Changing Data Pattern: Voice Versus Data
September 25, 2015
Short honk: I read Akamai’s State of the Internet. You can get your copy by going through some registration hoops at this Akamai link. Useful information; for example, one chart suggested some downstream consequences of the shift to mobile devices. The data come from Ericsson, so other analyses may differ. Here’s the chart:
Online advertisers will have to put on their thinking cap when it comes to marketing to the mobile dependent folks.
Stephen E Arnold, September 25, 2015
Weekly Watson Watch: Robots Become Socially Adept
September 25, 2015
The Watson promotional campaign is clogging my Overflight alert system. I will try to pick one Watson item from my favorite main frame company each week.
This week’s selection is from MIT Technology Review, whose editors find IBM Watson fascinating. The write up is “IBM Watson to Teach Robots Some Social Skills.” The MIT angle is magnetized by the money spinning Watson’s ability to “better understand and mimic human communication.” The write up focuses on an IBM wizard with the delightful name of Bob High.
The news hook is that an IBM partner used Watson to allow the partner’s robot Nao to speak “with realistic intonation.” The robot was also able to make “appropriate hand gestures during a conversation.”
The article tucks in an interesting comment, which struck me as a bit like Volkswagen’s approach to diesel emissions. Are you ready? Here is the passage I highlighted in a color I call truthful blue:
Speaking with MIT Technology Review after the demo, High admitted that this interaction was prerecorded, because the system doesn’t always work well in noisy environments. But he said the capabilities demonstrated reflected real research.
Ah, a demo. Where’s the beef? The PR hot dog seems to me to have some artificiality within.
I quite like the “real research” phrase. Who wants faux research like the work that creates television shows, flows of PR, and mid tier consultants praising cognitive computing.
I favor the type of research which allows me to buy 100 shares of IBM stock and then watch the value rise. I am not too keen on technology that does not work in a noisy environment. Been in an airport lately? How about under mortar fire? Well, canned responses will work in some cases I assume.
Watson is, as you know, gentle reader, open source, acquired, and home brew technology. Watson is, in my opinion, a good example of how basic search technology is wrapped with numerous other functions in a remarkable series of marketing efforts to generate revenue. We know the IBM Watson marketing people can elicit excitement from big time, “real” journalistic endeavors.
I feel lighthearted this morning. Here are my notes made as I sat on my deck watching the mine drainage stir the yellow green water in the still pond. It is time for a Frostian “you come too”:
- Will a drone equipped with two laser-guided AGM-114 Hellfire missiles experience emotion upon release of the ordinance?
- Will “love” robots incorporate the technology? Will the stop word list contain, “Take out the garbage” with appropriate intonation and gestures?
- Will the technology work in a real world environment like an office? The technology may be useful for some IBM HR applications; for example, a 54 year old employee is RA’d and discusses with a socially adept IBM robot the employee’s impending severance because the employees’ job will be off-shored in four weeks.
Enough old-person humor for this Weekly Watson. For more IBM information, check out Allliance@IBM.
Stephen E Arnold, September 25, 2015
Google US Probe: Legal Eagles Expect Great 2016
September 25, 2015
I read “US Will Probe Google for Anti-Competitive Android Behavior.” Quite a surprise. I assumed that Google and the US government’s legal system had moved on to more interesting topics; for example, Loon balloons, adding features to Gmail, and Version 2 of Glass.
Wrong was I. According to the article:
US regulators reportedly decided to launch the inquiry after meeting with rival tech companies, which complained that Google limits their access to Android in favor of its own apps.
The Alphabet Google thing is going to ensure that some attorneys have really good fourth quarter and 2016 revenues. The GOOG is dealing with the pesky European Union. Now the world’s greatest ad centric, search and retrieval outfit has to explain what’s up (not what’s app) with the Android business strategy.
My hunch is that the GOOG may be showing some signs of ageing. Management shuffles, a shift in the online advertising world from desktop search to mobile search, and the grousing some of the Alphabet Google thing’s competitors are taking a toll.
This will be interesting because Google will have to work harder to generate sufficient revenues to keep Wall Street happy. It will have to deliver numbers, not a road show talking about transparency to the stakeholders who want the two companies’ shares to keep on delivering good news. Also, the Alphabet Google thing cannot roll over and play dead as Facebook continues to follow the dollar signs in its social advertising sector.
Life was simpler when I thought about the objective methods to deliver results in response to my queries. Lawyers involved in these matters are likely to experience some additional billable hours. Those new gasoline powered Porsches look really slick too.
Stephen E Arnold, September 25, 2015
Watch Anti-Money Laundering Compliances Sink
September 25, 2015
With a title like “AML-A Challenge Of Titanic Proportions” posted on Attivio metaphoric comparisons between the “ship of dreams” and icebergs is inevitable. Anti-money laundering compliances have seen an unprecedented growth between 2011-2014 of 53%, says KPMG’s Global Anti-Money Laundering (AML) Survey. The costs are predicted to increase by more than 25% in the next three years. The biggest areas that are requiring more money, include transaction monitoring systems, Know Your Customer systems, and recruitment/retention systems for AML staff.
The Titanic metaphor plays in as the White Star Line director Bruce Ismay, builder Thomas Andrew, and nearly all of the 3327 passengers believed the ship was unsinkable and the pinnacle of modern technology. The belief that humanity’s efforts would conquer Mother Nature was its downfall. The White Star Line did not prepare the Titanic for disaster, but AML companies are trying to prevent their ships are sinking. Except they cannot account for all the ways thieves can work around their system, just as the Titanic could not avoid the iceberg.
“Systems need to be smarter – even capable of learning patterns of transaction and ownership. Staff needs more productive ways of investigating and positively concluding their caseload. Alerting methods need to generate fewer ‘false positives’ – reducing the need for costly human investigation. New sources of information that can provide evidence need to come online faster and quickly correlate with existing data sources.”
The Titanic crew accidentally left the binoculars for the crow’s nest in England, which did not help the lookouts. The current AML solutions are like the forgotten binoculars and pervasive action needs to be taken to avoid the AML iceberg.
Whitney Grace, September 25, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Wall Street Sees Challengers to the Bloomberg Terminal
September 25, 2015
Few industries rely on timely data quite like Wall Street, and the trading platform that has long been the industry favorite has been enjoying that revenue stream for almost 30 years. However, the New York Times now reports that “The Bloomberg Terminal, a Wall Street Fixture, Faces Upstarts.” Writer Nathaniel Popper notes that funds from the popular terminal enable the company’s news endeavors: BusinessWeek and the Bloomberg Business website, it seems, “cost more than they earn.” Will all that fall away if the Bloomberg terminal loses ground to the competition?
The article relates:
“Bloomberg has sustained several challenges to its dominant market position, fending off smaller competitors hoping to bite off a corner of its business. And it has the cash reservoirs to wage a vigorous defense this time around. But Bloomberg’s own history shows that it is not easy to maintain a profitable market position like the one it has held for more than two decades. Bloomberg rose to prominence in the 1990s by nimbly replacing earlier Wall Street data companies — like Quotron and Telerate — that failed to change quickly enough to protect their longtime market dominance. Morgan Downey, the former Bloomberg executive who is building Money.Net, said he decided to leave Bloomberg in late 2013 and create a low-cost challenger after seeing how slowly Bloomberg was changing and how many of the company’s clients wanted a cheaper alternative.”
Cheaper, it seems, is the key word here. Firms are under pressure to cut costs amid new regulations and shifting markets; they are now eyeing lower-cost alternatives to the Bloomberg terminals, which run about $25,000 per year each. See the article for more on the competition, like Money.Net and chat provider Symphony.
What of Thomson Reuters? According to the article, that company’s terminal sales in the U.S. continue to disappoint, though they have done well in certain niche markets. Their terminals, we’re told, are “not notably cheaper than Bloomberg’s.” Will the upstarts topple both venerable firms?
Popper reports stockbrokers have been complaining about Bloomberg’s terminal pricing and lack of innovative product design. Then again, retired New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg is said to be taking a more active role in the company. Perhaps with his efforts, it will manage to fend off the challengers. For now.
Cynthia Murrell, September 25, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Google and YouTube Views: Relevance or Money?
September 24, 2015
I read “Google Charges Advertisers for Fake YouTube Video Views, Say Researchers.” My goodness, will criticism of Alphabet Google continue to escalate?
The trigger for the newspaper article’s story with the somewhat negative headline was an academic paper called “Understanding the Detection of Fake View Fraud in Video Content Portals.” The data presented in the journal by seven European wizards suggests that an Alphabet Google type company knows when a video is viewed by a software robot, not a credit card toting human.
“Fake view fraud” is a snappy phrase.
According to the Guardian newspaper write up about the technical paper:
The researchers’ paper says that while substantial effort has been devoted to understanding fraudulent activity in traditional online advertising such as search and banner ads, more recent forms such as video ads have received little attention. It adds that while YouTube’s system for detecting fake views significantly outperforms others, it may still be susceptible to simple attacks.
Is this a Volkswagen-type spoof? Instead of fiddling with fuel efficiency, certain online video portals are playing fast and loose with charging for video ads not displayed to a human with a PayPal account?
Years ago an outfit approached me with a proposition for a seminar about online advertising fraud. I declined. I am confident that the giant companies and their wizards in the ad biz possess business ethics which put the investment bankers to shame. I recall discussing systems and methods with a couple of with it New Yorkers. The lunch topic was dynamically relaxing the threshold for displaying content in response to certain queries.
My comment pointed to ways to determine if an ad “relevant” was relevant to a higher percentage of user queries. I called this “query and ad matching relaxation.”
I did not include a discussion of “relaxation” in my 2003-2004 study Google Version 2.0, which is now out of print. The systems and methods disclosed in technical papers by researchers who ended up working for large online advertising methods were just more plumbing for smart software.
When an ad does not match a query, that’s the challenge of figuring out what’s relevant and what’s irrelevant.
My thought in 2003 when I started writing the book was that most content was essentially spoofed and sponsored. I wanted to focus on more interesting innovations like the use of game theory in online advertising interfaces and the clever notion of “janitors” which were software routines able to clean up “bad” or “incomplete” data.
As I recall, that New York City guy was definitely interested in the notion of tuning ad results to generate money for the ad distribution and not so much for the advertiser. For me, no interest in lecturing a group of ad execs about their business. These folks can figure out the ins and outs of their business without inputs from an old person in Kentucky.
Mobile and video access to digital content do pose some interesting challenges in the online advertising world. My hunch is that the Alphabet Google type outfits and the intrepid researchers will find common ground. If the meeting progresses smoothly, perhaps a T shirt or mouse pad will be offered to some of the participants?
I remain confident that allegations about slippery behavior in online advertising are baseless. Online advertising is making life better and better for users everyday.
The experience of online advertising is thrilling. I am not sure the experience of receiving unwanted advertisements can be improved? Why read a Web page when one can view an overlay which obscures the desired content? Why work in a quite office? Answer: It is simply easier to hear the auto play videos on many Web pages. Why puzzle over a search results page which blurs sponsored hits from relevant content? By definition, displayed information is relevant information, gentle reader. Do you have a problem with that?
Google, according to the article, will chat up the seven experts who reported on the alleged fraud. I am confident that the confusion in the perceptions of the researchers will be replaced with crystal clear thinking.
Online ad fraud? What a silly notion.
Stephen E Arnold, September 24, 2015
Spark: Another Open Source Game Changer
September 24, 2015
Gentle reader, I know that knowledge about Spark is as widespread as information about the woes of the Philadelphia Eagles. My understanding of Spark is that is is an open source engine for large scale data processing. It is faster than Hadoop. It is easy to use. It is flexible enough to allow the intrepid Spark aficionado the combine structured query language, streaming, and analytics in one software system. Spark runs “everywhere.” For more about Spark, see this Apache project page.
Spark is one of the next big things, poised to ignite innovation, consulting revenues, innovations, and vendor repositionings.
I approached “Game-Changing Real-time Uses for Apache Spark” in order to learn how Spark can change the game for real time data and information work. Game changing means that old school outfits are going to lose because the new game has new rules, new players, and new everything.
The write up identified these ways Spark will change some quite significant markets:
- Credit card fraud detection
- Network security
- Genomic sequencing
- Real time ad processing
- Medical
My goodness, Spark will become the number one enabling technology for some very problematic market spaces.
Let’s look at what Spark will do to real time ad processing. The write up reports:
One advertising firm uses Spark, on MapR-DB, to build a real-time ad targeting platform. The system looks at user data and decides which ads to show users on the Internet based on demographic data. Since advertising is so time-sensitive, advertisers have to move fast if they want to capture mindshare. Spark Streaming is one way to help them do that.
What strikes me is that Spark requires programmers, software engineering, and then integration of different components. If an error manifests itself, the Spark solution may require those who embrace it to perform some old fashioned work.
In a sense, the game hasn’t changed at all. Open source software reduces license fees and provides a developer with some freedom from license restrictions. On the other hand, the difficult task of getting a complex system to work as intended remains.
My hunch is that Spark is an interesting open source project. The consultants and start ups see Spark as an opportunity. The game changing nature of Spark is potential energy, not a sure thing.
Stephen E Arnold, September 23, 2015
Microsoft Bing in Edge is Baidu: Confused?
September 24, 2015
I received an alert about Bing. I usually ignore these. The headline did not reference search. The article is billed as “Windows 10 in China.” I am not sure why I scanned the item, but I noted that the Microsoft blog post contained an interesting factoid about Bing search.
Here’s the passage I noted:
Together [Baidu and Microsoft], we will make it easy for Baidu customers to upgrade to Windows 10 and we will deliver a custom experience for customers in China, providing local browsing and search experiences. Baidu.com will become the default homepage and search for the Microsoft Edge browser in Windows 10.
I wondered if I understood the message. The Windows 10 browser, called Edge, will include a Web and local search function. The search is going to be provided by Baidu for “local browsing and search experiences.”
I find this interesting for two reasons: Is Bing, assisted by a search wizard from Australia, now “funneling” queries to Baidu? and Has Microsoft given up on the job of indexing Chinese language content?
I recall reading “About Microsoft Research Asia,” and learning that one of the goals for Microsoft’s expanding research activities in Asia was:
Search and online advertising takes Web search and online advertising to the next level by applying data-mining, machine-learning and knowledge-discovery techniques to information analysis, organization, retrieval and visualization.
Now the company is relying on a third party for search. Is this a signal that Bing is not up to the search and retrieval job in China?
Stephen E Arnold, September 24, 2015
Rundown on Legal Knowledge Management
September 24, 2015
One of the new legal buzzwords is knowledge management and not just old-fashioned knowledge management, but rather quick, efficient, and effective. Time is an expensive commodity for legal professionals, especially with the amount of data they have to sift through for cases. Mondaq explains the importance of knowledge management for law professionals in the article, “United States: A Brief Overview Of Legal Knowledge Management.”
Knowledge management first started in creating an effective process for managing, locating, and searching relevant files, but it quickly evolved into implementing a document managements system. While knowledge management companies offered law practices decent document management software to tackle the data hill, an even bigger problem arose. The law practices needed a dedicated person to be software experts:
“Consequently, KM emphasis had to shift from finding documents to finding experts. The expert could both identify useful documents and explain their context and use. Early expertise location efforts relied primarily on self-rating. These attempts almost always failed because lawyers would not participate and, if they did, they typically under- or over-rated themselves.”
The biggest problem law professional face is that they might invest a small fortune in a document management license, but they do not know how to use the software or do not have the time to learn. It is a reminder that someone might have all the knowledge and best tools at their fingertips, but unless people have the knowledge on how to use and access it, the knowledge is useless.
Whitney Grace, September 24, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Harsh Criticism of Yahoo
September 24, 2015
Kill dear old Yahoo? IBTimes reports on some harsh words from an ivory-tower type in, “NYU Professor: Yahoo Ought to Be ‘Euthanised’ and Marissa Mayer’s Pregnancy Saved her Job.” It seems marketing professor Scott Galloway recently criticized the company, and its famous CEO, in a televised Bloomberg interview. In his opinion, any website with Yahoo’s traffic should be rolling in dough, and the company’s struggles are the result of mismanagement. As for his claim that the “most overpaid CEO in history” only retains her position due to her pregnancy? Reporter Mary-Ann Russon writes:
“Galloway says that Yahoo would not be willing to face the public backlash that would come from firing a woman in such a position of power who has just announced she is pregnant.
“This is not a stretch since there are still far fewer women in leadership positions than men – as of March 2015, only 24 of the CEOs in Fortune 500 companies are women – and the issue with how companies perceive family planning remains a sore point for many career-minded women (Read: Gamechangers: Why multimillionaire ‘mom’ Marissa Mayer is damned if she does and damned if she doesn’t).
“However, Galloway also pointed the finger of blame for Yahoo’s woes at its board, which he said has been a ‘lesson in poor corporate governance,’ since there have been five CEOs in the last seven years.”
Though Yahoo was a great success around the turn of the millennium, it has fallen behind as users migrate their internet usage to mobile devices (with that format’s smaller, cheaper ads). Though many still use its free apps, nowadays most of Yahoo’s revenue comes from its Alibaba investment.
So what does Galloway recommend? “It should be sold to Microsoft,” he declared. “We should put a bullet in this story called ‘Yahoo’.” Ouch. Can Yahoo reverse their fortunes, or is it too late for the veteran Internet company?
Cynthia Murrell, September 24, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
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