Open Access Puts Publishers Out Of Work
January 29, 2013
The Internet is a wonderful resource, offering researchers the ability to information that they would never have had access to before. It also makes it easier to access databases (if you have subscription), but one problem that has come up concerns the publishers. Nature has the news on, “Mathematicians Aim To Take Publishers Out of Publishing.” The Episciences Project is run by a group of mathematicians with the goal to launch free open access journals that will electronically publish their peer-reviewed articles. The goal is that researchers will be able to get their work reviewed and published at a very low cost. The main goal is to offer mathematicians access to a bigger research community without having to rely on commercial journals.
“Many mathematicians — and researchers in other fields — claim that they already do most of the work involved in publishing their research. At no cost, they type up and format their own papers, post them to online servers, join journal editorial boards and review the work of their peers. By creating journals that publish links to peer-reviewed work on servers such as arXiv, Demailly says, the community could run its own publishing system. The extra expense involved would be the cost of maintaining websites and computer equipment…”
The Episciences Project is starting small, but the more prominent mathematicians join the more recognition it will gain in the academic community. The good news is that it makes it easier and cheaper to write a research paper, but the bad news is that trusted journals will fall out of favor.
Whitney Grace, January 29, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
World Governments Manipulate Social Media to Impact Public Opinion
January 29, 2013
Capitalizing on recent marketing trends in the private sector, countries across the globe are utilizing bloggers as a tool for influencing public opinion. The article, “Vietnam Hires Bloggers to Influence Online Discussion,” from Techeye reveals that the Vietnamese government employs hundreds of bloggers to influence public perception of the regime both locally and globally.
The article states:
“[…] the Vietnamese government has hundreds of the bloggers on its pay roll, with at least 400 accounts spanning 20 different social media networks. The BBC says there is a noticeable number of bloggers on social media networks popular in the country, who mostly post positive comments and articles.”
This declaration comes just weeks after China was exposed for utilizing social media to achieve similar ends. Influencing opinions through social media is becoming common practice amongst many world governments. The article continues:
“The technique is not unique to Vietnam or China. In 2011, it emerged that the United States had been developing software to game popular social networks with fake profiles to influence conversations.”
The recent prominence in government-banked bloggers underscores the global pervasiveness of social media and mobile technology. The manipulation of social media networks has become standard practice for companies seeking to control their brand. It is interesting to see Vietnam’s Communist Party leveraging similar techniques to quell political dissent.
Michael Cole, January 29, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
Tech Acquisitions in 2012: Where Does Search Fall?
January 28, 2013
I read “Report: There Were 94 Tech M&A Deals in 2012 above $100M. Average Deal Value Was $717M.” Interesting stuff. Let’s assume that the data are accurate. Where do to search system buys outs fall.
Autonomy sold for $11 billion but that number may be soft due to the Hewlett Packard write down of $8.8 billion. I don’t have a dog in the fight, but the matter does suggest that some acquisition deals in search were overoptimistic.
Vivisimo sold to IBM for about $20 million. This is a fuzzy number which I heard about from poobahs at a trade show. If the number is accurate, Vivisimo sold to IBM for about the 2013 estimated revenues. However, Vivisimo is not a search company. Vivisimo was, at the time the deal was announced, was a big data company.
Brainware and ISYS Search Software sold for undisclosed amount. The amount Lexmark paid is not known. Lexmark did pay $280 million for Perceptive Software, so let’s assume that these transaction were less than $280 million. Close enough for horseshoes.
Oracle has not disclosed how much it paid for Endeca. Endeca, a privately held company, sold for about $1.1 billion. Again the only source I have is poach outputs.
So what?
- Search can yield some nice payouts
- Paying too much for search can trigger some interesting post purchase hand wringing
- Search is not really search. The reason people buy search companies is to get customers and solutions to specific problems like customer support or “meaning based computing.”
With some venture firms pumping money into search and content processing vendors, the likelihood of a big payday exists. On the other hand, search, like other software niches, poses some significant risks in my opinion.
Stephen E Arnold, January 28, 2013
PolySpot Enables Information Access for Analysts and Business Management
January 28, 2013
The decline in the pricing of RAM and the popularity of cloud computing in conjunction with the need for faster queries has produced a multitude of options for enterprise organizations to increase productivity and efficiency. O’Reilly Radar discusses the demand for technology and tools that facilitate interactive query performance. The article “Need Speed for Big Data? Think In-Memory Data Management” explains how these tools lead to real-time communication and reports.
The article informs us about interactive query performance:
Faster query response times translate to more engaged and productive analysts, and real-time reports. Over the past two years several in-memory solutions emerged to deliver 5X-100X faster response times. A recent paper from Microsoft Research noted that even in this era of big data and Hadoop, many MapReduce jobs fit in the memory of a single server. To scale to extremely large datasets several new systems use a combination of distributed computing (in-memory grids), compression, and (columnar) storage technologies.
We have seen an increase in the amount of technologies available to address engagement and productivity issues in the workplace, but there are none that we have seen to match the user experience and infrastructure technology of PolySpot. This solution enables information access while maintaining data integrity and adding semantic enrichment. What more could an analyst or a decision-maker want?
Megan Feil, January 28, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search.
DataStax Bumps Up NoSQL with New Enterprise Edition
January 28, 2013
DataStax has increased the power of its NoSQL database by adding the latest Hadoop data muncher and Solr search. The Register covers all the new features in its article, “DataStax Cranks Up Facebook NoSQL to 3.0 with Enterprise Features.”
The article begins:
“DataStax, the company that was founded to take the Cassandra NoSQL data store created by Facebook commercial and therefore usable by mere enterprise data centers, is keeping to its cadence and is rolling up a new release of its DataStax Enterprise Edition. The company has also put out an update to its Community Edition, which is available for free and which does not include some of the proprietary integrations between the Cassandra data store and the Hadoop big data muncher and the Solr search engine that have been tweaked to run atop of Cassandra.”
Open source is the foundation of Cassandra and the enhancements to DataStax Enterprise 3.0 are also due to open source technology. Hadoop and Solr are both part of the Apache Foundation open source community. Solr is known as the best open source search option, serving as the foundation for many commercial search systems. One award-winner known for its Solr and Lucene foundation is LucidWorks. LucidWorks builds Big Data and enterprise search solutions on the strength of these trusted open source essentials.
Emily Rae Aldridge, January 28, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Is Facebook a Rip Off of 16th Century Academics
January 28, 2013
To us, it seems Facebook has taken over the Internet. The giant social network that promotes sharing data and creating a web of relationships is a real innovation, rising above the crowd online and off. Or is it a ripoff of a 16th century monk? After reading “Facebook Concept Used by 16th Century Scholars, Researchers Discover” on Phys.org, we are not so sure.
The article states that our obsession with social networking is nothing new. Researchers say this idea of creating groups or networks and then exchanging information dates back to the 16th century where young scholars created nicknames and developed mottos and emblems to form groups where information was shared. We learn:
“Professor Jane Everson, Principal-investigator, said: ‘Just as we create user names for our profiles on Facebook and Twitter and create circles of friends on Google plus, these scholars created nicknames, shared – and commented on – topical ideas, the news of the day, and exchanged poems, plays and music.
‘It may have taken a little longer for this to be shared without the internet, but through the creation of yearbooks and volumes of letters and speeches, they shared the information of the day.’”
The discovery was made when a team of academics were cataloging the works of the Italian Academies. Too bad for the monks, this copycat system is alive and thriving with no thanks to these early scholars. We think the similarities between our societies is fascinating and salute these early monks for the innovation.
Andrea Hayden, January 28, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
List of Significant Open Source Programs Neglects Search Engines
January 28, 2013
Zdnet’s recent article focusing on listing, “The 10 Oldest Significant Open Source Programs,” still in popular usage today becomes redundant and neglects to mention other, more relevant projects. Open source software and freeware projects have been influencing software development since the early days of computers.
According to the article:
“Both concepts were actually used long before proprietary software showed up. As Richard M. Stallman, (rms) free software’s founder noted, ‘When I started working at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab in 1971, I became part of a software-sharing community that had existed for many years. Sharing of software was not limited to our particular community; it is as old as computers […]'”
Linux has certainly had incredible success as the foundation for the internet and the most ported operating system in the world, running on everything from Android devices to super computers. Python has also proven its impact by becoming the fastest growing open source programming language.
While the article goes on to list several other programming languages and another operating system, I cannot help but notice the lack of open source search engine and indexing software. Lucene and Solr have been around since 1999 and 2004, respectively. These projects merged in March 2010, and have just received a robust update. Not only are these programs currently still in use, but they are making strides towards solving the search problems that plague big enterprise.
Michael Cole, January 28, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
On Innovation: Dreaming or Planning?
January 28, 2013
Can the importance of innovation be overstated? Perhaps, if your source is heavily invested in the concept. Innovation Excellence asks (and answers), “What is the Missing Cost of Not Innovating?” We thought that doing a good job with what you have was important, too. Can everyone or every company be an innovator? We don’t think so.
The crux of the article lies in justifying innovation costs when the benefits can seem nebulous. At times, writer Paul Hobcraft can sound downright defensive:
“Often the person asking the ‘what is the ROI on innovation’ has never been involved in creating, designing or managing innovation. They can often be the ‘bean counter’, the hard-nosed CFO out to drive up the short-term performance, imposing short-term deadlines on getting the innovation launched within a given calendar year to meet much of his performance measures. They also often do not really appreciate that there are real disparities on time, investments and resources for managing an incremental project against one that leads to discovery or disruptive innovation and why these are dramatically different.”
He does have one point. It is important to keep the long term in sight, even if details are a little vague, while struggling with the short-term needs that concern those “bean counters.” Being able to clearly communicate such needs to the higher-ups is important for those charged with forging a path to future success; see the article for Hobcraft’s tips in this area.
However, it is also important to maintain a realistic perspective when dreaming of the future. It is tough to arrive at the next best thing if you’re struggling to make payroll each month. In the end, it is a matter of balance.
Cynthia Murrell, January 28, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Oracle Endeca, More Oracle Than Endeca
January 27, 2013
In December 2012, Boston.com reported on the “Endeca exodus.” You can get the scoop by reading “As Endeca Exodus Continues, Trio of Former Employees Start Salsify to Help Manufacturers Distribute Better Product Info.” The content marketing play is not the part of the article which I found interesting. Here’s what I wanted to capture:
Co-founders Steve Papa and Pete Bell have both left Oracle as of this month. Former Endeca SVP Chris Comparato is now at Acquia, the Burlington company that peddles web content management software. Others have left for PayPal Boston, Silver Lining Systems, Sqrrl, Hopper, Internet advertising company DataXu, and Lookout Gaming, a new startup.
Why not cash in and check out? It is tough work making a search system generate revenue and even more difficult to achieve revenues and make a deal to sell the company to a larger firm.
The big outfits who buy search engines have the opportunity to learn first hand exactly how difficult it is to:
- Build revenues and turn a profit
- Find the resources to keep the software working
- Figure out how to market in a way that does not end in a flame out.
With these changes, Endeca is now Oracle. Can Oracle become more like the pre-acquisition Endeca which caught the attention of Oracle in the first place? Worth watching.
Stephen E Arnold, January 27, 2013
If you are interested in gourmet food and spirits, read Gourmet De Ville.
PR in the Digital Arenas
January 27, 2013
I don’t know zip about public relations. First, I don’t do much “public” work. The connotation of “relations” remains mildly distasteful to me. I suppose that is a consequence of a high school English teacher who did not permit certain words to be used in class. If a student were to encounter a word on the banned list, he or she had to skip it when reading aloud. The notion of “public relations” gives me the willies.
You can check out the best in PR and real journalism in the scary “Microsoft: Google Blames Us for All Its Problems.” I thought I was jaded with corporate slickness. One is never too old to learn how the big guys handle communications.
I had a client ask me about a company which could post messages to LinkedIn and other social media. I motioned that the work was getting difficult. For example, Instagram wants a person who posts a picture to register with a government issued ID card. Now that is interesting because I use a passport for identification, and I am not too keen on having that information in the hands of a 20 something engineer working from a drafty apartment in a country to which the data processing has been outsourced. Also, LinkedIn has a number of groups which are managed by those who start the groups. LinkedIn wants anyone who found the group interesting to participate or the “member” is kicked out of the group. Some groups are lax about advertising. Other groups are not. LinkedIn has turned into a job hunting and marketing service, so its utility to me has declined. I find the “expert” commentary sent to me by LinkedIn employees annoying tool. Facebook is a wild and crazy place. I am not sure how the new Facebook search will work when a person posting can be linked to “interesting” topics and “friends.” The Google Plus thing is mandatory with each post linked to a “real” person. Maybe Google will just issue official ID cards and skip the government angle. Google’s mission to North Korea was fascinating, and I hope no one draws a connection between the Google visit and the increasingly hostile rhetoric from that country toward the United States.
So what about public relations.
I did a quick check online and found that a consulting and publishing company called O’Dwyer Company, Inc. publishes a list of the PR firms ranked by revenue. After all, what could be more important than revenue in today’s economic climate. (Do I hear a tiny voice saying, “Quality and integrity”? No, not here in Harrod’s Creek.
The list exists in a couple of different forms. The dates covered by the list are not clear to me. But the PR league table I reviewed contained 118 firms. Of these 118, the total revenue reported by O’Dwyer was $1,776,859,523, slightly more than the revenues for the enterprise search market which I wrote about here. The top 10 firms generated $1,120,706,215 or 63 percent of the total revenue in the O’Dwyer report. What’s interesting is that this concentration of money is similar to the concentration of revenues in enterprise search prior to the consolidation craze which peaked in 2012. Once a search vendor is absorbed into a giant new owner like Microsoft or Oracle, the revenues from search related deals disappears into the accounting miasma. Become too open about enterprise search revenues and an Autonomy type of situation may unfold.
What I found interesting was that of the top ten firms, two were flat with no significant increase in revenue and one new entrant was able to pump out $21 million quickly. Whoa, Nelly.
Another point I found interesting is that I recognized the “name” of these firms of the 118:
- Edelman, not sure why
- Waggener Ekstrom, the Microsoft PR outfit
- Ruder Finn, not sure why.
Several observations:
- PR seems to be a low profile business. I am confident that the big dogs know how to market, but I am quite certain that most of the firms do not build a “brand” nor do they play a role in my world as “thought leaders.” I presume the reason is that the PR firms are so focused on their clients that any visibility for the PR firm would be a big no no.
- The revenues for PR are almost identical to those reported for enterprise search by Forrester. Does this mean that PR is a better business from a revenue point of view that search or content processing. Presumably the search vendors hire PR firms so the cash available for search marketing helps pump up the PR revenues. Interesting, particularly at a time when it is difficult to track sales to PR. (After all, if PR worked, wouldn’t the firms showing flat and declining revenue use their own tools to get those sales going?)
- PR, like enterprise search, generates one of those nifty long tale graphs which are so popular in today’s learned discussions about “concentration,” “oligopolies,” and “market forces.”
I told the client to take the O’Dwyer list and pick a firm close to home. The challenge is that the biggest firms are in the big cities; for example, Manhattan boasts 31 firms on the list, more if I include New Jersey and Connecticut. A quick check of Louisville, Kentucky’s PR density revealed 18 firms. More were listed if I tossed in marketing communications, social media, and similarly nebulous terms. PR advisors are as plentiful as consultants it seems. The swelling ranks of the unemployed creates a fertile ground for advisors, wizards, mavens, and poobahs in search, business consulting, and public relations.
My big finding is that the vast majority of public relations firms are likely to be struggling to generate revenue. What’s new in today’s economy? Is PR a discipline? Don’t know. Don’t care. I do know I tell those who write me PR spam that I am not a journalist. I get pretty frisky when people ignore my about page and assume I am, at age 69, a real journalist. Heaven forbid that I should be confused with a real journalist, a PR person, or an effective marketer. I am none of those things. Never will be.
Stephen E Arnold, January 26, 2013
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