Search Left Out of the Collaborative Economy Honeycomb
May 8, 2015
I must admit that I knew very little about the collaborative economy. I used AirBnB once time and worried about my little test. I survived. I rode in an Uber car one time because my son is an aficionado. I am okay with the subway and walking. I ignore apps which allegedly make my life better, faster, and more expensive.
I saw a post which pointed me to the Chief Digital Officer Summit and that pointed me to this page with the amazing honeycomb shown below. The title is “Collaborative Economy Honeycomb 2: Watch It Grow”
The hexagons are okay, but the bulk of the write up is a listing of companies which manifest the characteristics of a collaborative honeycomb outfit.
Most of the companies were unfamiliar to me. I did recognize the names of a couple of the honeycombers; for example, Khan Academy, Etsy, eBay (ah, delightful eBay), Craigslist, Freelancer, the Crypto currencies (yep, my Dark Web work illuminated this hexagon in the honeycomb for me), and Indiegogo (I met the founder at a function in Manhattan).
But the other 150 companies in the list were news to me.
But what caused me to perk up and pay attention was one factoid:
There were zero search, content processing, or next generation information access companies in the list.
I formed a hypothesis which will probably give indigestion to the individuals and financial services firm pumping money into search and content processing companies. Here it is:
The wave of innovation captured in the wonky honeycomb is moving forward with search as an item on a checklist. The finding functions of these outfits boil down to social media buzz and niche marketing. Information access is application centric, not search centric.
If I am correct, why would honeycomb companies in collaboration mode want to pump money into a proprietary keyword search system? Why not use open source software and put effort into features for the app crowd?
Net net: Generating big money from organic license deals may be very difficult if the honeycomb analysis is on the beam. How hard will it be to sell a high priced search system to the companies identified in this analysis? I think that the task might be difficult and time consuming.
the good news is that the list of companies provides outfits like Attivio, BA Insight, Coveo, Recommind, Smartlogic, and other information retrieval firms with some ducks at which to shoot. How many ducks will fall in a fusillade of marketing?
One hopes that the search sharpshooters prevail.
Stephen E Arnold, May 8, 2015
Google Glass: A Harsh Assessment
May 8, 2015
I read “The Debacle of Google Glass.” As a 70 year old wearer of trifocal lenses, I failed to see (pun alert) the future in this wonky product. I haven’t thought too much about Google Glass, although I did a research report for one of those really stable financial outfits.
“Debacle” comes at Glass with some zest. I read:
When Google introduced their Google Glass, this was the first thing that came to mind about this project. I wondered if Google even had a clue how tech adoption cycles develop. While it is true glasses had been used in vertical markets since 1998, even after all of this time, we saw no interest by consumers. Google’s decision to aim Glass at consumers first, yet price them as if they were going to vertical markets, stumped me. Even the folks who had spent decades making glasses for use in manufacturing, government applications, and transportation were dumfounded by Google’s consumer focus with Google Glass, priced at $1500. Apparently, Google found out the hard way how tech products get adopted. They lost hundreds of millions of dollars on this project and, worse yet, they soured the consumer market for similar products. Even those with disposable income who could afford to be a Glass Explorer have to feel taken as Google used them as beta testers at their personal expense. I have seen a recent report that details the damage in consumer minds about Google Glass and, even if a competitor came to market with a cheaper product better than Glass, they would have a hard time getting anything but vertical users interested.
The idea that Google has some weak spots is not a new one. The write up includes what strikes me as a positive nod to the Apple Watch. My hunch is that the idea is that Apple is better at some things than Google.
The write up pops the “debacle” word again in this passage which I highlighted with my trusty pink marker. I reserve pink for anti Google sentiments, by the way:
Google glasses was a debacle for multiple reasons. It gave Google a black eye in the minds of consumers and cost them a lot in the way of consumer confidence when it comes to their efforts in hardware. It also tainted the market for consumer glasses for them and competitors in the future beyond how these products can be used in vertical markets. It also proved to be a debacle for a lot of partners who lost serious money on the Google Glass project. I spoke at a major customer conference of a company who was highly focused on the optical side of the glass. For years, they were very successful in vertical markets but were pulled into the consumer glasses area by Google and the media hype and tried to convince their own customers to jump into the space with competitive products. To their chagrin, most of their customers passed on this and I am sure they are glad they did.
Like most Glass analyses, this write up ignores some of the points I still find interesting; for example, the Babak Parviz (yep, the smart contact lens person with the multiple versions of his name) Microsoft-Google-Amazon adventure, the impact of the senior manager-marketer interaction on intra company inter personal processes, the fascinating sales approach, the likely re-emergence of a more fashionable and stylish Glass, and the concomitant use of the festive neologism “glasshole.” Not many products warrant a coinage like “glasshole.”
If you are interested in Glass, you will find the write up fascinating. Perhaps the full story of Glass will emerge as a Netflix original series?
Stephen E Arnold, May 8, 2015
Cloud Adoption Is Like a Lead Balloon
May 8, 2015
According to Datamation’s article, “Deflating The Cloud BI Hype Balloon” the mad, widespread adoption of enterprise cloud computing is deflating like helium out of a balloon. While the metaphor is apt for any flash pan fad, it also should be remembered that Facebook and email were considered passing trends. It could be said that when their “newness” wore off they would sink faster than a lead balloon, if we want to continue with the balloon metaphor. If you are a fan of Mythbusters, however, you know that lead balloons, in fact, do float.
What the article and we are aiming here is that like the Mythbusters’ lead balloon, cloud adoption can be troublesome but it will work or float in the end. Datamation points out that the urgency for immediate adoption has faded as security risks and integration with proprietary systems become apparent.
Howard Dresner wrote a report called “Cloud Computing And Business Intelligence” that explain his observations on enterprise cloud demand. Dresner says that making legacy systems adaptable to the cloud will be a continuous challenge, but he stresses that some data does not belong in cloud, while some data needs to be floating about. The challenge is making the perfect hybrid system.
He makes the same apt observation about the lead balloon:
“Dresner, who was a Gartner fellow and has 34 years in the IT industry, takes a longer-term perspective about the integration challenges. “We have to solve the same problems we solved on premise,” he explains, and then adds that these problems “won’t persist forever in the enterprise, but they will take a while to solve.”
In other words, it takes time to assemble, but the lead balloon will keep floating around until the next big thing to replace the cloud. Maybe it will be direct data downloads into the head.
Whitney Grace, May 8, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Blur Private Search Promises to Hide User Identities from Google
May 8, 2015
We advise you to not take this advice: ReadWrite purports to tell us “How to Blur your Search Tracks on Google.” The article profiles Blur Private Search from privacy company Albine, a shield service that works to hide your identity from Google’s prying databases. The tool does this by setting each user up with a fake, cookie-free identity for each search. Writer Yael Grauer tells us:
“Private Search provides a new made-up identity for each individual search. It then funnels the request through an SSL tunnel, so that the search is encrypted—even Abine can’t see what you’re searching for. And every phrase or topic you search appears as if it is unconnected to previous searches, since each query is sent through Abine’s server with an entirely different IP address (which is yet another avenue by which websites can track people).
“Your search requests are modified before leaving your browser in a way that breaks the identity connection between your searches and the rest of your tabs. That means you can keep your YouTube tab open with all of your videos, and stay logged into Gmail, all without allowing Google to link your search queries with your account (and identity).”
At this time, the tool runs only in Firefox, and they have not yet implemented the in-results visuals that let you know it is working. Those problems will be fixed, but the bigger issue lies in trying to hide the tracks of anything typed into Google. Even the folks at Albine admit that people with something to hide that could put them in actual danger (Chinese dissidents, for example) would be better off going through Tor. There are other engines that don’t track in the first place, too. At the same time, it is true that Google’s functionality is unmatched, so users must weigh their priorities; one might use a non-tracking tool for anything financial, health, or uprising-related, for example, and Google for everything else. Just a suggestion.
Boston-based Albine bills itself as “the online privacy company,” and their goal is to bring user-friendly security to anyone who goes online. Their other products include DoNotTrackMe, MaskMe, and DeleteMe. The company was founded in 2008.
Cynthia Murrell, May 8, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Automating Innovation: Another Beyond Search Moment
May 7, 2015
What future Bill Gates or Larry Page can resist the notion of automating innovation. The notion that invention is 99 percent perspiration is definitely the equivalent of making horseshoes with a fire, hammer, and a strong arm.
I read Inno 360’s article “5 Things We Do to Automate Innovation.” Note that this is not automating information analysis which garnered Banjo $100 million in funding. Inno 360 deals with innovation, the Tesla type of battery insight.
The write up identifies five steps:
- Semantic search
- Visualizations
- Outreach
- Collaborative evaluation and vetting management
- Content management.
I find this list of items quite interesting. Each item is a basket containing numerous and often widely divergent technologies, definitions, and features.
If you are intrigued by a company asserting that it can do automatically that which a handful of humans achieves, navigate to http://www.inno-360.com/. I cannot define semantic search and content management. I don’t know what collaborative evaluation and vetting management means either, particularly in terms of automation. I have a good handle on visualizations. These are pictures, and I know that many cyber OSINT systems can generate visual outputs.
Automating innovation is a new angle, and I think it may be quite a remarkable achievement if it works. Innovation in information access is needed. Humans have not made much progress in the last 50 years when it comes to information access. The search box seems to the go to solution.
Stephen E. Arnold, May 7, 2015
Lightcrest Cloud Nine: Does Nirvana Come from Commodity Plumbing?
May 7, 2015
Lightcrest seems to want to be a major player in the enterprise search market. Recently the company’s senior management has posted links to LinkedIn enterprise search discussion groups. The president is Zach Fierstadt, and I wanted to read some of this other contributions to the search and content processing discussions I follow.
The Metaphors Used to Sell Search in the Cloud
I read “Cloud Nine Is a Private Cloud.” To me, Cloud Nine evokes a somewhat imprecise connotation; specifically, “heaven” and “a utopia of pleasure.” The notion of a utopia of pleasure makes me uncomfortable because promising wondrous outcomes from jargonized technology often comes to no good end.
Definitions
The Urban Dictionary’s word cloud for Cloud Nine exacerbates my discomfort:
How do pleasure and technology link in hosted search services. Here’s a definition of pleasure from Google.
I noted that the word is used or intended for entertainment rather than business. “pleasure boats”. I immediately think of Caligula’s Lake Nemi ships, the Gary Hart vessel Monkey Business, and the Xoogler’s death by heroin yacht Escape. Let me say that I am not calmed by how my mind relates to metaphors of pleasure and information access.
Assertions
Now let’s look at the article “Cloud Nine Is a Private Cloud,” which is at this link, http://www.lightcrest.com/blog/2015/04/cloud-nine-is-a-private-cloud/. The author is Zach Fierstadt, who asserts:
Most public cloud providers are not tuned to provide you with full-stack support, including things like DevOps services and caching best-practices. This cost haunts CTOs in the form of sprawling staff requirements, whereby operational staff required to support a 24x7x365 operation grows as the infrastructure on the public cloud grows.
None of these references evoke any pleasure. I noodled over the reference to “DevOps,” which is a neologism. Like much jargon, the word “DevOps” blurs the distinction between two perfectly useful terms: Developers and Operations.
Hosting companies in general and Lightcrest in particular can, as I understand it, make a DevOp’s life into a digital utopia. Mr. Fierstadt writes:
The growth of private and hybrid cloud solutions is indicative of CIOs and CTOs realizing the economic benefits and performance optimizations associated with sophisticated cloud orchestration layered on top of single-tenant hardware. As your workloads and storage requirements grow, make sure your costs don’t blow your budget – and be sure to consider long-term alternatives that allow you to focus on your core business initiatives, and not on cloud operations or cloud economics.
Now this sounds pretty darned good. I like the parental tone and parental rhetoric of “make sure” and attendant sentence structure as well. When I was in college, I knew one student who thought any polysyllabic stream of nonsense was the stuff of his Technicolor dreams. For me, references to sophisticated, optimizations, workloads, costs, core business initiatives, etc. is a substitute for facts, thought provoking commentary, and useful information. Lightcrest offers my hungry mind thin gruel.
Lightcrest’s Alleged Expertise
I did some poking around on the Lightcrest Web site and learned that when the verbiage is parsed, the company does a couple of things. These are:
- Hosting
- Consulting.
Before I could see the sun through the psychedelic cloud of marketing silliness, I learned that Lightcrest has expertise in the following search and content processing systems. You can find the list at this link. Lightcrest, the Cloud Nine technology operation, can provide “expertise” for:
- Document management search
- eCommerce search
- Intranet search
- Web indexing.
When it comes to expertise which means skill or knowledge in a particular field, Lightcrest makes other search centric outfits a bit like also rans. Please, check out this collection of systems which the Cloud Nine organization can make bark, sit, roll over, and fetch the newspaper:
- Attivio enterprise search
- Autonomy and Verity. (I thought that Hewlett Packard had moved Autonomy to the cloud and repositioned it as something other than enterprise search. I am confused.)
- Custom indexers and support. (What is a custom indexer? Does Lightcrest have proprietary crawling, parsing, and querying technology? Isn’t that important? Doesn’t an outfit with gargantuan expertise have a fact sheet about these functions?)
- Endeca search and business intelligence. (Isn’t Oracle the owner of Endeca? Why is Endeca separate from Oracle? What happened to Endeca as an eCommerce search system? I must be senile.)
- LucidWorks (Really?)
- Microsoft Fast ESP (Enterprise Search Platform) and FDS 4.x. (which I thought was shorthand for Fire Dynamics Simulator. Shows how little search expertise I have.)
- Oracle Enterprise Search (Is this Secure Enterprise Search, Oracle Text, or functionality from InQuira, TripleHop, or RightNow? No matter. Expertise is easy to say, but I think it might be slightly more difficult to deliver.)
- Solr, Lucene, Nutch, Mahout, and Hadoop. (Are Mahout and Hadoop software delivering functions other than enterprise information retrieval? )
- Sphinx and MySQL full text searching.
Some Considerations
Frankly I have grave doubts about this organization’s expertise in these areas. I have several reasons:
First, the odd ball mix of search systems mixes apples and quite old oranges. The square pegs are not in the square spaces. Round pegs sit precariously in the gaps designed for squares.
Also, the logic of the listing of these search engines defies me. I thought Mahout was software for machine learning and data mining, not information retrieval. How does one support and host software which is difficult to obtain from its owners of the intellectual property like Fast ESP or Verity?
The reference to “custom indexers” is interesting. Is Lightcrest able to index the Deep Web like BrightPlanet or like Recorded Future and its monitoring of Tor exit nodes? I wonder if Lightcrest has comparable technical horsepower for this type of work? Based on my experience with BrightPlanet and Recorded Future, I would suggest that Lightcrest is nosing into quite rarified territory without setting forth credentials which give me confidence in the company’s ability to deliver. What exactly are “custom indexers”? Am I able to apply these to a list of Tor sites and cross tabulate retrieved data with targeted clear Web crawls?
In my opinion and without evidence, facts, and concrete examples, the Lightcrest assertions are search engine optimization outputs.
The CEO as a Thought Leader
At least in the LinkedIn enterprise search “space,” Zach Fierstadt has attracted modest attention with his one sentence link only posts. Mr. Fierstadt wrote a non search related article in 2003 labeled “10G Matures” for Computerworld. He has a brief profile or “entry” in Google Plus, Zoom Info, and Stocktwits and a number of other social media sites. He made this statement in a 2010
“Look, there a lot of search solutions out there; but few cut the mustard when it comes to delivering sub-second performance at a reasonable price point. Lucene/Solr is the only platform that gives us the economy of scale needed to provide enterprise-grade search within our hosting model. By leveraging our expertise in deploying search within the enterprise, Lightcrest will be able to provide search solutions to smaller and mid-sized businesses that currently find proprietary platforms to be cost prohibitive.
What’s up with Lightcrest? Lightcrest walks gently, almost as if the company were weightless and massless. Maybe content marketing or just social media shot gunning? The company’s blog archives reveal marketing activities in September 2013 and then gaps in the content flow until January 2014, September 2014, December 2014, and the recent efflorescence of marketing oriented posts.
Bottom Line: Mass or Massless
Net net: Lightcrest may answer the question, “Is light a particle or a wave?” From what I understand about this company, there is most hand waving.
Stephen E Arnold, May 7, 2015
The Dichotomy of SharePoint Migration
May 7, 2015
SharePoint Online gets good reviews, but only from critics and those who are utilizing SharePoint for the first time. Those who are sitting on huge on-premises installations are dreading the move and biding their time. It is definitely an issue stemming from trying to be all things to all people. Search Content Management covers the issue in their article, “Migrating to SharePoint Online is a Tale of Two Realities.”
The article begins:
“Microsoft is paving the way for a future that is all about cloud computing and mobility, but it may have to drag some SharePoint users there kicking and screaming. SharePoint enables document sharing, editing, version control and other collaboration features by creating a central location in which to share and save files. But SharePoint users aren’t ready — or enthused about — migrating to . . . SharePoint Online. According to a Radicati Group survey, only 23% of respondents have deployed SharePoint Online, compared with 77% that have on-premises SharePoint 2013.”
If you need to keep up with how SharePoint Online may affect your organization’s installation, or the best ways to adapt, keep an eye on ArnoldIT.com. Stephen E. Arnold is a longtime leader in search and distills the latest tips, tricks, and news on his dedicated SharePoint feed. SharePoint Online is definitely the future of SharePoint, but it cannot afford to get there at the cost of its past users.
Emily Rae Aldridge, May 7, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
RichRelevance Promises Complete Omnichannel Personalization
May 7, 2015
The article on MarketWatch titled RichRelevance Extends Its Partner Ecosystem to Support True Omnichannel Personalization predicts the consequences of San Francisco-based company RichRelevance’s recent announcement that they will be amping up partner support in order to improve the continuity of the customer experience across “web, mobile, call center and store.” The article explains what is meant by omnichannel personalization and why it is so important,
“Personalization has emerged as the most important strategic imperative for global businesses,” said Eduardo Sanchez, CEO of RichRelevance. “Our partner ecosystem provides our customers with a unique resource to support the implementation of different components of the Relevance Cloud in their business, as well as customize personalization according to the highly specific demands of their own businesses and consumer base.” Gartner predicts that 89% of companies plan to compete primarily on the basis of the customer experience by 2016…”
The Relevance Cloud is available for Richrelevance partners and includes such core capabilities as Pre-built personalization apps for recommendations and search, the Open Innovation Platform for Build, and Relevance in Store for the reported 90% of sales that occur in-store. The announcement ensures that the collaboration Richrelevance emphasizes with its partners will really range all areas of customer engagement.
Chelsea Kerwin, May 7, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Yahoo and Microsoft Announce Search Partnership Reboot
May 7, 2015
It seems that Microsoft and Yahoo are friends again, at least for the time being. Search Engine Watch announces, “Yahoo and Microsoft Amend Search Agreement.” The two companies have been trying to partner on search for the past six years, but it has not always gone smoothly. Writer Emily Alford tells us what will be different this time around:
“First, Yahoo will have greater freedom to explore other search platforms. In the past, Yahoo was rumored to be seeking a partnership with Google, and under the new terms, Microsoft and Yahoo’s partnership will no longer be exclusive for mobile and desktop. Under the new agreement, Yahoo will continue to serve Bing ads on desktop and mobile, as well as use Bing search results for the majority of its desktop search traffic, though the exact number was undisclosed.
“Microsoft and Yahoo are also making changes to the way that ads are served. Microsoft will now maintain control of the Bing ads salesforce, while Yahoo will take full control of its Gemini ads salesforce, which will leave Bing free to serve its own ads side by side with Yahoo search results.”
Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer painted a hopeful picture in a prepared statement. She and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella have been working together, she reports, to revamp the search deal. She is “very excited to explore” the fresh possibilities. Will the happy relationship hold up this time around?
Cynthia Murrell, May 7, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Google Cloud Bigtable: The Real Hadoop de Doop?
May 6, 2015
Navigate to “Announcing Google Cloud Bigtable: The same database that powers Google Search, Gmail and Analytics is now available on Google Cloud Platform.” I learned:
we are excited to introduce Google Cloud Bigtable – a fully managed, high-performance, extremely scalable NoSQL database service accessible through the industry-standard, open-source Apache HBase API. Under the hood, this new service is powered by Bigtable, the same database that drives nearly all of Google’s largest applications.
In the list of benefits Google offers, one caught my attention:
Over the past 10+ years, Bigtable has driven Google’s most critical applications. In addition, the HBase API is a industry-standard interface for combined operational and analytical workloads.
The question becomes, “Is this the real Hadoop?” Another question: “Is Google using decade old technology for its “most critical applications”? I answer, “Nope. I think there are newer, whizzier software in use.”
Stephen E Arnold, May 6, 2015
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