OneRiot and Collecta– Husbanding Funds
August 29, 2009
I received an email from a person at OneRiot, a real-time search vendor, yesterday, August 27, 2009. The message focused on OneRiot’s receiving $7.0 in funding. For me, the key point was:
OneRiot’s partners include Yahoo and Microsoft, who recently released a version of Internet Explorer bundled with OneRiot real time search.
You can learn more about OneRiot.com’s services by navigating to the company’s About page.
I was curious about Collecta.com, another contender in the real time search sector. My recollection was that Collecta.com also had received infusions of investment cash. According to TechCrunch, Collecta raised $1.85 million in a series A round. Other competitors in this sector include ITpints, Scoopler, and niche services like Topsy, among others.
My tests of these services indicate that each has strengths and some issues which will be remediated in the future. My question is, “How much magnetic power did the OneRiot tie up with Yahoo and Microsoft have in this recent funding tidal wave?” Comparing outputs of OneRiot and Collecta, I wonder, “What OneRiot will do with its basket of cash?” Neither Yahoo nor Microsoft, in my opinion, have real time search services on a par with the companies I have mentioned. Google, in my opinion, is on the sidelines in this sector as well.
Stephen Arnold, August 31, 2009
Silobreaker Update
August 25, 2009
I was exploring usage patterns via Alexa. I wanted to see how Silobreaker, a service developed by some savvy Scandinavians, was performing against the brand name business intelligence companies. Silobreaker is one of the next generation information services that processes a range of content, automatically indexing and filtering the stream, and making the information available in “dossiers”. A number of companies have attempted to deliver usable “at a glance” services. Silobreaker has been one of the systems I have relied upon for a number of client engagements.
I compared the daily reach of LexisNexis (a unit of the Anglo Dutch outfit Reed Elsevier), Factiva (originally a Reuters Dow Jones “joint” effort in content and value added indexing now rolled back into the Dow Jones mothership), Ebsco (the online arm of the EB Stevens Co. subscription agency), and Dialog (a unit of the privately held database roll up company Cambridge Scientific Abstracts / ProQuest and some investors). Keep in mind that Silobreaker is a next generation system and I was comparing it to the online equivalent of the Smithsonian’s computer exhibit with the Univac and IBM key punch machine sitting side by side:
Silobreaker is the blue line which is chugging right along despite the challenging financial climate. I ran the same query on Compete.com, and that data showed LexisNexis showing a growth uptick and more traffic in June 2009. You mileage may vary. These types of traffic estimates are indicative, not definitive. But Silobreaker is performing and growing. One could ask, “Why aren’t the big names showing stronger buzz?”
A better question may be, “Why haven’t the museum pieces performed?” I think there are three reasons. First, the commercial online services have not been able to bridge the gap between their older technical roots and the new technologies. When I poked under the hood in Silobreaker’s UK facility, I was impressed with the company’s use of next generation Web services technology. I challenged the R&D team regarding performance, and I was shown a clever architecture that delivers better performance than the museum piece services against which Silobreaker competes. I am quick to admit that performance and scaling remain problems for most online content processing companies, but I came away convinced that Silobreaker’s engineering was among the best I had examined in the real time content sector.
Second, I think the museum pieces – I could mention any of the services against which I compared Silobreaker – have yet to figure out how to deal with the gap between the old business model for online and the newer business models that exist. My hunch is that the museum pieces are reluctant to move quickly to embrace some new approaches because of the fear of [a] cannibalization of their for fee revenues from a handful of deep pocket customers like law firms and government agencies and [b] looking silly when their next generation efforts are compared to newer, slicker services from Yfrog.com, Collecta.com, Surchur.com, and, of course, Silobreaker.com.
Third, I think the established content processing companies are not in step with what users want. For example, when I visit the Dialog Web site here, I don’t have a way to get a relationship map. I like nifty methods of providing me with an overview of information. Who has the time or patience to handcraft a Boolean query and then paying money whether the dataset contains useful information or not. I just won’t play that “pay us to learn there is a null set” game any more. Here’s the Dialog splash page. Not too useful to me because it is brochureware, almost a 1998 approach to an online service. The search function only returns hits from the site itself. There is not compelling reason for me to dig deeper into this service. I don’t want a dialog; I want answers. What’s a ProQuest? Even the name leaves me puzzled.
I wanted to make sure that I was not too harsh on the established “players” in the commercial content processing sector. I tracked down Mats Bjore, one of the founders of Silobreaker. I interviewed him as part of my Search Wizards Speak series in 2008, and you may find that information helpful in understanding the new concepts in the Silobreaker service.
What are some of the changes that have taken place since we spoke in June 2008?
Mats Bjore: There are several news things and plenty more in the pipeline. The layout and design of Silobreaker.com have been redesigned to improve usability; we have added an Energy section to provide a more vertically focused service around both fossil fuels and alternative energy; we have released Widgets and an API that enable anyone to embed Silobreaker functionality in their own web sites; and we have improved our enterprise software to offer corporate and government customers “local” customizable Silobreaker installations, as well a technical platform for publishers who’d like to “silobreak” their existing or new offerings with our technology. Industry-wise,the recent statements by media moguls like Rupert Murdoch make it clear that the big guys want to monetize their information. The problem is that charging for information does not solve the problem of a professional already drowning in information. This is like trying to charge a man who has fallen overboard for water instead of offering a life jacket. Wrong solution. The marginal loss of losing a few news sources is really minimal for the reader, as there are thousands to choose from anyways, so unless you are a “must-have” publication, I think you’ll find out very quickly that reader loyalty can be fickle or short-lived or both. Add to that that news reporting itself has changed dramatically. Blogs and other types of social media are already favoured before many newspapers and we saw Twitters role during the election demonstrations in Iran. Citizen journalism of that kind; immediate, straight from the action and free is extremely powerful. But whether old or new media, Silobreaker remains focused on providing sense-making tools.
What is it going to be, free information or for fee information?
Mats Bjore: I think there will be free, for fee, and blended information just like Starbuck’s coffee.·The differentiators will be “smart software” like Silobreaker and some of the Google technology I have heard you describe. However, the future is not just lots of results. The services that generate value for the user will have multiple ways to make money. License fees, customization, and special processing services—to name just three—will differentiate what I can find on your Web log and what I can get from a Silobreaker “report”.
What can the museum pieces like Dialog and Ebsco do to get out of their present financial swamp?
Mats Bjore: That is a tough question. I also run a management consultancy, so let me put on my consultant hat for a moment. If I were Reed Elsevier, Dow Jones/Factiva, Dialog, Ebsco or owned a large publishing house, I must realize that I have to think out of the box. It is clear that these organizations define technology in a way that is different from many of the hot new information companies. Big information companies still define technology in terms of printing, publishing or other traditional processes. The newer companies define technology in terms of solving a user’s problem. The quick fix, therefore, ought to be to start working with new technology firms and see how they can add value for these big dragons today, not tomorrow.
What does Silobreaker offer a museum piece company?
Mats Bjore: The Silobreaker platform delivers access and answers without traditional searching. Users can spot what is hot and relevant. I would seriously look at solutions such as Silobreaker as a front to create a better reach to new customers, capture revenues from the ads sponsored free and reach a wider audience an click for premium content – ( most of us are unaware of the premium content that is out there, since the legacy contractual types only reach big companies and organizations. I am surprised that Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo have not moved more aggressively to deliver more than a laundry list of results with some pictures.
Is the US intelligence community moving more purposefully with access and analysis?
The interest in open source is rising. However, there is quite a bit of inertia when it comes to having one set of smart software pull information from multiple sources. I think there is a significant opportunity to improve the use of information with smart software like Silobreaker’s.
Stephen Arnold, August 25, 2009
Somat Engineering: Delivering on the Obama Technology Vision
August 24, 2009
I fielded an email from an engaging engineer named Mark Crawford. Most of those who contact me get a shrill honk that means, “The addled goose does not want to talk with you.” Mr. Crawford, an expert in the technology required to make rockets reach orbit and vehicles avoid collisions, said, “One of the top demo companies in San Francisco listened.” I asked, "Was it TechCrunch?" Mr. Crawford said, "I cannot comment on that." So with a SF demo showcase interested, I figured, “Why not get a WebEx myself?”
Quite a surprise. I wrote a dataspace report for IDC in September 2008. No one really cared. I then included dataspace material in my new Google monograph, Google: The Digital Gutenberg. No one cared. I was getting a bit gun shy about this dataspace technology. You can get a reasonable sense of the thinking behind dataspace technology by reading the chapter in Digital Gutenberg which is available without charge from my publisher in the UK. Click here to access this discussion of the concept of dataspaces.
Mr. Crawford’s briefing began, “We looked at how we could create a dataspace that brings together information for a government agency, an organization, or a small group of entrepreneurs. We took a clean sheet of paper and built a system that bridges the gap between what people want to do and the various islands of technology most enterprises use to get their knowledge sharing act together.”
Mr. Crawford, along with his partner Arpan Patel, and some of Somat Engineering’s information technology team, built a system that President Obama himself would love. Said Mr. Crawford, “We continue to talk with our government partners and people like the demo showcase. There seems to be quite a bit of excitement about our dataspace technology.”
I wanted to put screenshots and links in this write up, but when I followed up with Somat Engineering, a 60 person multi-office professional services firm headquartered in Detroit, Michigan, I was told, “Sit tight. You are one of the first to get a glimpse at our dataspace system.”
I challenged Mr. Crawford because Somat designs bridges, roads and other fungible entities. It is not a software company. Mr. Crawford chuckled:
Sure, we work with bridges and smart transportation systems. What we have learned is that engineers in our various offices build bridges among information items. Our dataspace technology was developed to build bridges across the gaps in data. Without our dataspace technology, we could not design the bridges you drive on. Unlike some software companies, our dataspace technology was a solution to a real problem. We did not develop software and then have to hunt for a problem to solve. Without our technology, we could not deliver the award winning engineering Somat puts out each and every day.
Good answer. A real software solution to a real world problem – bridging gaps among and between disparate information. Maybe that is what turned the crank at the analyst’s shop. Refreshing and pragmatic.
However, I did get the okay to provide some highlights for you and one piece of information that may be of considerable interest to my two or three readers who live in the Washington, DC area.
First, the functions:
- Somat has woven together in one seamless system Microsoft and Google functions. Other functions can be snapped to make information sharing and access intuitive and dead simple.
- The service allows a team to create the type of sharing spaces that Lotus has been delivering in a very costly and complicated manner. The Somat approach chops down the cost per user and eliminates the trademarked complexity of the Lotus solutions.
- The system integrates with whatever security methods a licensing organization requires. This means that the informal security of the Active Directory works as well as the most exotic dongle based methods that are popular in some sectors.
The second piece of news is that the public demonstration of this Somat technology will take place in Washington, DC, at the National Press Club on September 23, 2009. I have only basic details at the moment. The program begins at 9 am sharp and ends promptly at 11 am. There will be a presentation by the president of Somat, a demonstration of the dataspace technology, a presentation by long-time open source champion Robert Steele, president of OSS Inc. and a technology review by Adhere Solutions, the US government’s contact point for Google technology. A question and answer session will be held. After my interrogation of Mr. Crawford, he extended an invitation to me to participate in that Q&A session.
Bridging information pathways. The key to Somat’s engineering method.
Somat’s choice of the National Press Club venue was, according to Mr. Crawford:
The logical choice for Somat. As a minority owned engineering and professional services company, we see our dataspace technology as one way to deliver on President Obama’s technical vision. We think that dataspaces can address many of the transparency challenges that the Obama administration is tackling head on. Furthermore, we know from our work on certain government projects, that US agencies can use our dataspace approach to reduce costs and chop out the “wait” time in knowledge centric projects.
Based on what I saw on Friday, August 21, 2009, the San Francisco tech analysts were right on the money. I believe that Somat’s dataspace solution will be one of the contenders in this year’s high profile demo event. My thought is that if you want to deal with integrated information in a way that works, you will want to navigate to the Somat registration link to attend this briefing. If you want to talk to me about my view, drop me an email at seaky2000 at yahoo dot com. (The NPC charges for coffee, etc., so there is a nominal fee to deal with this situation.)
Somat has a remarkable technology. It touches upon such important information requirements as access to disparate information, intuitive “no training required” interfaces, and real time intelligence.
For more information about Somat, visit the company’s Web site. The addled goose asserts, “Important technology that bridges the gaps between Google, Microsoft and other information systems.”
Stephen Arnold, August 24, 2009
Twitter Stream Value
August 19, 2009
Short honk: I want to document the write up in Slashdot “Measuring Real Time Public Opinion With Twitter.” The key point for me was that University of Vermont academics are investigating nuggets that may be extracted from the fast flowing Twitter stream of up to 140 character messages. No gold bricks yet, but the potential for high value information seems to warrant investigation.
Stephen Arnold, August 19, 2009
Belief Networks Beefs Up Lingospot
August 14, 2009
Back in May we wrote about Lingospot, http://www.lingospot.com/, (see http://arnoldit.com/wordpress/2008/05/09/lingospot-in-text-content-discovery-means-auto-linking/) and its in-text auto-linking Discovery Bubbles. We tested the Lingospot set up at Forbes.com and didn’t find it very useful, though it seemed promising. We just got a pointer that a product put out by Belief Networks has improved the service of real-time personalized recommendation. Rather than bubbles, the suggestions are displayed in a one-line “Like This Story?” banner at the top of the page. You can check out Belief’s service at Charleston, S.C., news aggregator, The Digitel (http://thedigitel.com/). We like it because it doesn’t block the text that we’re trying to read. Looks like auto-recommendations are much improved. A happy quack to Belief Systems.
Jessica Bratcher, August 14, 2009
Facebook on the Move
August 12, 2009
Short honk: If you have been living in a country without Internet access, you may have missed “Facebook Flips The Switch On Real-Time Search, Goes After Twitter Where It Hurts.” Twitter has a truck load of trouble. Facebook is gunning for the source of Tweet spam.
Stephen Arnold, August 12, 2009
Google and Real Time Maps
August 11, 2009
A happy quack to the reader who alerted me to GoogleMapMania’s “Real Time Google Maps”. The article contains a number of links to real time Google Maps created by developers. The one that I found most useful was the Chicago Transit Authority map. Google has a burgeoning transportation services business. Those operating bus, rail, and shuttle services may want to take note of this CTA-centric gizmo.
Stephen Arnold, August 11, 2009
Yahoo Search Wizard Identifies Real Time Search as Hot
August 2, 2009
The ink is not yet dry on the proposed tie up between Microsoft and Yahoo. Yahoo’s top management exited the search business, dumping the costs to a willing and eager Microsoft. Reuters reported that one of Yahoo’s senior wizards sees real time search as an opportunity. “Yahoo Labs Chief Sees Real time Search Opportunity” reported:
Yahoo’s Prabhakar Raghavan, head of Yahoo Labs, said that the company could potentially “mine” messages from Twitter, the popular microblogging service, to offer Web surfers search results beyond those offered by Microsoft’s Bing.
What I find interesting is that real time search is not all that new. What also struck me is that Yahoo seems to be taking a conceptual lead in this search niche. I wonder what Microsoft’s take on this Yahoo notion is? If the deal between Microsoft and Yahoo is approved, will Googlers take the hint and accelerate their efforts in real time search? Interesting.
Stephen Arnold, August 2, 2009
US and UK Sing Different Tweets
August 1, 2009
Apparently Twittering at the White House is a no-no, but government agencies in the United Kingdom are getting a 20-page how-to (“…why and how we intend to establish and manage a corporate presence on the microblogging social network Twitter.com.”) You can get a copy at http://www.scribd.com/doc/17313280/Template-Twitter-Strategy-for-Government-Departments or http://mashable.com/2009/07/28/uk-government-twitter-guide/. Included is a basic Twitter how-to, objectives for using it, plans for data crunching, risks inherent and how to recognize them (Reduce by registering alternative names), and guidelines for setting up accounts to properly represent the departments. There are also tips on third-party tools to help the effort. In my opinion, it’s a good guide to using Twitter that focuses on the positives. Also check out Mashable’s guide to Twitter at http://mashable.com/guidebook/twitter/.
Obama Transparency Does Not Include Tweets
July 26, 2009
Short honk: The more things change, the more the Potomac remains the same. Read “Twitter Banned from White House”. I am assuming that the story is accurate. Furthermore, I suppose one of the hundreds of staffers and thousands of consultants can drift over to Cosi’s or President Clinton’s McDonald’s to fire off a Tweet. Will offenders be tasered? Arrested? Fired? For sure, the real time information flow is now having to fight like a spawning salmon.
Stephen Arnold, July 26, 2009
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