SAP Provides a Glimpse of the Future for Enterprise Software
August 30, 2009
SAP is a weather vane for me. I am interested in the company’s almost invisible search technology called TREX. I find the firm’s business dealings a bit like tea leaves. One can take a gander at what is new with SAP and see the edges of what may be in the future for other enterprise software vendors. A good example is the story “SAP Loses Case and Faces Massive Payout over Patents”. V3.co.uk reported:
SAP is facing massive costs after losing its patent-infringement case with Versata Software. Versata claimed that SAP had infringed five of its patents in its Business Suite applications, including one on how price is determined for individual products.
Cutting corners, getting caught, and legal maneuvers—I see the rosy fingered tips of a new dawn.
Stephen Arnold, August 29, 2009
Google Books Becomes Novel Material
August 29, 2009
The Google Book brouhaha is getting tiresome. My view is that no one other than Google has the dough to scan lots of books. Microsoft and Yahoo withdrew from the tourney grounds. The commercial database publishers don’t have enough cash to fuel their corporate jets. The Library of Congress seems to be on the sidelines. Unless George Soros or someone like him writes a check, the books are not going to be scanned any time soon.
What makes this topic mildly – notice I used the word “mildly” – interesting to me are the weird and unexpected developments in this saga.
Today, courtesy of a Beyond Search reader, that the Special Libraries Association has joined the open book alliance to investigate the Google deal. I find this interesting.
Not much more than one hour later I learned that “EU’s Reding Backs Google in Online Books Row.” Quite a surprise to this addled goose.
More to come I assume.
Stephen Arnold, August 29, 2009
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Vivisimo on Reddit
August 29, 2009
We check Reddit.com every few days. An interesting post plugging Vivisimo’s Clusty.com metasearch system hit our radar on August 26, 2009. “Get Clusty” enjoined me to kick the Google and Bing habit. What I found interesting about the post was the implementation of the popup preview.
This was a first in our experience reading about search engines.
Stephen Arnold, August 28, 2009
Useful List of Search Systems
August 29, 2009
A happy quack to the reader who alerted me to Daum.net’s list of search engines. The list includes most of the companies I track. A few of the listings are not current, but the list provides a useful way to jump directly to a vendor’s Web site to get more information. Worth a link in your bookmarks because the links are grouped by type; for example, human search, legal, open source, etc. Omissions include Bing.com and Lucid Imagination to name two. Nevertheless, I found the page useful.
Stephen Arnold, August 29, 2009
OneRiot and Collecta– Husbanding Funds
August 29, 2009
I received an email from a person at OneRiot, a real-time search vendor, yesterday, August 27, 2009. The message focused on OneRiot’s receiving $7.0 in funding. For me, the key point was:
OneRiot’s partners include Yahoo and Microsoft, who recently released a version of Internet Explorer bundled with OneRiot real time search.
You can learn more about OneRiot.com’s services by navigating to the company’s About page.
I was curious about Collecta.com, another contender in the real time search sector. My recollection was that Collecta.com also had received infusions of investment cash. According to TechCrunch, Collecta raised $1.85 million in a series A round. Other competitors in this sector include ITpints, Scoopler, and niche services like Topsy, among others.
My tests of these services indicate that each has strengths and some issues which will be remediated in the future. My question is, “How much magnetic power did the OneRiot tie up with Yahoo and Microsoft have in this recent funding tidal wave?” Comparing outputs of OneRiot and Collecta, I wonder, “What OneRiot will do with its basket of cash?” Neither Yahoo nor Microsoft, in my opinion, have real time search services on a par with the companies I have mentioned. Google, in my opinion, is on the sidelines in this sector as well.
Stephen Arnold, August 31, 2009
Google and Skype
August 28, 2009
At lunch I received a call alerting me to this Barron’s story, “Investor Group Reportedly Plans Bid For Skype.” What makes this interesting is that the “investor group” may be a code for a way to move along the Google. Stay tuned because a Google Skype tie up would interesting.
Stephen Arnold, August 28, 2009
Back Lot of Google Begins to Takes Shape
August 28, 2009
Google filed a number of patent documents over the last four years that referenced video. None of the individual documents connect the dots. A light bulb went on at the goose pond today. One of the goslings read “YouTube Views Can Ad Up for Popular Videos.” The write up explains that Google will share ad money with the individuals who have videos that generate lots of Google traffic. Google is in the motion picture business. We think that Google will make it possible for a company looking for a hot video producer to locate that individual using Google match making services. We think that over time Google will put in place a unified company for producing, distributing, and monetizing video. Are we right or wrong? Lights, camera, action.
Stephen Arnold, August 28, 2009
Google Labs Aptitude Test (GLAT) UK Edition
August 28, 2009
Googlers in the UK set their building’s roof on fire during a bar-b-que. I included a test question from the Google Labs Aptitude Test in my study Google Version 2.0. In the spirit of the frivolity resulting from this setting the Google facility on fire, I have crafted a sample of the Google UK GLAT question concerning this situation:
A carbon-based substance produced by slow pyrolysis ignites. The heat exceeds 1510°C. You squirt CH3NO2 on the carbon substance and ignite the mixture with a standard kitchen match. The compounds reach a temperature of 1510°C before you open the vents on the bottom of the fire chamber. The carbon based substance falls to the surface (roof) coated with an asphalt with a flash point above 200°C. Calculate the speed with which the flame spreads to the square of the fire chamber. Once you have this value, your action is to:
[a] Capture the fire on your iPhone and distribute via Twitvid.com
[b] Tear off your T shirt with the word ‘woot’ on the front and use it to smother the flames
[b] Calculate the impact velocity of a jump from a 30 meter height while cradling your MacBook
[c] Continue debugging your Haskell code, allowing lesser creatures to deal with trivial matters
[d] Apply for a job at Microsoft Research in Cambridge, England
Stephen Arnold, August 28, 2009
More on Microsoft and Telephony
August 28, 2009
A happy quack to my associate in the Mediterranean for this link to the article “Microsoft Making a Windows-to-Cloud Play into Telephony?” Please, keep in mind that stories from the Globes organization go dead after a short period of time. The gist of the story is that Microsoft is teaming with Jajah Israel to provide Microsoft with SIP trunk services. The most interesting comment in the story in my opinion was:
Israeli start-up Jajah, which provides VoIP telephone calls, has signed a strategic agreement with software giant Microsoft. Under the agreement, Jajah will provide Microsoft with SIP (session initiation protocol) trunking services. SIP connects a company’s PBX to the existing telephone system infrastructure (PSTN) via Internet using the SIP VoIP standard. The agreement allows companies to make high quality voice calls over Jajah’s IP Platform in the cloud, without requiring an infrastructure upgrade.
Microsoft has a large number of initiatives in quite diverse technical sectors. Telephony, if the information in the Globes’s write up is accurate, can now be added to consumer hardware, online search, and desktop applications. Has Microsoft developed a taste for Yahoo’s “peanut butter” addiction?
Stephen Arnold, August 28, 2009
Confused Database Publishers and Libraries
August 28, 2009
A happy quack to the ArnoldIT.com team member who sent me a link to a story in The LIS Kid’s Web log. I must say I was taken aback, annoyed, and saddened. Three emotions do not roil the calm of the addled goose. Navigate to The LiS Kid for August 24, 2009, and look at the advertisement snippet from West, a vendor of content to the libraries worldwide. Now look at the text, which I will reproduce here:
Are you on a first name basis with the librarian? If so, chances are, you’re spending too much time at the library. What you need is fast, reliable research you can access right in your office. And all it takes is West®.
Let me quote from the LiS Kid’s commentary, then add my observations:
This brilliant piece of marketing was sent out by the electronic database and news giant Reuters/Thomson/West. Hubris is one word that comes to mind after looking this over. Essentially they are saying, “hey, you don’t need the library, West has it all!” Any bit of information or data that you need can be obtained from West … despite the fact that much of the information on West can be found for free on Government websites or in a book. Asking a librarian would make it harder for West to turn you upside down and shake the change out of your pockets. And, thanks for the added stereotype- the glasses really capture the essence of all things librarian.
You may also find the comments in the Law Librarian Blog on point as well. This write up is called “Another Boner from West: Hi, My First Name is Joe and I’m a Law Librarian.”
My observations and these are my opinions to which I am entitled:
- I do not think that senior management at Thomson Reuters knows much about the library world. I would ask, “Does Thomson Reuters management or does the company as a whole care about the profession?” In my opinion, the T/R emphasis is upon generating revenue. As a result, the sensitivity of the firm is tuned to shareholders, government agencies, and the machinations among publishing units. These units are trying to avoid following in the footsteps of the newspaper and magazine publishers on a walk down the path next to Red Ink Creek. I ask, “Does a ‘library waste time’?” My son is in the information business. I had access to online when he was in the second grade and so did he. With that whizzy technology easily available in 1980, I ** made it my business ** to take him to real libraries. I introduced him to real librarians like Glenda Neely at the University of Louisville Ekstrom Library. I showed him research tricks I had learned to facilitate combining serendipity with the grunt work of info digging. I explained and demonstrated microfilm. I showed him how traditional card catalogs were set up and then how this metaphor transferred to OPACs. I bought airplane tickets and arranged for him to meet and spend time with superstar librarians like Marydee Ojala, Ulla de Stricker, and Barbara Quint. I wanted him to learn about information from the best librarians / information experts in the world. I think his success in online at Adhere Solutions — Google’s focal point for the US government — is due in part to his having a physical, fungible knowledge of how information is organized, accessed, and manipulated in a range of media in libraries. If anything, I fault myself for not creating situation for him in which he had to spend more time in libraries. In my opinion, one cannot spend too much time in libraries. Online is one information method. A physical library is an multidimensional immersion in information. I have 13 computers within three feet of me as I write this. None has the tactile and intellectual impact of a library.
- The marketer who wrote T/R’s possibly insensitive if not insulting, possibly demeaning copy is equally unaware of what makes a library work, how the professionals staffing libraries teach and facilitate information navigation, deliver information consulting to customers of diverse backgrounds, and create information programs that attract people to the wonders of information. T/R’s and other commercial information vendors’ insensitivity is evident across the commercial database world. Most of the senior managers at these firms are accountants or lawyers concerned about making money and maximizing revenues. A library is a standing order, not an organism of knowledge. The increasing likelihood of outright failure for today’s commercial database companies stems from a disconnect or indifference to the craft of information where humans interact.
- When I worked at the database unit of the Courier Journal (ABI / INFORM, Business Dateline, General Periodical Index, and other databases), we employed librarians to work on our products, to run our training programs, and to keep management in tune with the needs, challenges, and opportunities in the world of law, sci tech, public, academic, medical, and other important segments of the broader world of librarianship. When you called our 800 number, you had a 90 percent chance of speaking to a senior manager or a librarian. We were not perfect, but we darn well tried to treat our customers and their profession with respect. Call one of the big information companies today like Thomson Reuters or LexisNexis or Ebsco, and you may have a menu of options, not an expert on the line. Call the next day and you will probably have a different menu choice and, if you are clever, maybe a new hire to read you text from a customer support database updated a year ago. I don’t call for customer service because I don’t have time to teach most of those with whom I speak about their systems and my particular angle of attack. The big companies prefer self service customer support. It’s cheaper. When I answered phones at the CJ’s database company, I sometimes got an earful when a librarian pointed out an indexing error. I listened. I wrote down the problem. I put it on the fix list. I gave the librarian’s name to Betty Unruh or Dena Gordon to follow up. I wanted that librarian to know we were making an effort to listen and give the criticism serious attention. Get those bonuses might well be the motto for information company managers, not listen to the customer and take action.
To close, the addled goose even today must deal with the librarians who work on his projects. Most of the librarians with whom I work have known me for decades. When Ulla de Stricker or Marydee Ojala complains, I listen as I did in 1980. My resident legal information expert is Constance Ard, and she has picked up Ulla’s best habit: informing me when I am not in touch with what librarians and information professionals want. I have been grinding away at digital information for decades, and I don’t know much more than it pays to attend to librarians’ ideas and suggestions. At a meeting last night, I learned that two companies – ProQuest and Ebsco – are engaging in a price war and marketing shoot out to win an account in Kentucky. One of those involved said that he was confused by the claims, counter claims, and caveats. Obviously these vendors’ behavior communicates a message quite different from that sent by the CJ team when we were licensing ABI / INFORM and our other databases in 1981.
Would it benefit the commercial database publishers to deliver quality products at a published, fully disclosed price with full details of coverage scope? With that type of information, library decision makers would be able to use their professional judgment to determine which database best suited the needs of a particular library. I think most commercial database marketing distorts and confuses. I think much of the marketing reveals a shallowness that makes clear that a new era in commercial databases has begun. How the ear of quality commercial information products has taken a new turn. Not good.
Stephen Arnold, August 28, 2009
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