The Future of EasyAsk: Depends on Progress
December 18, 2008
EasyAsk is a search system that works quite well. You can read EasyAsk Facts here. The company is now a unit of Progress Software. Progress began with a core of original code and over the years has acquired a number of companies. I think of the firm as a boutique, which is not what the Progress public relations people want me to keep in my tiny goose brain. I saw a news item about Progress Software’s most recent financial report. You can read a summary of the numbers here. If you want more detail, navigate to Google Finance here. The story is simple: earnings are down to $8.5 million from $15.8 million in the fourth quarter of 2007. With the economic climate in deep chill mode, Progress will have to retool its sales and marketing. If the downdraft continues, the company will have to make some tough decisions about which of its many products to hook up to life support. EasyAsk is like other search systems a complicated beastie. Search systems gobble up money, and the sales cycle is often long even when the MBAs are running at full throttle. When the MBAs are home worrying about their mortgage payments, the search business is likely to suffer. One warning sign: EasyAsk was not mentioned in the news release I read. This goose is accustomed to watching the weather for signs of a storm. My thought is that one might be building and heading the EasyAsk way. What’s your take? No PR people need reply, thanks.
Stephen Arnold, December
Leximancer Satmetrix Tie Up
December 18, 2008
Leximancer has partnered with Satmetrix so that company can utilize Leximancer’s Customer Insight Portal. Satmetrix provides software applications and consulting services to improve customer loyalty. Using “intuitive concept discovery” — semantic analysis — Leximancer develops responses on customer attitudes. Leximancer will provide customer analytics and unstructured text mining for Satmetrix’s Net Promoter, which automatically sifts and categorizes data from blogs, Web sites, social media, e-mails, service notes and survey feedback to increase companies’ customer loyalty, retention and growth. The focus on analyzing positive and negative trends in text entries from customers is key to speed and response for customer service-oriented companies. Satmetrix serves a wide spread of markets including telecommunications firms like Verizon and business services like Careerbuilder.
Jessica Bratcher, December 17, 2008
SharePoint: ChooseChicago
December 18, 2008
I scanned the MSDN Web log postings and saw this headline: “SharePoint Web Sites in Government.” My first reaction was that the author Jamesbr had compiled a list of public facing Web sites running on Microsoft’s fascinating SharePoint content management, collaboration, search, and Swiss Army Knife software. No joy. Mr. Jamesbr pointed to another person’s list which was a trifle thin. You can check out this official WSS tally here. Don’t let the WSS fool you. The sites are SharePoint, and there are 432 of them as of December 16, 2008. I navigated to the featured site, ChooseChicago.com. My broadband connection was having a bad hair day. It took 10 seconds for the base page to render and I had to hit the escape key after 30 seconds to stop the page from trying to locate a missing resource. Sigh. Because this was a featured site that impressed Jamesbr, I did some exploring. First, I navigated to the ChooseChicago.com site and saw this on December 16, 2008:
The search box is located at the top right hand corner of the page and also at the bottom right hand corner. But the search system was a tad sluggish. After entering my query “Chinese”, the system cranked for 20 seconds before returning the results list:
App Engine Changes
December 18, 2008
For the fans of Google’s App Engine, Googzilla made several important announcements on December 16, 2008. Dashboards are a big deal in some organizations. The data can be wacky, but the users love the notion of a bird’s-eye view of what’s hot and what’s needed to win the organizational battles. Google is taking a dashboard baby step, and it will be followed by dashboard big steps. First, Google rolled out an App Engine System Status Site that monitors the latency and uptime of various components and provides real-time visibility into their performance. Good news for administrators, and the dashboard will whip up demand among rank and file users when these folks learn about the system. Google also delivered a Quota Details Dashboard, detailing the resource quotas that affect a Google App engine application. Finally, the company provided a “sneak peak” at upcoming billing feature, which will enable a developer to pay Google to use its services. Good news for the Google bean counter and probably not so good news for some Google App users who thought that Google offered everything for free. Ha ha. Click here to watch a video about the dashboard. A slightly different slant on the dashboard appeared in the Google Code blog here. You can track Google’s news in its Web logs as it happens via the free ArnoldIT.com Overflight service. To give it a try, click here. Oh, the search engine is provided by Exalead. The Google custom search engine lacks the metatagging and entity extraction features I find quite helpful. Watch for another Overflight service featuring a different search system in the near future. I am suffering Google fatigue, so a new content domain will become available.
Stephen Arnold, December 19, 2008
Expert System’s Luca Scagliarini
December 18, 2008
ArnoldIT.com’s Search Wizards Speak’s series has landed another exclusive. Hard on the heels of the interview with Autonomy’s chief operating officer, Luca Scagliarini, one of the senior executives at Expert System in Modena, Italy, explains the company’s technology and strategy for 2009. Mr. Scagliarini is a technologist’s technologist and a recognized leader in next generation search systems. The company’s COGITO technology has cut a wide swath through European markets and is now available in North America. Mr. Scagliarini told ArnoldIT.com’s Beyond Search:
A major mobile handheld manufacturer uses our technology to address the issue of supporting new users in learning how to use the device. The objective was to reduce the return rate of the device AND to reduce the customer support costs. This natural language-based solution leverages our semantic technology to provide their customers with a simple and effective tool to answer questions and how-to queries with consistency and high precision. As of today the system has answered, in only 5 months, more than 4 million questions with more than 87% precision.
Search is no longer key word matching and long lists of results. Mr. Scagliarini said:
To deliver an effective question and answer system that works on more than a small set of FAQ, it is very important to have a deep understanding of the text. This is possible only through deep semantic analysis. We have several implementations of our natural language Q&A product recently renamed COGITO Answer. In the next 12 months, we will be investing to expand our footprint worldwide–especially in the U.S. and in the Persian Gulf region to replicate our European success there. In the U.S, we are now supporting customer service operations with natural language Q&A for a government unit of the Department of the Interior and we are one of only 5 semantic partners actively promoted by Oracle.
You can read the complete interview with Mr. Scagliarini on the ArnoldIT.com Web site or you can click here. More information about the company and its technology may be found on the firm’s Web site http://www.expertsystem.net or click here.
More SAP Trouble
December 18, 2008
In London, one of the City’s brightest stars “debated” me after my keynote speech. I made the observation that SAP, the maker of hugely complex and even more hugely expensive software, was a gone goose. The bright City luminary disagreed, pointing out that SAP was big and had a lot of happy customers. I did not respond to the point because SAP’s woes are easily findable in almost any news search system. Some customers are annoyed. Some resellers are annoyed. Some competitors are annoyed. And one competitor, the bunny rabbit Oracle has sought protection from SAP in the smooth running US legal system. You can read about the law suit on Web sites that attract legal eagles. Click here for one version of the Oracle complaint against the SAP outfit. Keep in mind that I don’t have a horse in this joust. But bunny Oracle has ripped off his disguise and the predator from the film Alien is now exposed. To make matters worse, Computerworld reported that SAP was bitten by a legal eagle. “Judge Denies Most SAP Motions to Dismiss in Oracle Suit” makes it clear that SAP’s attorneys were not up to the task to make the Oracle problem smaller. You can read the full story by Chris Kanaracus here. For me the key comment in the Computerworld story was:
SAP has acknowledged that TomorrowNow staff members made “inappropriate downloads” from Oracle’s Web site, it but strongly rejected Oracle’s claims of a broader pattern of wrongdoing.
When I read this, I must tell you that any fiddling around is not something a healthy, confident, growing company has time to do. Everyone in a health, confident, growing company is working 16 hour days, struggling to meet deadlines, and paying attention to customers. Evidently the Federal judge did not find the SAP arguments compelling, and I think this comment in Mr. Kanaracus’ article may flop around this legal matter like the albatross around the neck of the Ancyent Marinere conceived by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
The unhappy sailor lost at sea just the way attorneys like their clients. Image source: http://i95.photobucket.com/albums/l140/gardevias/Art/Dore-Mariner-01.jpg
Was SAP trying to get at the secrets to Oracle Secure Enterprise Search 10g system? Was SAP eager to tap into the semantic technology that Oracle was testing from such vendors as Siderean Software and Bitext? I think this Alien versus Predator legal dust up will quite entertaining. The outcome will not benefit users of SES10g or TREX and, in the long run, the money spent in court would be more productively invested in each company’s search system. Once again search and search users lose out. Good news for the lawyers. Lawyers usually get paid.
Stephen Arnold, December 18, 2008
Microsoft Fast Says Google Not a Threat
December 17, 2008
Business 24-7.ae published on December 18, 2008, “Microsoft Eyes Google Turf” here. This is a wacky url, so the article by Nancy Sudheer may 404 by the time you read this. The premise of the article is that Microsoft Fast does not see Google’s enterprise initiatives as a threat. I have to tell you that I don’t agree. I think Google is a threat to Microsoft at this time, and the orange level is heading for red in 2009, gentle reader. As you may know, Microsoft paid $1.23 billion for Fast Search & Transfer in April 2008. About 45 days later, the Microsoft Fast programming team released a Web part. In October, Norwegian police raided the Microsoft Fast office and is investigating alleged criminal behavior at the company.
In the meantime, Googzilla has moved past 25,000 licensees of the Google Search Appliance. The customer count does not include educational institutions such as 1.5 million users of Google Docs in New South Wales or the thousands of organizations using Google Maps. I don’t believe that Google is getting 3,000 new sign ups for Google Apps every 24 hours. I think one of the Googlers was guzzling too much Odwalla juice at 3 am. I do believe that the GOOG is getting a steady flow of sign ups. Some are tire kickers and some are for real. The point is that Google is grinding forward.
Ms. Sudheer is reporting a story and relying on the information provided by her sources. I am not faulting her writing or her effort to be clear. I am not comfortable with her accepting the premise that Google is not a threat. For goodness sake, Microsoft is tangled in knots, spending hundreds of millions on data centers, buying companies with recycled technology and companies with lousy accountants, and changing search strategies more frequently than Tess, my technical advisor, rolls over in her cedar chip Orvis bed.
Ms. Sudheer quotes a Microsoft Fast big wig–Neil Garner, VP International Operations, Fast, Middle East–as saying:
“Google is not about enterprise search as they focus more on advertising, which is their revenue source. Microsoft is converse to that as our enterprise resource planning product SharePoint itself is a billion-dollar business issuing 100 million licenses, of which Fast will be an integral part,” he said. “Search will be able to service Microsoft’s present set of customers interested in e-commerce and provide specific capabilities to enhance business. Our new branding activities will also bring out this awareness as consumers have to go to a single vendor,” Garner said.
I have heard that Microsoft is putting pressure on SharePoint licensees to use the Fast ESP technology and abjure a third party solution such as Coveo or Isys Search Software. My hunch is that Microsoft may have to make the Fast ESP system financially attractive. What’s interesting is that Google’s enterprise pricing is headed the other way. Based on my analysis of search vendors’ pricing for 2008, Google is one of the most costly systems to license. Oracle seems to have retreated from the enterprise search market, but Microsoft is sticking with it. Which strategy is better? Fighting the GOOG or poking one’s head in the sand? Let me know your thoughts. Oh, if you have any update on the police action in Norway, please, let me know. Maybe the case has been dismissed? I hope so.
Stephen Arnold, December 17, 2008
A New Twist in Google Information
December 17, 2008
Matt Cutts is or was a Googler last time I saw him. I must be upfront and say that I don’t pay any attention to his Web log. Googlers’ or Xooglers’ Web logs are not too useful. The GOOG makes people sign interesting documents that prohibit much, if any, useful information about the company from seeing the light of day. I owned part of a company a few years ago and had the opportunity to talk with a person with some experience in this arena. Sorry, I can’t provide more information. My attorney is angling for a new houseboat, and I don’t need to aid his cause.
Mr. Cutts has a Web log here. It covers a range of topics that don’t interest me. I care nothing about search engine optimization. I understand that most Web sites get near zero traffic, and SEO is important to some people. Mr. Cutts also includes whimsical comments about online. I am too old for whimsey. Skip that. But the article “Ten Things I Don’t Like about Google Chrome” hooked me. What is a Googler or Xoogler doing criticizing a very important Google product, not a beta, but a real, honest to goodness product?
The article said:
Normally when I have suggestions or complaints about a Google product, I talk directly to that team within Google — the Google Chrome team is especially good about listening to feedback. They also provide a very easy way to file bugs or feature requests against Chrome, and they do triage those requests. But I’ve written so positively about Google Chrome in the past that I wanted to show the sort of feedback that I give when I really care about a product.
Wow, this reminds me of a Luigi Pirandello scene. A character is talking to the audience to show how that character would talk to the real audience if the people in the theatre were not present.
I don’t think Chrome is a browser. My research suggests that Chrome is a code component that hooks the device via an umbilical to the big Googleplex of data centers. Chrome makes it easy for Google to run containers on the device. One of the features of Chrome is that separate windows can hold Google applications such as Gmail. The device’s operating system is wrapped in a software layer that is one component of Google’s virtual data center operating system. VDOS is not an official Google acronym but it makes clear what Chrome’s function is. Veterinarians in Kansas uses a similar method to keep track of cows’ health. The cow is hooked to a system that can make sense of cow behaviors. Chrome is similar to this only in digital form, not stuff in a plastic bag and shoved in the cow’s stomach.
Mr. Cutts runs down a list of issues he has with Chrome. When I read this list, I wondered, “What’s the purpose of this? Is Mr. Cutts eager to spend time giving a deposition about his revelations on his personal or quasi personal Web log? Is he trying to reinforce his image as a ‘good person’? Is he a cat’s paw for Google’s burgeoning and somewhat erratic public relations machine?”
I have no idea., What’s clear is that this article walks down a less well traveled path. As Pirandello allegedly said:
Logic is one thing, the human animal another. You can quite easily propose a logical solution to something and at the same time hope in your heart of hearts it won’t work out.
Stephen Arnold, December 17, 2008
Microsoft: Search Revolving Door
December 17, 2008
I have a tough time keeping track of who is running Microsoft’s search effort. In a lousy market, Google continues to keep a paw clamped around the throats of 70 percent of Web search users. Microsoft, Yahoo, and the troubled Ask.com are not making much, if any, headway in closing the gap or slowing Googzilla. When Google makes a mistake as it did with its OpenEdge play, none of these competitors exploits the error.
So, I was not surprised to read in Todd Bishop’s TechFlash that Brad Goldberg is leaving Microsoft and the Live search operation. He was the general manager, and I am not sure where in the wild wonderful world of Microsoft he reported or what his duties were. If he was the person who had the job of crippling Google, he certainly did not deliver. You can read “Live Search GM Leaving Microsoft” here. Mr. Bishop said that Mr. Goldberg will join an investment company. In today’s economy, I am not very confident that investment companies will flourish for a while. The US Treasury suggested that it will print as much money as needed to jump start the economy. The most interesting comment in Mr. Bishop’s write up was:
His wife, Michelle Goldberg, is a partner at the Ignition Partners venture capital firm.
Wow. A banking family in today’s economy. The Goldbergs are optimists. I wonder, “Does Mr. Goldberg’s replacement Yusuf Mehdi has the time, resources, or technical infrastructure to deal with the GOOG?”
Stephen Arnold, December 17, 2008
Semantic Search Laid Bare
December 17, 2008
Yahoo’s Search Blog here has an interesting interview with Dr. Rudi Studer. The focus is semantic search technologies, which are all the rage in enterprise search and Web search circles. Dr. Studer, according to Yahoo:
is no stranger to the world of semantic search. A full professor in Applied Informatics at University of Karlsruhe, Dr. Studer is also director of the Karlsruhe Service Research Institute, an interdisciplinary center designed to spur new concepts and technologies for a services-based economy. His areas of research include ontology management, semantic web services, and knowledge management. He has been a past president of the Semantic Web Science Association and has served as Editor-in-Chief of the journal Web Semantics.
If you are interested in semantics, you will want to read and save the full text of this interview. I want to highlight three points that caught my attention and then–in my goosely manner–offer several observations.
First, Dr. Studer suggests that “lightweight semantic technologies” have a role to play. He said:
In the context of combining Web 2.0 and Semantic Web technologies, we see that the Web is the central point. In terms of short term impact, Web 2.0 has clearly passed the Semantic Web, but in the long run there is a lot that Semantic Web technologies can contribute. We see especially promising advancements in developing and deploying lightweight semantic approaches.
The key idea is lightweight, not giant semantic engines grinding in a lights out data center.
Second, Dr. Studer asserts:
Once search engines index Semantic Web data, the benefits will be even more obvious and immediate to the end user. Yahoo!’s SearchMonkey is a good example of this. In turn, if there is a benefit for the end user, content providers will make their data available using Semantic Web standards.
The idea is that in this chicken and egg problem, it will be the Web page creators’s job to make use of semantic tags.
Finally, Dr. Studer identifies tools as an issue. He said:
One problem in the early days was that the tool support was not as mature as for other technologies. This has changed over the years as we now have stable tooling infrastructure available. This also becomes apparent when looking at the at this year’s Semantic Web Challenge. Another aspect is the complexity of some of the technologies. For example, understanding the foundation of languages such as OWL (being based on Description Logics) is not trivial. At the same time, doing useful stuff does not require being an expert in Logics – many things can already be done exploiting only a small subset of all the language features.
I am no semantic expert. I have watched several semantic centric initiatives enter the world and–somewhat sadly–watched them die. Against this background, let me offer three observations:
- Semantic technology is plumbing and like plumbing, semantic technology should be kept out of sight. I want to use plumbing in a user friendly, problem free setting. Beyond that, I don’t want to know anything about plumbing. Lightweight or heavyweight, I think some other users may feel the same way. Do I look at inverted indexes? Do you?
- The notion of putting the burden on Web page or content creators is a great idea, but it won’t work. When I analyzed the five Programmable Search Engine inventions by Ramanathan Guha as part of an analysis for the late, great BearStearns, it was clear that Google’s clever Dr. Guha assumed most content would not be tagged in a useful way. Sure, if content was properly tagged, Google could ingest that information. But the core of the PSE invention was Google’s method for taking the semantic bull by the horns. If Dr. Guha’s method works, then Google will become the semantic Web because it will do the tagging work that most people cannot or will not do.
- The tools are getting better, but I don’t think users want to use tools. Users want life to be easy, and figuring out how to create appropriate tags, inserting them, and conforming to “standards” such as they are is no fun. The tools will thrill developers and leave most people cold. Check out the tools section at a hardware store. What do you see? Hobbyists and tinkerers and maybe a few professionals who grab what they need and head out. Semantic tools will be like hardware: of interest to a few.
In my opinion, the Google – Guha approach is the one to watch. The semantic Web is gaining traction, but it is in its infancy. If Google jump starts the process by saying, “We will do it for you”, then Google will “own” the semantic Web. Then what? The professional semantic Web folks will grouse, but the GOOG will ignore the howls of protest. Why do you think the GOOG hired Dr. Guha from IBM Almaden? Why did the GOOG create an environment for Dr. Guha to write five patent applications, file them on the same day, and have the USPTO publish five documents on the same day in February 2007? No accident tell you I.
Stephen Arnold, December 17, 2008
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