Opportunities Intersect Challenges with SharePoint
June 17, 2014
Probably the most all-encompassing challenge facing SharePoint is the tension between the user experience provided by consumer level technology (mobile, social, cloud, etc. etc.) and the limitations of enterprise level technology. SharePoint knows its weaknesses and strives to overcome them, but change is slow. Read more in the eCommerceTimes article, “Microsoft SharePoint’s Crossroads: Where Opportunities, Challenges Meet.”
The article sums up the problem:
“As consumer-based technologies, which are primarily out in the cloud, have progressed, organizations want to focus less on infrastructure and focus more on actual business systems. End users on the other side of that want their corporate solutions to match more closely to their personal habits, to their personal tools. They’re doing everything in the cloud, everything via a mobile phone.”
And in this current scenario there are lots of opportunities present for SharePoint, and yet within them, many challenges. SharePoint is a large ship, so to speak, and is therefore slow to turn. Furthermore, they are restricted by their update plan, which thus far has provided a major overhaul every 3 years instead of their competitors’ continual, smaller improvements. Stephen E. Arnold knows this strengths and weaknesses well, and reports on them through his Web service, ArnoldIT.com. Having made his life’s work about search, Arnold’s SharePoint feed serves to inform end users and managers about tips, tricks, add-ons, and shortcuts that can make life easier.
Emily Rae Aldridge, June 17, 2014
GM Hands over List of 69 Abolished Words in Light of Recalls
June 16, 2014
The massive amount of recalled GM cars in 2014 is discussed in the article The 69 Words GM Employees Can Never Say on AOL Jobs. As part of the settlement with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, GM was forced to hand over the list of terms that they abolished from their employees’ vocabulary. It is an odd list, ranging from sensible words to avoid like “problem” and then the more colorful “grenadelike” and “Kevorkianesque” appearing later. John Oliver also had some fun with this list recently, wondering if at some point it simply became an exercise in free association? The article reports,
“The company was trying to tell engineers how to document problems – uh, make that issue, condition, or matter, according to the agreement – with cars as part of the recall process. These were words that were not supposed to be used in memos, emails, or presentations, lest they come back to haunt the company. As they have…You might wonder just how bad things looked to the engineers, given that this would be an odd collection of words…”
The article also mentions the astounding fact that the brake light issue was apparent as early as 2008, right around when the list was put together. So not so much prescience as knowing negligence. Or perhaps it was just a way to simplify search, since obviously you can’t search for a word if it does not appear in the corpus.
Chelsea Kerwin, June 16, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
ISPs and Pay TV, Making Search Vendors Look Good
June 16, 2014
The article on Eweek titled Customer Satisfaction With ISPs, Pay TV the Lowest of Any Industry relates the findings of the most recent American Customer Satisfaction Index. To start, Samsung has received a higher rating than Apple for the first time ever. Samsung jumped from a 76 out of one hundred to an 81 this year, whereas Apple fell from an 81 last year to this year’s score of 79. The article also notes the other important news from the survey. It states,
“The second, particularly notable as the number of merger proposals in the federal government’s inbox increases, is that customer satisfaction with subscription TV and Internet service providers (ISPs) has sunk to a new low. So low, said the report, that these industries are the worst performing of the 43 industries the ACSI tracks… Specifically, Time Warner Cable (TWC) received the lowest score of any subscription television service, falling by 7 percent to 56 out of 100.”
ISPs and Pay TV have sunk to a new low in customer satisfaction. That makes Time Warner Cable the lowest of the low. (No surprise there if you are a customer.) Compared to these dismal findings, search vendors look pretty darn good.
Chelsea Kerwin, June 16, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Rising Startup Tamr Has Big Plans for Data Cleanup
June 13, 2014
An article Gigaom is titled Michael Stonebraker’s New Startup, Tamr, Wants to Help Get Messy Data in Shape. With the help ($16 million) from Google Ventures and New Enterprise Associates, Stonebraker and partner Andy Palmer are working to crack the ongoing problem of data transformation and normalization. The article explains,
“Essentially, the Tamr tool is a data cleanup automation tool. The machine-learning algorithms and software can do the dirty work of organizing messy data sets that would otherwise take a person thousands of hours to do the same, Palmer said. It’s an especially big problem for older companies whose data is often jumbled up in numerous data sources and in need of better organization in order for any data analytic tool to actually work with it.”
Attempting to allow for machines to learn some human-like insight into repetitive cleanup work just might be the trick. Tamr does still require a human in the management seat known as the data steward, someone who will read the results of a projected comparison between two sets of separate data and decide whether it is a good relationship. Tamr has been compared to Trifacta, but Palmer insists that Tamr is preferable for its ability to compare thousands of data sources with a data stewards oversight. He also noted that Trifacta co-founder Joe Hellerstein was a student of Stonebraker’s in a PhD program.
Chelsea Kerwin, June 13, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Learn Something New Today, With Free-As-In-Beer Downloadable Books
June 13, 2014
The article titled 12 Free (As In Beer) Data Mining Books on Christonard lists many excellent books available for download. Free-as-in-beer, the article explains, means that the download is complete and without payment. Statistical learning books, programming guides, guides to Bayes and Bayesian reasoning are all included in the list with a brief synopsis. For example,
“Machine Learning – The Complete Guide – This one is new to me. It’s a collection of Wikipedia articles organized into chapters & downloadable in a number of formats. I didn’t realize they did this, but it’s a great idea. Because it’s a collection of individual articles, it covers quite a bit more material than a single author could write. This is an incredible resource.”
The possibilities are endless with content available for free. The only limitations on knowledge gathering today are time and ambition- based. Anyone with a few hours and the willpower to turn off the TV and Facebook can learn for free. This list in particular shows the appeal to beginners, with the article touting readability and the introductory level that many of the books maintain. They are not short, either. David Barber’s Bayesian Reasoning and Machine Learning clocks in at 648 pages, and The Elements of Statistical Learning by Hastie, Tibshirani and Friendman has 745 free-to-download pages.
Chelsea Kerwin, June 13, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Googles Possible Italian Roots
June 12, 2014
The article on Bloomberg titled Meet the Italian Who Beat Google to Web Search—and Gave It Away discusses the possible Italian roots of Google. The article relates the story of a conference in California with a particular talk given. Massimo Marchiori unveiled his Internet search engine, with none other than Larry Page in the audience. The article states,
“Marchiori’s project was called Hyper Search, a system able to scan the Web with a level of accuracy never seen before. Hyper Search was based on an innovative algorithm many developers consider to be an inspiration for PageRank, Google’s magic formula that sorts Web pages by counting the number and quality of links to each from around the Internet… “When I finished my presentation, a gentle boy approached me saying he found it very interesting,” Marchiori says in a phone interview.”
Page promised to “develop” Marchiori’s ideas further, and was later granted $100,000 to pursue Google, while Marchiori’s project was passed over by another grant in Italy. Yet Marchiori claims he bears Page no ill will for his astronomical success, even crediting Page and Sergey with the ability to make a reality out of an idea. Marchiori is not a computer-science and mathematics professor at the University of Padua, Italy.
Chelsea Kerwin, June 12, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Libraries Hurt If Net Neutrality Dies
June 12, 2014
The Washington Post blog The Switch interviewed the American Library Association’s Director of Government Relations Lynne Bradley in the article “Why The Death of Net Neutrality Would Be A Disaster For Libraries” about how libraries would be adversely affected without net neutrality. As public institutions with most of their resources online, libraries rely on free Web to serve their users and provide information. With budgets already stretched to their limits, libraries will not be able to afford to pay to ISPs. More people are going to the public libraries to have access to the Internet and other digital services. If that is taken away, not only will libraries suffer, but public education institutions will also suffer.
“In a way, not having a truly open Internet is like privatizing all of the Internet. Our nation was built on the concept of public schools, and public libraries are part of that, even the universal service fund at the FCC. These are part of our nation’s public policies that say as all educated, as all can have public libraries, as all can have public phone service, it’s best for the country as a whole.”
Libraries are at the forefront of how people consume information. Even if most of the resources are digital, the users represent a large percentage of people who go unnoticed when it comes to usage. While it’s safe to assume that everyone has Internet access, it needs to be taken into account how they connect. Raise the price of Internet access and it will harm those who need it most.
Whitney Grace, June 12, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Microsoft Deepens Yammer Assimilation
June 12, 2014
With its purchase of Yammer two years ago, Microsoft made a public statement that they were increasing social integration within its SharePoint platform. Now, two years into the process, integration has deepened through SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business. Read all about it in the CRN article, “Microsoft Deepens Yammer Integration With SharePoint Online, OneDrive For Business.”
The article begins:
“Microsoft, which bundled Yammer with Office 365 last November, has taken another big step toward integrating the social networking technology with SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business. Microsoft Tuesday unveiled a new feature called Document Conversations, which adds Yammer conversations to more than 30 different file types, including Office documents, images and videos.”
Stephen E. Arnold has covered SharePoint for many years on his information service, ArnoldIT.com. He found that many users wanted better social integration before the release of SharePoint 2013, so with the announcement of Yammer’s purchase, users were looking forward to seeing the social aspect of SharePoint move forward. Arnold provides good coverage on his SharePoint feed and SharePoint users and managers can look there for the latest news, tips, and tricks.
Emily Rae Aldridge, June 12, 2014
Huge Bets on Search: Spreadsheet Fever Rages
June 11, 2014
The news of the $70 million injected into Elasticsearch caused me to check out Crunchbase and some other sources of funding data. I looked at a handful of search and content processing vendors in the departures lounge. I am supposed to be retired, but Zurich beckons.
How large is the market for search and content processing software and services. As a former laborer in the vineyards of Halliburton Nuclear and Booz, Allen & Hamilton, the answer is, “You can charge as much as you want when the customer is in a corner.” The flipside of this adage is, “You can’t charge as much when there are many low cost options.”
In my view, search—regardless of the window dressing slapped on decades old systems and methods—is sort of yesterday. One of the goslings posted a list of Hewlett Packard’s verbal arabesques to explain IDOL search as everything EXCEPT search. The HP verbal arabesques make my point:
Search is not going to generate big money going forward.
Is search (regardless of the words used to describe it) a money pit like as the Tom Hanks’ motion picture made vivid?
For that reason, I am wondering what investors are thinking as they pump money into search and content processing companies. The largest revenue generator in the search sector is either Google or Autonomy. Google, as you may know, is in the online advertising business. Search is a Trojan horse. Search is free and the clicks trigger the GoTo/Overture mechanism that caused Google’s moment of inspiration. Before the Google IPO, Google ponied up some dough to Yahoo regarding alleged borrowing of pay to play methods.
Autonomy focused on the enterprise. Between 1996 and October 2011, Sir Michael Lynch grew the company to about $1 billion in revenues. HP’s prescient and always interesting management paid $10.3 billion for Autonomy and then wrote off $8 billion, aimed allegations at Autonomy at the company, and, in general, made it clear that HP was essentially a printer ink business with what seems to be great faith in IDOL, DRE, and assorted rich media tools.
More recently, IBM, the subject of an entertaining analysis The Decline and Fall of IBM by Robert X. Cringely suggested that Watson would grow to be a $10 billion in revenue business. Not a goal to ignore. The fact that Watson is a collection of home grown widgets and open source search technology. I think Watson’s last search contribution was creating a recipe for a tamarind flavored sauce. IBM is probably staffed with folks smarter than I. But a billion dollar bet with a goal of building a revenue stream 10 to 12 times greater than Autonomy’s in one third the time. Wowza.
Let’s do some simple addition in the elegant United lounge.
Let’s assume that IBM and HP actually generate the billions necessary to recover the cost of IDOL and hit the crazy IBM goal of $10 billion in four or five years. To make the math simple, skip interest, the cost of assuaging stakeholders, and the money needed to close deals that total $20 to $25 billion. HP pumps up Autonomy to $10 or $11 billion and IBM tallies another $10 to $12 billion.
So, HP and IBM need or want to build $10 billion or more in revenues from their respective search and content processing ventures. I estimated that the market for “search” was about $1.3 billion in 2006. I am not too sure that market has grown by a significant factor since the economic headwinds began blowing through carpetland.
Now consider the monies invested in some search and content processing companies.
Attensity (sentiment analysis), $90 million
BA Insight (Microsoft centric, search and business intelligence), $14.5 million
Content Analyst (text analysis, SAIC technology, $7.0 million
Coveo (originally all Microsoft all the time, now kitchen sink vendor), $34.7 million
Digital Reasoning (text analysis, no shipping product), $4.2 million
EasyAsk (natural language processing, several owners(, $20 million
Elasticsearch (open source search and consulting), $104 million
Hakia (semantic search), $23.5 million
MarkLogic (XML data management and kitchen sink apps), $73.6 million
Recorded Future (text analysis of Web content), $20.9 million
Recommind (similar to Autonomy method), $15 million
Sinequa (proprietary search and widgets), $5.3 million
X1 (search and new management), $12.2 million
ZyLab (search and licensed visualizations), $2.4 million
A Map of Craigslist Crimes
June 11, 2014
A reporter over at The Daily Dot has used data from news stories to answer a point of curiosity, we learn from “Mapping 30 Days of Craigslist Crimes.” It is not news that some people use the classifieds site to perpetuate crimes. Writer Aaron Sankin wanted to know more, to get a “big-picture perspective” of these events. He and his associates mined data from news articles to compile a map of incidents that occurred in April of this year. There are 74 crimes represented on the resulting Google-generated map, though Sankin hastens to note that this sampling cannot be considered comprehensive; these are only the crimes that were both reported and considered important or interesting enough to make the news. Still, it is an interesting analysis.
Of these 74 incidents, eleven resulted in violence and three in death. The most common fell into the robbery/ attempted robbery/ assault categories. That’s why it’s wise to meet online contacts in a well-lit public place, of course. Interestingly, Sankin tells us, a Chicago police department has gone so far as to invite people to complete online-initiated transactions in their lobby or parking lot.
Other, non-violent crimes the team found included the appearance of stolen property on the site and failure to pay for goods. Then there was this apparently common scam:
“One particular type of crime stood out both for its specificity and prevalence.
“The scam typically involves the victim responding to a listing for a rental property and corresponding with someone he or she believed was (or represented) the landlord or property manager. The victim would be sent pictures of the property but not actually be let inside. The victim would then be instructed to send a security deposit and/or the first month’s rent, often wiring the funds to an out-of-state account, and they would then receive keys to the unit.
“Of course, those keys never came and the suspects with whom the victims were corresponding with had no actual connection to the property owners—they simply found an unoccupied housing unit and used it to swindle money out of unsuspecting people.”
So, watch out for that. The article recommends anyone looking for property through Craigslist perform a Google reverse image search, which will reveal whether the same images appear in multiple property descriptions. For good measure, he also includes Craigslist’s own list of best practices, like not giving out financial information or inviting strangers into your home. Most of it is common sense, but it’s worth a refresher for those considering a Craigslist transaction.
Cynthia Murrell, June 11, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
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