The Desktop Search Model: Doomed?
May 6, 2015
Nah, doom is too strong a word. Desktop search will become a niche service. The future is mobile. Who wants to “work” from an old fashioned office? The switched on, 24×7 world is just so much more efficient. Check out the lines outside of the Washington, DC passport office or the traffic bottlenecks in Chicago. Mobility is the new modality.
I read “Now It’s Official: More Google Searches Are Coming from Mobile Than Desktop.” The write up reports:
Smartphones account for more than half of searches in 10 countries—including the U.S. and Japan—according to Google, which didn’t release exact percentages or a full list of countries. But it is playing up mobile at its annual AdWords Performance Summit, being live-streamed this afternoon. “The purchase funnel is officially dead,” proclaimed Jerry Dischler, vp of product management at Google. “What we’re seeing are these short bursts of activity that we’re calling micro-moments. We see the new challenge for marketers is to be there at those moments anytime, anywhere.”
The shift is likely to have some profound impacts. For Google, the company has to figure out how to keep its revenues flying high. For marketers, the methods for capturing attention have to be rethought. For consumers, the “search results” are likely to be skewed by the system and the advertisers.
My view of the shift is one of amusement. Those who are unable to identify and analyze information will be affected in ways large and small.
I like the old fashioned approach to research: Talking to people, reading, and using online and offline sources of information. Even then, getting a sense of what’s correct and what’s crazy is not easy.
Why work when one can allow a predictive algorithm and marketers to figure out what one needs to know? As Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, wrote:
“It is extremely difficult to obtain a hearing from men living in democracies, unless it be to speak to them of themselves. They do not attend to the things said to them, because they are always fully engrossed with the things they are doing. For indeed few men are idle in democratic nations; life is passed in the midst of noise and excitement, and men are so engaged in acting that little remains to them for thinking. I would especially remark that they are not only employed, but that they are passionately devoted to their employments. They are always in action, and each of their actions absorbs their faculties: the zeal which they display in business puts out the enthusiasm they might otherwise entertain for idea.”
Yep, the mobile thing. Busy schedules. No time to figure out what’s on the beam and what’s off.
Stephen E Arnold, May 6, 2015
Watson Becomes a Guide for Cancer Therapies
May 6, 2015
I read “IBM’s Watson to Guide Cancer Therapies at 14 Centers.” My immediate reaction? Baloney. I am no doc but I recall an experience with docs, hospitals, and assorted health experts.
In the late 1980s, Ziff Communications created the Health Reference Center. The idea seemed like a good one. We packed information about frequent disorders on CD ROMs. Remember those? We put a—for the time—a user friendly interface on the system. We included categories, what today’s marketers call metadata tags, so a person could select a category and see accurate, consumer-centric articles about common maladies. No rocket science for the folks at Ziff’s Information Access unit. But it was a first. We worked out trial placements at some big outfits. We set up the kiosks.
What happened?
The phones began to ring almost immediately. No one wanted the gizmos in their facilities. Docs were among the first and loudest complainers. Docs did not want a kiosk providing information about diabetes or prostrate cancer to their patients. We removed the kiosks and went back to the drawing board. We reengineered the kiosk into what would be called a “cloud service” today. Out of sight, calm returned.
Good lesson for me.
Flash forward to 2015. Have docs morphed from technological knuckle draggers to Silicon Valley surfers? Maybe. The assertion in the headline does not ring true in my ears. IBM’s marketers are doing everything possible to generate revenues from a collection of content processing software. IBM, as you may know, has delivered three years of declining revenue. Since the IBM technology is not delivering substantial, sustainable growth, enter the Watson cancer guide.
James Fennimore Cooper crafted a fictional guide. Is Watson a digital guide like Deerslayer’s sidekick?
According to the write up:
Oncologists will upload the DNA fingerprint of a patient’s tumor, which indicates which genes are mutated and possibly driving the malignancy. Watson, recognized broadly for beating two champions of the game show Jeopardy! in 2011, will sift through thousands of mutations and try to identify which is driving the tumor, and therefore what a drug must target. Distinguishing driver [sic] mutations from others is a huge challenge. IBM spent more than a year developing a scoring system so Watson can do that, since targeting non-driver mutations would not help.
This sounds great. I like the Big Data, the uploading, the DNA touch. The problem is that docs, like lawyers, often cling to methods that look back to the good old days and their time worn methods. Docs use what their employers identify as procedurally appropriate.
Now, in my chats with docs, I ask about their knowledge of various technologies to which I am exposed and I write; for example, automated processing and report generation. Now keep in mind that I live in Kentucky which is in the lower quartile of education and in the upper quartile of bourbon production and horse racing.
The level of tech knowledge is pretty low. Even more amusing to me is that curiosity about advanced technologies is generally low. Continuing education is more important than digging into bits and bytes in my narrow angle of view.
I have no doubt that the institutions involved are delighted to get access to Watson. I have no doubt that some researchers will explore the system.
I don’t accept the assertion that Watson will guide anything. Don’t agree. If you get cancer, chase down a Watson centric health care provider and let me know how that works out.
I would prefer a specialist with experience and a track record of success. Watson can be a resource but I don’t think Watson makes open source, acquired, and home brew code into Chingachgook. What works in fiction may not transfer to real life except in the mental synapses of marketers.
Stephen E Arnold, May 6, 2015
Annual Ranking of Legal Sector Puts Omnivere at the Top
May 6, 2015
The article titled Omnivere Voted Best National End-To-End Ediscovery, Managed Ediscovery & Litigation Support, and Data & Technology Provider in 2015 Best of the National Law Journal on Blackbird discusses the ranking and what it means. This is an annual ranking that is conducted with readers of The National Law Journal & Legal Times casting ballots based on their experiences with their own legal services. Omnivere won this year’s legal sector “best in show.” The article states,
“In less than a year, OmniVere has established itself as a trailblazer in the next wave of data and technology consulting, eDiscovery services and litigation support. In creating an in-house team of expert, veteran data consultants, including former senior leadership from FTI, Navigant Consulting, Integreon, Recommind, Xerox and Berkeley Research Group, OmniVere is well positioned to deliver a range of products and services on a global playing field.”
Omnivere was launched in May 2014 and rapidly grew into one of the biggest and most sought-after companies for its work in litigation support and discovery management. Erik Post, Omnivere President, is quoted in the article celebrating the win and the overall success of the company. He suggests that in spite of their new brand, the work and abilities of the staff is “resonating across the country.”
Chelsea Kerwin, May 6, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Cerebrant Discovery Platform from Content Analyst
May 6, 2015
A new content analysis platform boasts the ability to find “non-obvious” relationships within unstructured data, we learn from a write-up hosted at PRWeb, “Content Analyst Announces Cerebrant, a Revolutionary SaaS Discovery Platform to Provide Rapid Insight into Big Content.” The press release explains what makes Cerebrant special:
“Users can identify and select disparate collections of public and premium unstructured content such as scientific research papers, industry reports, syndicated research, news, Wikipedia and other internal and external repositories.
“Unlike alternative solutions, Cerebrant is not dependent upon Boolean search strings, exhaustive taxonomies, or word libraries since it leverages the power of the company’s proprietary Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI)-based learning engine. Users simply take a selection of text ranging from a short phrase, sentence, paragraph, or entire document and Cerebrant identifies and ranks the most conceptually related documents, articles and terms across the selected content sets ranging from tens of thousands to millions of text items.”
We’re told that Cerebrant is based on the company’s prominent CAAT machine learning engine. The write-up also notes that the platform is cloud-based, making it easy to implement and use. Content Analyst launched in 2004, and is based in Reston, Virginia, near Washington, DC. They also happen to be hiring, in case anyone here is interested.
Cynthia Murrell, May 6, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Microsoft Nudges English to Ideographs
May 5, 2015
Short honk: In my college days, I studied with a fellow who was the world’s expert in the morpheme burger. You are familiar with hamburger. Lev Soudek (I believe this was his name) set out to catalog every use of –burger he could find. Dr. Soudek was convinced that words had a future.
He is probably pondering the rise of ideographs like emoji. For insiders, a pictograph can be worth a thousand words. I suppose the morpheme burger is important to the emergence of the hamburger icon like this:
Microsoft is pushing into new territory according to “Microsoft Is First to Let You Flip the Middle Finger Emoji.” Attensity, Smartlogic, and other content processing systems will be quick to adapt. The new Microsoft is a pioneering outfit.
Is it possible to combine the hamburger icon with the middle finger emoji to convey a message without words.
Dr. Soudek, what do you think?
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What about this alternative?
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How would one express this thought? Modern language? Classy!
Stephen E Arnold, May 5, 2015
CyberOSINT Study Findings Video Available
May 5, 2015
The third video summarizing Stephen E Arnold’s “CyberOSINT: Next Generation Information Access” is available. Grab your popcorn. The video is at this link.
Kenny Toth, May 5, 2015
IBM and SAP: More Power Delivered for Big Data
May 5, 2015
I read “IBM Creates Power Systems Servers for Big Data Crunching in SAP HANA.” The story line is easy to grasp: Struggling IBM has purpose built fast servers for the IBM like SAP. According to the write up:
BM has expanded its partnership with SAP by creating Power Systems server configurations specifically designed to enhance the way SAP HANA is deployed for big data projects.
IBM said its Power Systems Solution Editions for SAP HANA will allow users of IBM’s Power8 systems to deploy the in-memory database management platform faster and in a more cost-effective manner.
What’s interesting is that both companies have compute intensive content processing systems. The challenge of making sense of structured and unstructured information is a need IBM and SAP customers have.
The fix is big iron. Crunching large volumes of data in real time appears to be an issue both IBM and SAP wish to resolve.
The implication is that cloud services like those available from Amazon and HP are not up to the task. The tie up sounds good. The article references content processing as well:
Powering big data analytics and database management appears to be a major part of IBM’s strategy. The company recently entered the healthcare big data market by creating Watson Health after snapping up big data and cloud startups. Big Blue is also teaming up with Twitter to analyze big data harvested from the social network.
One minor point: Will customers be able to realize cost savings? Are IBM and a company with IBM’s DNA cost effective? “Cost savings” are easy to say and sometimes difficult to deliver. I assume one can ask Watson.
Stephen E Arnold, May 5, 2015
Survival of SharePoint and the Big Bang Theory
May 5, 2015
The ebb and flow of SharePoint expansion and contraction can be described as a “big bang theory” of sorts. This cyclical pattern can be seen in many businesses, but Redmond Magazine helps readers see the cycle in SharePoint. Read more in their article, “The SharePoint Big Bang Theory.”
The article sums up the illustration:
“As Microsoft added capabilities to SharePoint over the years, and provided the flexibility to configure or customize its features to meet just about any business requirement, the success of the platform exploded . . . End users and administrators alike started thinking about their information architecture and information governance policies. Companies . . . began consolidating their efforts, and started to move their businesses toward a more structured content management strategy . . . [then] the rise of the enterprise social networks (ESNs) and cloud-based file sharing solutions have had (are having) a contracting effect on those intranet and structured collaboration plans. Suddenly end users seem to be totally in charge.”
There’s no doubt that SharePoint has learned to weather the turbulent changes of the last twenty years. In some ways, their adaptability is to be applauded. And yet, most users know the platform is not perfect. To stay attuned to what the next twenty years will bring, keep an eye on ArnoldIT.com. Stephen E. Arnold has made a career of out reporting on all things search, and his dedicated SharePoint feed distills the information down into an easily digestible platform.
Emily Rae Aldridge, May 5, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Continued Growth and Success at Syl Semantics
May 5, 2015
The article on Yahoo New Zealand titled Syl Semantics Raises New Capital and Appoints New Directors begins by naming the two freshly-minted non-executive directors, Murray Nash and Gene Turner. This is the result of successful capital raising to the tune of a million dollars for the Wellington-based company. Syl Semantics will continue to focus on growing the company with the assistance of the new directors. The article explains,
“Murray Nash is Managing Director of Zusammen, an advisory firm specialising in strategy, finance and capital markets, risk management, and public policy. In 2013 Murray was manager of the Establishment Unit and subsequently the acting Chief Executive of Callaghan Innovation. Murray has been a senior manager in three financial risk management start-ups in New York – supplying technology solutions to global leaders in banking, insurance, asset management and prudential supervision. He has a MComm (Finance) from the University of Auckland.”
Gene Turner’s background is in law and banking. Syl Semantics was created in 2008 and has grown steadily since then, releasing Syl Search in 2011 with great success. Syl Semantics is focused on what they term “Information Intelligence” or the “ability to access and extract value, meaning and learning from information.” James Fowler, the Director of Sales and Marketing, spoke to the ambition and perseverance of the company, which hopes to gain more of a foothold in New Zealand and Australian markets.
Chelsea Kerwin, May 5, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Juvenile Journal Behavior
May 5, 2015
Ah, more publisher excitement. Neuroskeptic, a blogger at Discover, weighs in on a spat between scientific journals in, “Academic Journals in Glass Houses….” The write-up begins by printing a charge lobbed at Frontiers in Psychology by the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease (JNMD), in which the latter accuses the former of essentially bribing peer reviewers. It goes on to explain the back story, and why the blogger feels the claim against Frontiers is baseless. See the article for those details, if you’re curious.
Here’s the part that struck me: Neuroskeptic supplies the example hinted at in his or her headline:
“For the JNMD to question the standards of Frontiers peer review process is a bit of a ‘in glass houses / throwing stones’ moment. Neuroskeptic readers may remember that it was JNMD who one year ago published a paper about a mysterious device called the ‘quantum resonance spectrometer’ (QRS). This paper claimed that QRS can detect a ‘special biological wave… released by the brain’ and thus accurately diagnose schizophrenia and other mental disorders – via a sensor held in the patient’s hand. The article provided virtually no details of what the ‘QRS’ device is, or how it works, or what the ‘special wave’ it is supposed to measure is. Since then, I’ve done some more research and as far as I can establish, ‘QRS’ is an entirely bogus technology. If JNMD are going to level accusations at another journal, they ought to make sure that their own house is in order first.”
This is more support for the conclusion that many of today’s “academic” journals cannot be trusted. Perhaps the profit-driven situation will be overhauled someday, but in the meantime, let the reader beware.
Cynthia Murrell, May 5, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
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