IBM and Its New Content Delivery Initiative
April 20, 2010
I listened to a talk by an IBM innovator today and I did not hear anything about IBM’s deal with Verizon to float cloud storage nor did I hear anything about IBM’s content delivery initiative. I was puzzled because before the lecture I read “IBM Helps Media and Entertainment Industry Meet the Challenges of Delivering Content in the Digital Age.” My hunch is that IBM executives don’t know too much about other units of IBM. The same problem exists at Google, Microsoft, and other multi billion dollar companies. Read this article. Do you see similarities between what Google has announced and Google’s suite of content delivery patent documents? These jumped right off the page and hit me between the eyes. I wonder if the similarity is a result of my having been immersed in Google patent documents and technical papers for the last nine months or if there was one of those happy coincidences that occur. Remember the calculus dust up?
IBM asserts that it offers media and entertainment companies a way to make their lives much easier. Among the features of the new system are:
- A media enterprise framework. Unlike the repackaging of open source Apache into WebSphere, this framework sounds like a home grown solution
- Personalized content delivery, quite similar to the Google personalization method for set top boxes and other devices
- Business process features; that is, everything hooks together presumably eliminating stand alone and siloized functioned
- Metadata management which makes search of content assets possible
- Security
IBM in this article suggested to the writer:
The IBM Media Enterprise Framework is the software technology backbone that makes a wide range of media and entertainment solutions possible by helping clients to build an integrated platform for all of their operations based on industry standards. This new framework utilizes elements of IBM’s entire software portfolio including WebSphere, Rational, Tivoli, Lotus and Information Management products while leveraging the full range of IBM server and storage products and the industry-specific offerings and consulting expertise of IBM Global Business Services. Additionally, it supports the broad set of independent Software Vendors that address specific application requirements.
Okay, frameworks and backbones. Is IBM, like Google, arriving late to the content delivery party? Akamai and lots of other companies are in this space. Margins seem to be under pressure as firms vie for available accounts. Apple, despite its walled garden approach, seems to be chugging alone. Google’s YouTube.com delivers lots of video. Is there a play for IBM?
We will know if IBM breaks out revenues for this new framework / backbone. My hunch is that IBM is scrambling for any new revenue opportunity it can get. The company has lots of competitors and Fortune 1000 long accustomed to paying IBM big bucks or euros may be counting pennies.
My view is that IBM is cobbling together pieces, partners, and promises in hopes of striking a gusher of cash. Maybe content delivery is another commodity and not exactly what it seems to IBM’s business analysts? And what about search? Maybe another open source play?
Stephen E Arnold, April 20, 2010
A freebie.
Thomson Reuters and Sentiment Analysis
April 20, 2010
Thomson Reuters has a public relations unit. Based on the comments in “Two Doses of Sentiment Analytics From Thomson Reuters”, the professional publishing, financial information, and news giant is breaking new ground in sentiment analysis. According to Greg Radner, head of PR services at Thomson Reuters:
what’s really required for this audience is moving from machine-readable to machine-learnable. “The next thing beyond sentiment analysis is understanding what the nature of those conversations are,” he says. “It’s only so helpful to be able to say something has a positive or negative tone, but that doesn’t itself give insight into the nature of the conversation, into what people are really saying.” Using Crimson Hexagon machine-learnable algorithms, ThomsonReuters’ Thomson ONE Public Relations workflow platform users can identify the conversations underway, aggregate them, and categorize them into different buckets. Users can train the engine with a little manual processing on the front end about how to categorize posts, and then have it happen automatically going forward.
I find the open source initiatives and its public relations services unit two interesting facets of Thomson Reuters. As margin pressures increase for publishing and information companies, Thomson Reuters is showing remarkable creativity. Software, not journalists or analysts, are helping the company provide information to its clients in financial services and pharmaceuticals.
Stephen E Arnold, April 20, 2010
A freebie.
Eclectic List of Semantic Tools
April 20, 2010
I reviewed a list of semantic tools in the write up “Brown Bag Lunch: Methods for Semantic Discovery, Annotation and Mediation”. If you want a list of links to help orient you to the varied, interesting world of semantics, take a peek at the table in this article. I noted some unusual and possibly incorrect entries, but on the whole you will find the information in the table thought provoking. The list begins below the somewhat intimidating diagram of a semantic process.
Stephen E Arnold, April 20, 2010
Enterprise Search is Not Web Search
April 20, 2010
Google continues to dominate the search market as reported by ecommercenews.com, “Google Dominates Enterprise Level Search” Touting a number of 80% of the enterprise search market share would make one agree. However, it is important to note that not all searches are created equal. Google is making and maintaining gains in the enterprise search arena, but site search and web search results are a different game.
Per our own Stephen Arnold in The Enterprise Search Report: Requirements, Costs, Products, and Practices, web search is for finding web content, whether that be content on the Internet or on your own company’s intranet or website.
Enterprise search, on the other hand, is limited to specific information produced by a company. Instead of a spider or crawler adding content to the system, enterprise search can also receive a direct file transfer from other enterprise systems.
So, Google gets credit for the majority of enterprise market share. Can they gain and maintain market share of other search markets?
Melody K. Smith, April 20, 2010
Note: Post was not sponsored.
Lexalytics Reaches for the Cloud
April 20, 2010
Reaching out to a varied audience of users, Lexalytics Web Service can augment brand/reputation management by providing advanced text analytics from a variety of sources.
PRWeb reports in their article, “Lexalytics Unveils Lexascope Web Service for Social Media & Sentiment Analysis” that this new service works easily and inexpensively from the get go to integrate Lexalytics’ sentiment analysis, entity extraction, and thematic analysis directly into the user’s own business intelligence applications. According to Seth Redmore, vice president of products, “If it’s text, and it’s English, we can read it and add value to it.”
Targeting three different types of audiences, Lexalytics is looking at larger enterprises with specific, “point” text analytics problems they need to address; companies that are providing specific media and reputation management service; and companies who want to add value to the content that they are distributing. In short, this Web services provides an extremely quick analysis of thousands of documents; the work of many, many humans.
Melody K. Smith, April 20, 2010
Note: Post was not sponsored.
Google Recipes
April 19, 2010
Years ago I tried to keep pace with Google’s recipe demonstrations. There were classifications of recipes. There we some ingredient angles. Then recipes became – well – plain old recipes. I read in “Google Adds Rich Snippets for Recipes” that recipes queries on Google return “rich snippets.” the write up says you may need to do some fiddling. My sources suggest that more recipe fiddling will be forthcoming. What ever happened to the Google refrigerator?
Stephen E Arnold, April 19, 2010
A freebie, no ingredients.
Facebook Global Growth
April 19, 2010
Facebook is not into search. Facebook is into a new space where “friends” do the work of some search and retrieval tasks. I urge you to read “Is Facebook Becoming the Whole World’s Social Network?” The most useful part of the write up is the table showing one month’s changes in 10 countries. These data suggest that Facebook may be doing to Google what Google did to incumbent Web search systems, if the data hold up.
Stephen E Arnold, April 17, 2010
A freebie.
A Surprising Spurt in Self Publishing
April 19, 2010
Short honk: I read “Self-Published Titles Topped 764,000 in 2009 as Traditional Output Dipped” and was surprised by this factoid:
A staggering 764,448 titles were produced in 2009 by self-publishers and micro-niche publishers, according to statistics released this morning by R.R. Bowker. The number of “nontraditional” titles dwarfed that of traditional books whose output slipped to 288,355 last year from 289,729 in 2008. Taken together, total book output rose 87% last year, to over 1 million books.
Quite a treasure trove of uncurated content. If I were younger, there might be some useful information tucked in these publications.
Stephen E Arnold, April 19, 2010
A freebie.
Quote to Note: Games Consoles Follow the Snail darter
April 19, 2010
Quote to note: Fascinating quote from Japanese game superhero Hideo Kojima, who created Metal Gear Solid. In “Japan’s Video Game Visionary: The Console Is Dying,” Mr. Kojima allegedly said:
“In the near future, we’ll have games that don’t depend on any platform,” Kojima said at a news conference announcing the latest installment in a game saga that began in 1987. “Gamers should be able to take the experience with them in their living rooms, on the go, when they travel — wherever they are and whenever they want to play. It should be the same software and the same experience,” he said.
The end of history came and went. Now the end of consoles. Big news for some folks I suppose. Is a mobile device the new console? Is Google’s rich media infrastructure shaped for this portable playability?
Stephen E Arnold, April 10, 2010
A freebie.
Lookeen for Outlook Search
April 19, 2010
Those search experts at About.com flagged Lookeen as the best Outlook add on for 2010. No matter that 2010 is still in its youth, but I have confidence in the About.com “awards”. Does anyone else thing that there are a heck of a lot of awards floating around. Exalead and I sponsor an award at the Boston Search Meeting, but we are recognizing a specific person who does a great job in his / her presentation at this important gathering of search wizards. Outlook add ins. I am not so sure.
Anyway, Lookeen an extension for Microsoft Outlook. The company says, “It’s a search tool that is seamlessly integrated in your Outlook and will search everywhere in your Outlook data. Find every mail at your fingertips!”
Lookeen says (and these points come directly from http://www.lookeen.net/:
- Lookeen will find every mail – even in the largest archives!
- Use innovative features to find important data faster than ever!
- Search synchronous for e-mails, attachments, appointments, tasks, notes and contacts!
- Searching in external PST-Files or archives!
- Integrated Desktop search!
- Central indexing for enterprises!
There are too many exclamation points and I have a built in aversion to categorical affirmatives.
Whenever I change a machine, I go through the back up drill. When a machine crashes, I am paranoid unless I have two of everything plus whatever the happy little Drobo snags. As a result, I need a way to focus a search system on a specific PST or group of PSTs and then find emails and attachments that pertain to my query.
If you don’t have access to the Coveo search system which does a good job with email or Pocket Search from Gaviri, you may want to give Lookeen a spin. A 14 day trial is free. Navigate to www.lookeen.com.
Stephen E Arnold, April 19, 2010
A freebie. Gaviri’s founder told me he would buy me a taco when I was next in Newark. Promises. Promises. I am still waiting for the Coveo taco by the way.
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