Marketing Google Translate
August 29, 2010
The goslings at Beyond Search love Google Translate.
Google Translate is a free tool that enables you to translate sentences, documents, and even websites instantly. So, how does it work? An short item titled “How Google Translate Works” provides us with an explanatory video. Below the video is the full text of the video, which seems to have some Google DNA. It’s an interesting presentation of how the translator product works. It’s called ‘statistical machine translation.’ The article says that SMT “is just a fancy way to say that our computers generate translations based on patters found in large amounts of text. Google lets their computers learn the translation rules themselves. They do this by analyzing millions of documents. The computers then look for patterns between the translation and the original text that are unlikely to occur by chance. The computer can then use that pattern to translate similar texts on the future. What seems like a home run product, Google Translate appears to require some marketing boost. Interesting.
Bret Quinn, August 29, 2010
A Signal about the Economy
August 29, 2010
I noted the lack of hoo-hah in Cisco’s recent financials. today I read “Intel Warns, Wireless is Weak — Is Something Wrong in Techland?” and realized that the Silicon Valley crowd does not realize the scope of the economic problems in places like rural Kentucky. Maybe a quick visit to Harrod’s Creek is necessary? McMansions are for sale. Store fronts are empty. Some people look stunned most of the time. At a restaurant last night, one fellow looked at those inside and I was certain the guy was going to go postal. I moved to a booth away from the window. Better safe than sorry.
What surprised me this afternoon was the write up “Does Paul Allen Suing The Entire Internet Prove Our Patent System’s Broken?” I am not sure the patent system ever worked. What I think is that some big guns want to put a piece of rebar in the racing bikes of Google and some other folks.
I imagine that Google will assert that innovation is better than litigation. Facebook will probably huff and puff. But the reality is that Google now faces Oracle and Paul Allen plus a number of other legal challenges large and small. Frivolous litigation is nothing new. Deep pockets are needed and Google’s new antagonists have money and powerful pals.
A distracted Google in a booming economy is probably no big deal. A distracted Google in a lousy economy with potentially softening ad revenue is a different type of situation.
Stephen E Arnold, August 29, 2010
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iPad, Search, and Home
August 29, 2010
Will the tablet application kill search? Probably not. What the tablet seems to be doing is changing the behavior in the home. I was surprised.
Called everything from a portable computer to an e-reader the iPad has created quite a buzz. People everywhere are bringing home their new iPad and figuring out what the little gadget really has to offer. According to the article “iPad users keep their toy at home” a recent survey conducted by Cooper and Murphy Webb uncovered some interesting results about the new gadget and how UK owners are using it.
For the survey, 1,034 UK iPad owners were interviewed. Of those surveyed 27 percent said that they do not take their iPad out of the house while 35 percent of those interviewed admitted that they rarely take the gadget outside of the home. Most people complained that the shiny screen on the gadget was hard to make out in the bright sunlight. Surprisingly many of the respondents noted that they used their iPad more for entertainment, mostly games than anything else. It beat out game consoles for the title of “primary entertainment device.” A whopping 37 percent went so far as to say that they liked their iPad more than their gaming consoles. It seemed that the majority of these owners were impressed with the gaming capabilities of their new gadget rather than the ability to browse the Internet or read books.
The iPad was designed to be a direct competitor with the traditional PC but survey results show that the device is not quite ready for that. Of those surveyed 55 percent admitted that they still enjoyed surfing on their laptop or desktop rather than the iPad. The survey results showed that though users enjoy the new iPad it has not becoming their primary computer device. Though the features and animation are impressive the device with its small screen and limited processor does not overshadow the PC. The survey results show that the tablet does offer users some impressive features but before it can be crowned the “PC killer” it has to able to dominate the techno world.
The iPad expands the nature of search. It does not kill search in our opinion.
April Holmes, August 29, 2010
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YouTube Factoids
August 28, 2010
Short honk: YouTube.com factoids designed for easy consumption. No effort required. Point your browser thingy at “Things You Didn’t Know about YouTube.” Snarf such facts as YouTube.com loses money, that NigaHiga is its most popular channel, and Google uses rickrolls.
Stephen E Arnold, August 28, 2010
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SQL Server: Point of View Important
August 28, 2010
Short honk: I can’t resist. Navigate to “Is There a Shortage of SQL Server Experts?” When I read this odd human resource write up, I asked myself, “Maybe there are too many SQL Server problems for the available and willing pool of talent?” The other angle, suggested by a gosling this morning, is that people with SQL Server issues are jumping to NoSQL?”
Stephen E Arnold, August 28, 2010
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Tooting Tut Texts
August 27, 2010
The spirit of monitoring stretches to almost all areas of business, but nobody ever imagined it would pop up in a pyramid. While they are not using monitoring technology, we were struck with the similarities between a recent project by Oxford University and monitoring technology. Featured in a Read Write Web article, “iTut: All of Carter’s Tutankhamen Materials Now Online,” this fascinating story detailed how the mostly unseen documents of Howard Carter’s famous 1922 discovery of King Tut’s tomb are fully available online. “In 1995,” the article says, “the staff of Oxford University’s Griffith Institute of Egyptology, the custodians of Carter’s papers, started digitizing his Tut archive. The collection included all the photographs, glass negatives, reams of notes and diaries.” This now gives archeologists access to the tomb from anywhere on earth.
Pat Roland, August 27, 2010
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White House Balks at IT Bail Outs
August 27, 2010
In March 2010, I gave a talk and pointed out that government agencies were not businesses. I am certain the government wizards in the audience were annoyed with me. Well, be that as it may, top budget guy President Obama is balking at bailing out IT projects that are on the skids. You can get a few juicy details from “White House May Overhaul Some $30 Billion in Troubled Tech Projects.” The US government is running in the red. The culprits, of course, are not the agencies themselves or their wild and crazy management methods. Nope. The vendors, those evil doers, are responsible. Among those identified in the article were Accenture, AT&T, IBM, and Oracle. My goodness. I wonder if any other firms were on the master list?
Stephen E Arnold, August 27, 2010
Freebie unlike some of the products from the identified firms.
Bingo for Yahoo
August 27, 2010
Quote to note: Yahoo is now Bing. Sure, there is the logo, the cluttered interface, and the multiple clicks to get to email. The same old Yahoo. You can exercise the site, but it is clear that my use of Exalead’s search system will continue. In “Bing Officially Power Yahoo Search in U.S. and Canada,” I spotted a quote I want to tuck in my great moments in search file. Here’s the passage:
“Yahoo will continue to drive technology innovation in the search experience to bring more value to users and advertisers alike,” wrote Yahoo’s senior VP for search products Sashi Seth, in a blog post. “We are focused on creating rich, immersive experiences that foster serendipitous discovery for people across the Yahoo network.”
Experience is more important than relevance and recall? Yep. Precision. Long lost I fear. What does Yahoo’s time explorer service say? Test it yourself at http://fbmya01.barcelonamedia.org:8080/future/. I saw a downturn in September 2010 and another crater at the end of October 2015. Good news though. Around 2017, Yahoo sees its Microsoft Yahoo tie up improving. No surprise I suppose.
Stephen E Arnold, August 27, 2010
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Wave Postmortem
August 27, 2010
Want to know why Google Wave was almost as interesting as the demise of the Google Nexus One? Point your browser to “Wave Goodbye: A Tech Autopsy of Google’s Failed Communication Platform.” I found the discussion interesting. One passage jumped out at me. Here’s the snippet:
“I was in the sweet spot for Wave,” says Gina Trapani, the former editor of Lifehacker who, with Adam Pash, wrote The Compete Guide to Google Wave. “I’m a writer and a software developer, and I work with small teams—teams of six to 12 people who usually have a specific purpose, like drafting a blog post or technical documents.” Trapani says that Wave let such teams work together much more efficiently than they could via e-mail or other tools. Among other useful features, she cites Wave’s ability to let people reply in-line to sections of text. “When you want to respond to something someone said 12 messages ago, that was a really easy way to do it,” she says. Going back to other systems without that power “felt really primitive after using Wave.” But as Trapani concedes, these kinds of features probably weren’t attractive to everyone. “Wave did solve a problem, but it was a pretty advanced problem for pretty advanced users,” she says.
I agree. Google, after its success in Web search, seems unable to duplicate that service’s success. Google has high hopes for Android, its rich media play, and its enterprise applications. In contrast to some of Google’s capable competitors, misfires, not between-the-eyes shots, seem to be a defining characteristic of the company as the summer of 2010 winds down.
Stephen E Arnold, August 27, 2010
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Exclusive Podcast: David Fishman, Lucid Imagination
August 27, 2010
You can listen to an exclusive interview podcast with David Fishman, Lucid Imagination’s Vice President, powering the Lucene Revolution Conference. Mr. Fishman discusses why Lucene/Solr are disrupting the commercial enterprise search sector. In the podcast, Stephen E Arnold, Managing Director of ArnoldIT.com, probes the business model for open source search and content processing. In a challenging give-and-take session, Mr. Fishman explains what his company is doing to remove the “handcuffs” from organizations who have been unable to act swiftly and freely when encumbered with traditional software licensing agreements. The podcast runs about 10 minutes and is available from the ArnoldIT.com rich media page or at this link.
Stuart Schram IV, August 27, 2010
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