New Media Guidelines for Search and Access
August 13, 2009
Imediaconnection.com’s “Metadata Secrets for Expanding your Content’s Reach” struck me as a useful back to basics for traditional media executives. Ben Weinberger has gathered seven tips that provide some useful advice (use analytics) and some that is going to be as clear as Aramaic to media executives (intelligent metadata in a metadata management framework). If you want a shopping list of what to do to stay in business, you will want to add Mr. Weinberger’s write up to your archive. The killer omission is the plumbing required to permit implementation of some of his tips. Mr. Weinberger may want to acquaint himself with MarkLogic. MarkLogic, may I suggest you brief Mr. Weinberger?
Stephen Arnold, August 13, 2009
Morphing Search Vendor Adventures: Customer Feedback
August 13, 2009
Quite a few search and content processing companies are chasing the supposed honey pot of customer support, customer feedback, customer self help, and just about any way to cut these costs. Forbes ran a cheerleading article that I was going to ignore. “No,” one of the goslings said, “This write up makes some good points.” Okay, the story is “The Upside of Bad Online Customer Reviews” by Mirela Iverac. The core idea is that customers who complain can provide useful information to the company that caused the dust up in the first place. The underlying technical hook is that the outfit mentioned in the story, based on what I have heard, uses the Attensity system to deliver the bag of goodies. If you revel in feedback loops that work, snag the Forbes’s write up.
Stephen Arnold, August 13, 2009
Google Knol Gets an F
August 12, 2009
TechCrunch published “Poor Google Knol Has Gone from a Wikipedia Killer to a Craigslist Wannabe” by Erick Schonfeld and elicited a happy quack from the addled goose. Mr. Schonfeld points out that Google’s Knol (a unit of knowledge in Google speak) is a traffic magnet without much oomph. For me the killer statement in the write up was:
Sadly, Knol just never panned out. Google should just end its misery, just like it did when it killed other under-performing projects such as Lively and Google Notebooks. Knol will never come close to Wikipedia. It can’t even cut it as a classifieds listing site.
I agree with Mr. Schonfeld’s argument, but there were several thoughts that the write up triggered here in the pond choked with rain water and mine run off.
- Perhaps Google allowed resources to flow away from Knol because it was a publishing play on the surface but a test of a method for obtaining content from experts. Authoritative information from an expert is just the Googzilla food that smart algorithms feed upon. Publishing is a hot potato for the Google. Knol is better left as a sideline lest it draw enemy assaults.
- Google has a number of similar tests / betas underway. Are these products, or are they trials of key components of a less visible, more potent system? The terms of service and the various developer tools make it possible to shape Knol in interesting ways. Which of these “ways” is the one that Google wishes to encourage?
- What happens if Google, not eager users, hook together multiple Google beta services into one cohesive product that delivers and monetizes information? That is a question to which I don’t have an answer.
Google may have another Web Accelerator on its hands. On the other hand, Knol may be a cog in a larger machine. TechCrunch seems to be leaning toward giving the Knol service an F and may toss in a week in the Web detention hall based on performance to date.
Stephen Arnold, August 12, 2009
AP to Restrict Some Content
August 12, 2009
An eager beaver reader of the addled goose’s Web log sent me a link to “Why the Associated Press Plans to Hold Some Web Content Off the Wire”. The author is Zachary M. Seward, and the source is the Nieman Journalism Lab. (I assume that this is an outfit similar to Google’s Lab.) The story reports that owners—oops, members—of the AP will not be permitted to publish some AP content on their Web sites. The idea is that the owners—oops again, members—would link to content that resides on an AP repository. You will have to read this write up yourself. The words “confidential” and other legal sounding words are used in the document. These cause the addled goose to shed some feathers. There is also a reference to “link value”, a term which seems to refer to Google’s method of determining ranking in a search result list.
Several questions flitted through the addled goose’s tiny brain:
First, the AP is owned by its members or at least that is what I thought when Barry Bingham Jr. explained the relationship to me in 1980 or 1981. If the AP is owned by members, why can’t a member do what he or she wishes with the content produced by the organization he or she owns? I suppose the notion is similar to the home owner’s association which restricts what a home owner can do. Maybe this is more like the owner of a mall, which operates as an independent entity with regard to certain rules and regulations. Tenants—oops, members—give up some rights for the benefits the mall delivers. Maybe the mall analogy is infelicitous. The malls not far from Harrod’s Creek have fallen on hard times but I suppose the mall owner will continue to exercise its legal suzerainty over Trixie’s Nails Shoppe.
Second, what happens to an owner—oops, member—who gets out of line. The likelihood of the AP finding another outfit willing to pay for ownership—oops, membership—seems as if it would be time consuming and expensive to replace a fallen owner—oops, member. If that owner—oops, member—is a big gun outfit struggling to keep its powder dry, will there be a legal dust up?
Third, will the Internet users who read a high value content story somewhere expend the energy to summarize, reference, or describe that story? Posting such a summary may require the AP to defend its conceptual and fungible turf. What if the offender is a high school student? What if the alleged violator is an errant blogger?
In short, I applaud the AP for putting on its thinking cap. However, if Mr. Seward’s write up is understood by me and accurate, I think there will be some interesting consequences of this action.
Stephen Arnold, August 12, 2009
Facebook on the Move
August 12, 2009
Short honk: If you have been living in a country without Internet access, you may have missed “Facebook Flips The Switch On Real-Time Search, Goes After Twitter Where It Hurts.” Twitter has a truck load of trouble. Facebook is gunning for the source of Tweet spam.
Stephen Arnold, August 12, 2009
Kids and Downloading. And the Parents?
August 12, 2009
Short honk: TechDirt’s “New Study States the Obvious: Kids Download a Lot of Music.” The most interesting comment in the story was:
A new study, sponsored by UK Music (the UK organization that’s looking to get ISPs to put in place some sort of blanket licensing plan) has found that over 60% of kids in the UK admit to file sharing, with 83% of those admitting to doing it regularly, and those surveyed claiming to have downloaded an average of 8,100 tracks. Think about that for a second. 8,100 tracks.
As the kids grow up, what changes?
Stephen Arnold, August 12, 2009
The Turtle Moves Forward a Little
August 12, 2009
The blogosphere lit up when Google announced its Caffeine project was available for the hoi polloi. I looked at the prattlings and decided to point you to PCWorld’s FAQ for this giant turtle step for the Google. Read “Google Caffeine FAQ: Your Questions Answered” and give the turtle step a spin at http://www2.sandbox.google.com. The Google has more tricks up its sleeve. No point in getting ahead of the azure chip consultants, however. The applications of sparse tables to the programmable search engine are not as easy to grasp as a sandbox open to anyone with a browser. To see content, not a results list, navigate to the Sand box and run a query for Beyond Search. Click on Microsoft. Answers without a results list. Nifty. The function has been available from big Google for a while, but it is one example of Google’s cleverness.
Stephen Arnold, August 12, 2009
Another Google Chess Move
August 12, 2009
ZDNet ran a story that struck me as quite important to the telco companies and their ecosystems. I recall giving paid briefings to some telco outfits in 2007 and 2008. None of these companies figured Google to have much of a chance in a man’s game like telecommunications. “Embedded Android Code Goes Open Source” seems to suggest that the Google has pushed a knight or a bishop forward to a striking position in the telco sector. For me the most interesting segment in the story was:
Mips Technologies released the source code on Monday, two months after it first said it had ported Android to the 32-bit version of the Mips architecture. This architecture is used in set-top boxes, digital TV sets, home media players, internet telephony systems and mobile internet devices (MIDs), and is a rival to the Arm technology on which Android already runs.
Implications for Android embedded in a range of gizmos? You bet.
Stephen Arnold, August 8, 2009
TechDirt Kicks Sand on the Association Press
August 12, 2009
I have a simple solution to the Associated Press’s policy regarding addled geese quoting from AP news stories. I may mention a story, but I point out that I am not going to quote from a story so the reader can scurry to the AP source and get the news strait from the horse’s mouth. TechDirt’s “Rewriting an AP Story Just to Show We Can” took a different approach. TechDirt deconstructed an AP “news” story and revealed to my surprise that most of the story was a rehash. The addled goose was stunned. TechDirt said:
You can’t copyright facts nor can you claim copyright limits anyone’s right to restate the facts."
The AP has had sand kicked in its face, digitally and logically, of course. Actual sand would have been assault.
Stephen Arnold, August 11, 2009
Security Gaps Permit Intercepts
August 12, 2009
Short honk: If you are not up to speed on ways to intercept information, navigate to “10 Ways Your Voice and Data Can Be Spied Upon”. Useful list.
Stephen Arnold, August 12, 2009
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