Microsoft Fast: Stricken from the Mercury News List
December 27, 2008
When I lived in plastic fantastic (that’s Silicon Valley), I enjoyed the computer ads and some of the technical news coverage in the San Jose Mercury News. In flicking through my newreader’s daily treasure trove, I noticed “In Hindsight’s year in Review: Microhoo, Epic Change and an Economy in Crisis” by Frank Michael Russell. Microsoft did get the top billing in this month by month round up of what was important for the northern California region. There was one omission, however. In the month of October 2008, Mr. Russell neglected to mention the police raid at Microsoft Fast’s office in Oslo, Norway. I know that New York has a well deserved reputation for myopia. With Microsoft such a large factor in Mr. Russell’s write up, I was curious why a police action which have a profound impact on the company’s enterprise fortunes was ignored. Oh, now I remember. Folks in northern California don’t pay much attention to Oslo. Gas prices are more significant in the Valley of Heart’s Desire, which I think is a synonym for plastic fantastic. Google rated a couple of mentions. That’s encouraging.
Stephen Arnold, December 27, 2008
IBM OmniFind Personal E-mail Search
December 27, 2008
in December 2008, the bright eyed engineers at IBM rolled out a new version of the IBM OmniFind Personal E-Mail Search tool. IBM offers plug ins for Microsoft Outlook and IBM Lotus Notes mail systems. You can read about the basic system here. For the tough minded, you can download the system here. If you are running Vista, you will need to fiddle with the Universal Access Control. Once you have crippled that puppy, you can install the system on a 32 bit Vista system. The search only accesses files produced from Lotus Notes Version 6.x or above and Outlook Version 2003 and above. The cute gotcha is that you have to decide whether you want to search Outlook or Lotus Notes. You can’t search both at the same time. IBM’s engineers presumably are rushing to catch up with the notion of federating search results. Another neat limitation is that the software only runs on Windows. Enjoy.
Stephen Arnold, December 27, 2008
Google Translation Nudges Forward
December 27, 2008
I recall a chipper 20 something telling me she learned in her first class in engineering; to wit, “Patent applications are not products.” As a trophy generation member, flush with entitlement, she’s is generally correct, but patent applications are not accidental. They are instrumental. If you are working on translation software, you may want to check out Google’s December 25, 2008, “Machine Translation for Query Expansion.” You can find this document by searching the wonderful USPTO system for US20080319962. Once you have that document in front of you, you will learn that Google asserts that it can snag a query, generate synonyms from its statistical machine translation system, and pull back a collection. There are some other methods in the patent application. When I read it, my thought was, “Run a query in English, get back documents in other languages that match the query, and punch the Google Translate button and see the source document in English.” Your interpretation may vary. I was amused that the document appeared on December 25, 2008, when most of the US government was on holiday. I guess the USPTO is working hard to win the favor of the incoming administration.
Stephen Arnold, December 27, 2008
Algorithms for All
December 27, 2008
A happy quack to the reader who sent me this link to the ACM’s collection of old, bad, not too old and not too bad algorithms. You can access the list and download the algorithms here. The collection task was a big one. Tim Hopkins, University of Kent, has his name on the referenced page. The geese at ArnoldIT.com want to thank him for his work. Keep in mind that algorithms’ beauty may be found in the eye of the beholder. Some of these are gems; others will choke even a modern hot rod computer. Test and retest, quacks the goose.
Stephen Arnold, December 27, 2008
Reading Google Paw Lines to Foretell Its Future
December 26, 2008
Alex Chitu must have been close enough to Googzilla to get it to show its paw for a fortune telling session. You can read his “Predictions for Google’s 2009” in Google Operating System here. His observations for the most part are interesting and I think, like Nostradamus, some of these predictions may be “true”. For example, Google Translate will become a more widely deployed function in Google products and services. You will find my discussion of Google’s December 25, 2008, patent application US20080319962 germane to this prediction. If you want to peer beyond Mr. Chitu’s flat statement, download the patent document and check out the claims. I also agree that Google Contacts will gain some beef in 2009. If you have been watching the weird ritual mating dance between Googlers and Salesforce.com, you may conclude that the GOOG wants more from customer relationship management than a quick buy out of Salesforce.com for its multi tenant inventions and the company’s potent marketing engine. The personalized search ads have been visible to me on a couple of my Google “ig” sessions, so that’s a slam dunk for 2009. You can read his other prognostications here. I would like to mention three predictions that I hoped he would mention but did not. These are quite addled, and so these are ideal for the Beyond Search addled goose crystal ball output; namely:
- Companies in sectors unrelated to Web search and online advertising realize that the GOOG is disrupting their businesses. The addled goose watched in 2008 as commercial database companies and telecommunications companies woke up to a strange, new, Googley world. Can you guess the business sectors? You can get a list of these plus a diagram in my 2007 Google Version 2.0 which is still available. Click here to order.
- Authors will turn to Google as a way to sell, not just market, their original work. With dead tree publishing companies racing toward Armageddon, the GOOG as a publishing medium will come into its own. Google has quite a few technical documents explaining in considerable detail how to make this happen.
- Regulators in various countries will realize that Google heralds a new spin on globalization. Local operations deliver quite specific products and services, yet the plumbing exists “out there” so it is tough to deal with the GOOG under existing regulatory umbrellas.
What do you think the GOOG will do in 2009? Oh, I know that Google is just a Web search company in the business of selling ads in a deteriorating economic climate. I am a silly goose for having articulated that Google is more, much more.
Stephen Arnold, December 26, 2008
Hog Tie That SharePoint Server
December 26, 2008
A happy quack to the reader who alerted me to five tips I need to make SharePoint server purr like a kitten. Well, maybe, oink like a well-fed pig. You can read “Managing Microsoft SharePoint Server — Five Tips” by Briony Smith here. Ms. Smith starts her write up by referencing SharePoint’s legendary ease of use. My first thought was that Ms. Smith has never installed a SharePoint server, but that’s neither here nor there. Quite a few pundits obtain technical expertise via interviews or telepathy. I am not comfortable reproducing Ms. Smith’s five tips. I think it’s permissible to reference two of them and offer a handful of comments.
One of her tips is to use role based access. The idea is that you don’t want to peg people to access. People belong to roles. Roles are easier to administer. I agree. I would suggest that you get your roles organized before setting up SharePoint. Putting the cart before the horse will make you life a bit more complicated.
Another tip that caught my attention was her observation that SharePoint deployments can get out of hand. Now that’s an understatement. My hunch is that Ms. Smith wants to flash some soft yellow lights about the costs and complexity of scaling, customizing, and tuning SharePoint.
What’s left out? Quite a bit. In fact, I think that much of the writing about SharePoint skips right over the challenges SharePoint presents. I am not sure why people are reluctant to describe what’s involved with SharePoint, but it is a mini trend. I may be missing something, but these “it’s really easy” discussions of SharePoint don’t match what I have experienced. Am I missing something? Let’s start with search, indexing more than 50 million documents, and figuring out how to get facets, expert identification, and views working quickly enough to keep users from Googling for an alternative.
Stephen Arnold, December 26, 2008
Marissa Mayer Profile
December 26, 2008
Gawker Media published here a profile of Google’s Marissa Mayer. The article by Owen Thomas–“Marissa Mayer, the 21st Century’s Pointy Haired Boss–intrigued me. The title is ambiguous. I came away with the sense that Ms. Mayer was the recipient of back handed compliments. You may find the approach more critical of Ms. Mayer.
One comment that stuck in my mind was this sentence: “Employees report that she’s famous for not preparing for meetings, making spur-of-the-moment decisions on products based on five-minute presentations.” After reading the article, I recalled the possibly apocryphal quote attributed to Abraham Lincoln. When a person called General Grant’s penchant for whiskey to President Lincoln’s attention, someone told me that Lincoln replied, “Find out what he’s drinking and send a case to my other generals.”
Stephen Arnold, December 25, 2008
European Digital Library Back Online
December 26, 2008
The Inquirer reported here that the digital library sponsored by the European Union is online again. You can read the announcement here in “Euro Library Re-Opens”. More servers and more optimism should help the service which crashed when it first opened. The addled goose asks, “When will the EU lose its appetite for pumping money into infrastructure?” I am now calculating the odds that the EU seeks help from a company able to scale. Google is a long shot, but the Exalead engineers could contribute.
Stephen Arnold, December 26, 2008
Yahoo’s Four Issues
December 26, 2008
TheStreet.com ran Eric Jackson’s “Reasons behind Yahoo’s Four Year Slump” here. Mr. Jackson does a good job of summarizing the received wisdom about the company’s challenges. Few can disagree that Yahoo’s leadership has been uninspired. Mr. Jackson moves quickly to identify product leadership leadership and the company’s organizational structure challenges. I wanted to add several observations that, in my opinion, also contribute to the company’s singular lack of effectuality:
First, the Yahoo technology generates one offs. News releases accompany these initiatives. That’s great for the public relations company and for the developers who hop on the Yahoo bandwagon. Build Your Own Search is a good example. Yahoo makes it easy for search developers to piggyback on Yahoo’s Web index. The excitement is certainly due to Yahoo’s making this service available without charge. Google offers some free searching too, but from what I hear the GOOG is quick to contact those developers who come to Google’s attention. Fees are never far from Googzilla’s mind. My point is that monetization does not seem to be a top priority at Yahoo. In today’s business environment, I think that is an issue.
Second, over the years Yahoo has acquired a wide range of companies. Based on the information I have, Yahoo had been content to let these outfits chug along. Yahoo was on the portal path when the GOOG decided to focus on search and seek inspiration from the Overture paid search service. The GOOG, whether by luck or input from former Altavista.com engineers, created a relatively homogeneous computing infrastructure. Not the Yahooligans. After collection companies, some of these outfits operated as services available within a portal, portlets, if you will. Instead of integrating acquisitions into a homogeneous platform, Yahoo has a more heterogeneous infrastructure. As a result, agility and cost control are difficult, if not impossible, for Yahoo to deliver on a daily basis.
Third, Yahoo has managed to create the internal environment that preceded the Pan Slavic initiatives of the last century. One the surface, Yahooligans get along and love one another. In the day to day dealings, I have heard that the sweetness and light dissipates. With cultural issues in information technology and the types of management and leadership problems at which Mr. Jackson hints, I think Yahoo is in a vulnerable position.
What will happen in 2009? The Yahoo of the 1996 to 1999 period will become a dim memory. The 2009 Yahoo is morphing into an America Online with a different logo. Now tell me why I am wrong. Just offer up some holiday facts to support your position.
Stephen Arnold, December 25, 2008
Fast API Search: Good Stuff
December 25, 2008
If you have a touch of nerd DNA, you will want to navigate to GotAPI’s Fast API Search. You can find the service here. If you run a query and don’t find what you are looking for, you can click here and contribute to the service. This vertical search service is a product of LogPerspective, Inc. in Massachusetts. A happy quack to the creators of this service.
Stephen Arnold, December 25, 2008
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