Making Search Harder: Hiding Information at Work
April 19, 2009
I found it interesting that CNet published “How to Hide Your Tracks at Work”. The write up is in the spirt of the book Big Secrets, published in the 1980s. You can still get a copy of William Poundstone’s original from Amazon here. Write ups that provide tricks and insights are popular and deservedly so. However, if you have been involved in a legal matter, the task of finding informatoin is tough without having to deal with the many different ways to hide or obscure information. Forensic analysis makes short work of hidden files, folders, and partitions. Even encryption can be handled. But there are a number of new methods available to the clever or possibly the criminal individual.
To get some insight into these interesting methods, you will find Don Reisinger’s article fun reading. He touches upon with links if you want to try out these methods hiding access to Web services, stealth tips, and panic switches.
Most of these methods are not rocket science. In my opinion, work systems should be swept of stealth, cloaking, and related technologies. Even thought I am a marginalized, addled goose, I have to fight my instinct to make computers plain vanilla. I want every machine to have the same software and the same security features. That means no scampering dogs, no unauthorized third party programs, and no USB, wireless netbooks, and other digital sidekicks. Security breaks down with a single individual.
You can tell that I am not much fun. True. Mr. Reisinger’s tips, if implemented in my office, would be swept from the machine. The person responsible would be asked to pick up trash on the muddy bank of the mine drainage pond which is my home.
Stephen Arnold, April 19, 2009
Amsterdam Breathes New Life into Old Information Institution
April 19, 2009
A happy quack to the reader who sent me the link to Andrew Keen’s “Digital Dutch Masterpieces” here. The article points out that libraries can be both old and new media. He wrote:
at the Amsterdam public library. Instead of the dustiness and crustiness of the typical 20th century library, visitors to Amsterdam’s central public library will find not only books, but a restaurant as well as a children’s theatre and a public radio and television studio. The library, which is open every day from 10.00 am to 10.00 pm, also holds a series of cultural festivals – such as the upcoming week of poetry – which it then broadcasts on the Internet. Amsterdam library’s website epitomizes its innovative approach to the 21st curation of knowledge. The website features its own customized search engine, the “aquabrowser”, which has integrated the library’s books, CDs and DVDs as well as a rich archive of Amsterdam’s history and culture. Equally innovatively, the website provides those who use it within the walls of the library itself open access to all its digital content.
I did not resonate with the assertion that the library has a “return on investment”. That phrase has a specific meaning in financial circles. I think that the Amsterdam effort returns significant social value. One hopes other libraries absorb the lessons of this case.
Stephen Arnold, April 19, 2009
Progress Nets New Customer
April 19, 2009
Short honk. I can’t resist. Progress Software (owners of EasyAsk) lands Portland Fish. You can learn more about the deal here. Information about EasyAsk is here. At least, I did not put the “lands a new fish” as the headline. I was thinking of ways to work in , rabbitfish, zebra tilapia, or lefteye flounder but thought, “Enough with the fish already”. Congrats to Progress Software.
Stephen Arnold, April 19, 2009
Google: Not Just Publishing, Think Hollywood
April 19, 2009
The Toronto Globe and Mail’s Matt Hartley did a good job of explaining that Google is more than a disruptive force in traditional publishing. His “Google Unveils Hollywood Ambitions” here makes the cat that has been out of the bag show up on the radar of newspaper readers. He wrote “Web giant poised to bring full length movies and television programs to YouTube.” He added:
Although a limited number of full-length movies and television shows are already available on YouTube, the addition of premium content from major studios will significantly increase the site’s cache in the eyes of marketers, who have already begun to embrace competing sites such as Hulu.com. As well, although there will be no fee for the full-length videos immediately, Mr. Schmidt did not rule out the possibility of introducing a subscription or micro-payment system to YouTube at some point in the future in an effort to increase the site’s revenue.
So the conclusion I drew from this write up was that Google is a distributor of content.
I think that from the Toronto Globe and Mail’s vantage point, that’s what Google is—a throwback to the glory days of the big studios and the distribution systems those studios controlled. Hollywood makes movies. Google makes money on distribution.
Very tidy. Very narrow.
My research suggests that Google has capabilities that go well beyond the traditional Hollywood distribution model. Let me give one example which I describe in detail in my new monograph Google: The Digital Gutenberg. You can read the table of contents here. If you are more comfortable with Google as a search vendor, don’t click the link.
The GOOG has a matchmaking method, which it disclosed in one of the patent documents some folks insist are irrelevant to Google’s real business. I am not so sure. The method allows the Google to make it easy for a person looking for a creative type to locate one. Once found, the two can do a deal to create or deliver the service. Since the system exists within Google, the technology—if it is ever deployed—makes the Google into a producer. My reading of the claims opened my eyes to Googzilla wearing a Sam Goldwyn mask.
Sam Goldwyn about the time of the anti trust matter in the early 20th century
The Google has useful information about YouTube.com uploaders who attract a large following. The Google has useful information about individuals and organizations who create effective Google content. The Google has a great deal of information that creates the potential for disruption in a business that has been unchanged for many years.
Stephen Arnold, April 19, 2009
Google: Searching for Tax Loopholes
April 19, 2009
The dead tree Times (London, England) wrote about a different type of Google search—a search for way to avoid paying UK taxes. The article “Google Avoids £100m UK Tax. The website hailed as a ‘paragon’ is accused of adding to the public’s burden” here. No big surprise. The desire to avoid paying taxes seems to be inculcated in my family as a genetic trait. Maybe the GOOG is related to me in some mysterious way. The Times’s article is not really about taxes. The Times reported:
Google’s massive advertising revenues have already been blamed for ravaging the finances of newspapers, broad-casters and other creative industries. It is in dispute with musicians and songwriters, including Abba’s Bjorn Ulvaeus, Jools Holland and the singer Alison Clarkson, known as Betty Boo, for the royalties it pays for videos on its YouTube site.
The UK dead tree crowd wants the GOOG to go away. Not likely. The Times will continue to agitate, hoping for a return to the happier days of yore when newspapers were the primary source of information. I wish I was 15 again. Won’t happen. Adapt seems like a useful notion. I wonder if the Times and its owner have any tax skeletons in their closets?
Stephen Arnold, April 19, 2009
Google: Book Monopoly Asserted
April 19, 2009
Short honk: After writing my new monograph Google: The Digital Gutenberg here, I don’t have much energy for rehashes of Google’s deal to scan, process, and distribute books. Boing Boing has a good summary of a legal eagle’s opinion that Google has a monopoly in books. Do you think? Read the obvious here.
Stephen Arnold, April 19. 2009
Twitter: New Whipping Boy
April 18, 2009
I never watched the whipping scenes in pirate movies when I was a kid in central Illinois. The whole pirate shtick (????) scared me. Pirate life looked awful. Small ships. Scurvy. Rats. I saw a cat-o’-nine tails in a museum when I was in college and I shuddered. The nine tails referred to what looked like leather strips with metal tips or claws. The idea of whipping is bad. Whipping with nine claws buries the need on the badness scale. Here’s what one of these corrective devices used by the British Royal Navy in the 17th century looked like.
Poor Twitter, the steroid charged child of SMS, is now a whipping boy and the pundits and mavens are using the cat-o’-nine tails to make their point. Coverage of Twitter has morphed from “What use is it anyway?” to “Twitter is evil.” The Tyra Banks’s incident in New York allegedly made use of models less than 5 feet seven inches Tweets. For more information on this remarkable tea party or flash mob, click here.
I loved the headline “Twitter Sucks” in the New York Observer where nothing is “sacred but the truth”. You must read the story here. In a nutshell, Twitter is over exposed. The “trough of disillusionment” is that Twitter is lots of short messages. Most of the messages are banal. But some of them contain surprisingly useful information. Aggregated, the Twitter stream can make interesting ideas assume a form that can be prodded and examined.
Should Twitter be whipped with a cat-o’-nine tails. Sure. That’s the way the world today works. But my view is that Twitter is an example of how real time messaging broadcast to others on the network can trigger unanticipated opportunities or challenges. Twitter may suck. Twitter may be trivial. But one thing is clear. Twitter is going to spawn quite a few real time search innovations. Twitter, like PointCast, may end up the big loser in a month or a year, who knows? But push technology did not die with PointCast and BackWeb. Twitter is an example of a service that neither telcos nor the likes of Google were able to put in a box and control.
Stephen Arnold, April 18, 2009
Arrgh, Google the Pirate Opines Forbes Magazine
April 18, 2009
Forbes.com showed its fangs in “Why Google Is the New Pirate Bay” here. The business journalists reported that one can search Google for the name of a movie and the word “torrents” and get a valid hit. The user can then click on the link and download an unauthorized instance of a movie. Forbes.com wrote:
By searching for pirated music or video, Google users can easily scan a range of lesser-known pirate sites to dig up illicit content. Those looking for the upcoming film X-Men Origins: Wolverine, for instance, can search for “wolverine torrent.” The first result is a link to file-sharing site isoHunt, with a torrent tracker file that allows the user to download the full film. In fact, searches for “wolverine torrent” on Google have more than quadrupled since the movie file was first leaked to peer-to-peer networks on April 5, according to Google Trends.
Do the children of Forbes.com journalists use Google to locate copies of motion pictures? Have these progeny been downloading longer than their moms and dads have known it was possible to use a search system—not just the GOOG—to locate this type of content? Is the technology and Google at fault or are those clever progeny to blame? Chicken and egg situation perhaps?
Stephen Arnold, April 18, 2009
Newspaper Ad Revenues Head South
April 18, 2009
If you are an investor in print publications, navigate away from this short item. If you want a glimpse of the future of the dead tree crowd, read on. The article is irrelevant in my opinion. The headline nails the story: “US Newspaper Ads to Decline 22% in 2009”. You can snag the data here. What’s the impact? Easy. More staff reductions and more newspapers closing. Layoffs generate more professional writers cranking out Web logs. More newspaper closing create opportunities for coming up with news ways to deliver information people want and need. Big opportunities in my opinion.
Stephen Arnold, April 18, 2009
Microsoft Web Search Market Share
April 18, 2009
Joe Wilcox’s “Microsoft US Search Queries Rise in March” surprised me. You can read his article here. Estimates of online used are fraught with wackiness. If you have been asked to review actual log files for a high traffic site for a month, you know that the counts are reasonably accurate. There are those exciting anomalies such as losing a 48 hour chunk of data for no apparent reason. Most of the big outfits have fancy math to smooth out the hiccups in their statistical analyses. Smoothing is good. So is calculating an acceptable margin of error. Not surprisingly the major usage reports are indicative, not definitive. The question should be, “How far off are these data?” In my experience, somewhere in the 15 to 20 percent range.
Now if we look at the data about Microsoft’s usage, we notice that Mr. Wilcox focuses on an “increase” in Microsoft traffic of 0.1 percent, that is, 8.2 percent in February 2009 to 8.3 percent in March 2009. Apply the margin of error value that makes you comfortable and there’s not much of a change between Google and Microsoft.
The interesting point for me was that Google increased its share despite the lousy economy by a more robust 0.4 percent. But this too is irrelevant. Google’s share of the US search market, according to my goslings number crunching is getting near 80 percent. I like the idea that Google may be getting some competition after a decade of clear sailing, but the competitors need to hurry. Unless Microsoft can leapfrog Google, I don’t see much hope of making its many search investments payoff.
Stephen Arnold, April 18, 2009
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