008
Yahoo Bites the Bullet
November 16, 2008
I have been a critic of Yahoo for many years. The company’s technology strategy makes an addled goose look like Leopold Kronecker. The company bought companies and allowed each to operate in a silo. The technology gurus fiddled as advertisers burned when the ad people couldn’t get data about Yahoo demographics across its different silos. Then the company went wacky and drove its share price into the ground. All Things Digital reports that reality has infected the Yahooligans. “Yahoo Layoffs Set for December 10 (And, No, Jerry Yang Is Not Leaving Too)” provides the details of the pre holiday event. You can read Ms. Swisher’s write up here. Mr. Swisher offers a bit of color about the proposed tie up of AOL and Yahoo. I won’t add to that subject other than to say the Yahoo crazy math of 1 + 1 = 3 doesn’t make much sense to me.
A more interesting question is, “Will the layoffs make any difference other than a pumping up the balance sheet a bit?” In my opinion, “No.” Yahoo has an untenable cost burden due to its technology promiscuity. The present management team does not have a way to address the cost problem effectively. More is needed than some layoffs. The company needs to begin the painful process of downsizing and rebuilding. Whole chunks of the business are going to have to be sold or shut down. Yahoo is a ship in need of an overhaul and quickly. Time is indeed running out.
Stephen Arnold, November 16, 2008
Some Lessons for Enterprise Search
November 16, 2008
Manufacturing Business Technology’s “Fair Warning: 10 Signs Your ERP System Is Killing Your Business” did not seem germane to this Web log. I scanned the article by Mark Symonds, who apparently works at an outfit called Plexus Systems. The content of the story here is relevant to some enterprise search installations. The article is a listing of a self check up. I don’t want to spoil your enjoyment of his writing, so I will mention three of his 10 points, then offer a closing comment. The three points I found relevant to enterprise search were:
- The system cannot integrate with mission critical business data. That is a definite problem for some enterprise search systems. When a vendor is reluctant to explain exactly what must be done to move content from Legacy System A to the content processing subsystem of an enterprise search system, you know there is trouble. I learned last week that a certain major appliance vendor refuses to acknowledge this content acquisition and transformation problem.
- Maintenance fees are high. Another direct hit. Only a handful of search system vendors deliver a solution that won’t create a sea of red ink with engineering and technical support fees. In fact, some vendors price a device or system at a very attractive price and then try to make a profit on professional services.
- Upgrades are disruptive. I know of one major vendor who ships an update. The system must be restarted and if there is a problem, the hapless licensee must repeat the procedures. In one instance, the to get the upgrade to work, a roll back to an earlier version of the system was required because the hot fixes shipped between version upgrades did not work with the point upgrade. That was indeed exciting.
You will find that the other seven reasons may be as relevant to enterprise search as ERP. The days of massive platforms that boil the ocean are still with us, however. Apply this checklist to Microsoft SharePoint, and you will see what I mean. A happy quack to Mr. Symonds for this write up.
Stephen Arnold, November 16, 2008
A Traditional Newspaper Tries to Get Hip
November 16, 2008
I read in CIO Magazine here that the UK newspaper the Telegraph is a content provider for Google Android. The story “Telegraphy Newspaper Is First Google Android Content Provider.” Leo King does a good job of explaining that the Telegraph Media Group has an Android application that will, according to Mr. King:
provide users with news and sports feeds, as well as travel and motoring information, and can be downloaded from the Android Marketplace.
In August 2008, the same Telegraph unit offered content to iPhone users. I am encouraged by this innovation. My question is, “What were these folks doing for the last decade?” Google has been chugging happily along, offering opportunities for companies to hook up with Googzilla for years. The fact is that these action, although admirable, are in my opinion too late to make save the game. Traditional newspapers are facing demographic challenges, rising costs, and advertisers who have to decide between food and running adverts. More innovation is needed, but the good news is that the Telegraph is making an effort.
Stephen Arnold, November 16, 2008
Google Docs: An Enterprise Laggard
November 15, 2008
Forbes Magazine, the business publication with the editorial to ad ratios that made Bill Ziff giggle with glee, published “Study Finds Google Docs Struggles to Gain Foothold in Productivity Suite Market”. This is not really an Forbes story; it is a Forbes reprint of Business Wire news release. Nevertheless, you will want to take a quick look at the document here. I am learning to look closely at the urls and the disclaimers on some high profile Web sites. The content says “Forbes” but the information is often unusual. In September 2008 I was in the audience when a Googler reported strong uptake for Google Apps and Google Docs. I wrote about the New South Wales’s deal with Google for putting Google services in the hands of school children. I heard a rumor that on busy days, Google Apps was enjoying sign ups in the 3,000 every 24 hours. Google’s enterprise initiatives have been sufficiently robust to disrupt some enterprise search vendors and cause Microsoft to knee jerk its way into cloud services.
The news story reveals that:
Google Docs (a web-based application) was the 2nd most popular free productivity app, used by 1% of users. Google docs also had the lightest use of all productivity apps, with an average of 40 actions performed in the app (compare with 548 in OpenOffice and 1,797 in Microsoft Word), and the fewest average days used during the 6-month period.
I am not sure I follow the data but I think the GOOG is actually doing okay, not exactly what the headline and word “struggles” suggests. So who wrote this study? ClickStream Technologies. This is neither good nor bad in my opinion, but I have two questions: [a] Is Forbes endorsing this study or just earning some extra money recycling content? and [b] Why is this study negative towards Google? I don’t have answers to these questions. In our own work, we try to be clear, and I found the data in the story pretty confusing to an old goose like me.
Stephen Arnold, November 15, 2008
A Bad Economy May Boost Google
November 15, 2008
Garett Rogers is an analyst who can join my flock anytime. His “Worsening Economy Could Actually Help Google” takes a different view of how the GOOG will fare in the present economic climate. He wrote on November 13, 2008, in a ZDNet Web log here:
One major expense (and headache) for small, medium and large businesses are licensing fees for things like Microsoft Exchange, Share Point, Office, etc. As costs are being cut, these Microsoft products may well go on the chopping block with Google being the cheaper (or free) alternative.
The idea is that as organizations seek to reduce costs Google’s cloud services will become more and more appealing. I agree. The infrastructure costs that some organizations are now making in cloud computing are going to be an additional burden. Google continues to invest, but the company has the plumbing in place. If my analyses are accurate, Google could trim its infrastructure investment without great risk to its present lead in data centers and back end services.
The real plus for Google is that the company spends comparatively little on marketing. Granted, the company’s sales and marketing operations are not the well oiled machines one sees running for consumer products. But the market demand for things Google seems to be chugging along. Google has some operating cost advantages as well. In short, I agree with Mr. Rogers. Quack!
Stephen Arnold, November 15, 2008
Autonomy Upgrades Investigative System
November 15, 2008
Autonomy, based in Cambridge, England, continues to be one of the most agile of the information access and services company. The firm has updated its Intelligent Investigator & Early Case Assessment software. You can read about the story here or visit the Autonomy Web site for more details. Autonomy asserts that its software can understand the meaning of large volumes of data collected in an investigation or similar procedure. Once the structured and unstructured data are processed, an investigator can use the Autonomy system:
to reconstruct what occurred, develop informed case strategies and sweep aside non-responsive data. A seamless link with Autonomy Legal Hold software automatically provides a legally defensible preservation and collection process.
Features of the investigative system include:
- A case centric view of the data. The idea is that an investigator can get a bird’s eye view of information, events, persons of interest, and time in a matter
- A new feature to analyze data where it resides and provide answers to queries without building a collection and performing some of the manual tasks other systems require
- A risk component
- Enhanced entity extraction and alias identification
Other companies offer case management and investigative tools. Autonomy’s broad sweep of software and systems allows the company to provide a solution that can mesh with almost any organizational or legal requirement. Will Autonomy sweep the field in this market? I know the company will try? The challenge will be to convince investigative units and lawyers to try new methods. Investigators and lawyers can be like my grandmother–set in her ways. A number of search and content processing companies are looking closely at these specialized markets. When the economy goes south, legal activity goes north. Autonomy has demonstrated it knows which way the compass is spinning.
Stephen Arnold, November 15, 2008
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