HonkinNews for 28 Feb 2017 Now Available
February 28, 2017
This week’s HonkinNews considers the Facebook “manifesto.” Our interpretation is that companies like Facebook are countries too. Aren’t we lucky? The IBM security conference is scheduled for March 2017 and Beyond Search was invited. We assume that the data science root access breach will be one highlighted case study. The program also comments on the Pinterest Lens technology. Now after “pintering”, one can locate and buy a product. No words required. Two stories illustrate the depth or shallowness of thinking about online research. We present a list of “must use” search engines and note some notable omissions. Then we consider a comparison of conducting research on an ad supported system versus the commercial databases, books, and journals at a first-rate research library like Dartmouth’s. The subject of Google’s Loon balloons drifts in as well. We consider the question: Will Facebook free Internet drones engage in combat with Google’s free Internet Loon balloons? You can find it at this link.
Kenny Toth, February 28, 2017
HonkinNews for 21 February Now Available
February 21, 2017
Hang onto your lightweight mobile. HonkinNews lets you watch recall, precision, and relevance being kicked to pieces by a real live SEO expert and famed author. We love that “famed” thing. You will also get a peek at how to visualize innovation. Inside the box and outside the box look tame compared to our view of the real world. We give you a tip for searching for an image in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s 350,000 digital collection. You may not like the answer. We did not. If you have a mainframe in your home office, you can load Watson and let it index your significant other’s recipes, or you can process a local bank’s overnight cash transactions. Either way, IBM gives you some Watson juice. And you will get a bit of information about Yahoo’s most recent security issue. Yep, yabba dabba hoot.
Kenny Toth, February 21, 2017
HonkinNews for 14 February 2017 Now Available
February 14, 2017
Want some tax love? HonkinNews explains that you can visit an H&R Block store front and “touch” IBM Watson. Sounds inviting, doesn’t it? You will also learn about the fate of Lexmark’s search and content businesses under the firm’s new ownership. Denmark has appointed an ambassador to Sillycon Valley. Perhaps Apple, Facebook, and Google really are nation states? Google’s cloud wizard has some job advice for the newly terminated. Perhaps dog training collars are a breakthrough for those eager to acquire news skills. Lucid Imagination became Lucidworks. Now the company has positioned itself to deliver Exalead style search based applications. The play did not work too well for Exalead, which wrote the book about SBAs. Will Lucidworks make the me-too strategy pay off for the company’s backers and their tens of millions of dollars? We also catalog the many ways to search using the Pixel phone. Whatever happened to universal search? We reveal where to live if you want easy access to old fashioned book stores. No, it is not Harrod’s Creek, Kentucky. You can view the video at this link.
Kenny Toth, February 14, 2017
Metropolitan Museum of Arts: Images There but Findability Not
February 14, 2017
I recall the Google Life Magazine image collection. I noted the BBC archive of programs. I checked out the Internet Archive’s rich media collection. Years ago I worked on the Library of Congress’ American Memory project. These have a unifying thread:
The content is essentially unfindable.
I read “Metropolitan Museum of Art Puts 375,000 Public Domain Images in Creative Commons.” The write up explains:
As part of a new initiative it’s calling Open Access, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has placed 375,000 images of public-domain works in the Creative Commons. This major, though not unprecedented, move by one of the world’s most important museums means that users can now access pictures of many of the Met’s holdings on Wikimedia…
You can try out the search system at this link. Good luck finding images. Remember Caravaggio is spelled with two g’s. Oh, the query returned a number of false drops.
The way to find images is to browse. Fun. Time consuming. Not good.
Stephen E Arnold, February 14, 2017
HonkinNews for 7 February 2017 Now Available
February 7, 2017
This week’s program highlights Google’s pre school and K-3 robot innovation from Boston Dynamics. In June 2016 we thought Toyota was purchasing the robot reindeer company. We think Boston Dynamics may still be part of the Alphabet letter set. Also, curious about search vendor pivots. Learn about two shuffles (Composite Software and CopperEye) which underscore why plain old search is a tough market. You will learn about the Alexa Conference and the winner of the Alexathon. Alexa seems to be a semi hot product. When will we move “beyond Alexa”? Social media analysis has strategic value? What vendor seems to have provided “inputs” to the Trump campaign and the Brexit now crowd? HonkinNews reveals the hot outfit making social media data output slick moves. We provide a run down of some semantic “news” which found its way to Harrod’s Creek. SEO, writing tips, and a semantic scorecard illustrate the enthusiasm some have for semantics. We’re not that enthusiastic, however. Google is reducing its losses from its big bets like the Loon balloon. How much? We reveal the savings, and it is a surprising number. And those fun and friendly robots. Yes, the robots. You can view the video at this link. Google Video provides a complete run down of the HonkinNews programs too. Just search for HonkinNews.
Kenny Toth, February 7, 2017
Synthetic Datasets: Reality Bytes
February 5, 2017
Years ago I did a project for an outfit specializing in an esoteric math space based on mereology. No, I won’t define it. You can check out the explanation in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. The idea is that sparse information can yield useful insights. Even better, if mathematical methods were use to populate missing cells in a data system, one could analyze the data as if it were more than probability generated items. Then when real time data arrived to populate the sparse cells, the probability component would generate revised data for the cells without data. Nifty idea, just tough to explain to outfits struggling to move freight or sell off lease autos.
I thought of this company’s software system when I read “Synthetic Datasets Are a Game Changer.” Once again youthful wizards happily invent the future even though some of the systems and methods have been around for decades. For more information about the approach, the journal articles and books of Dr. Zbigniew Michaelewicz may be helpful.
The “Synthetic Databases…” write up triggered some yellow highlighter activity. I found this statement interesting:
Google researchers went as far as to say that even mediocre algorithms received state-of-the-art results given enough data.
The idea that algorithms can output “good enough” results when volumes of data are available to the number munching algorithms.
I also noted:
there are recent successes using a new technique called ‘synthetic datasets’ that could see us overcome those limitations. This new type of dataset consists of images and videos that are solely rendered by computers based on various parameters or scenarios. The process through which those datasets are created fall into 2 categories: Photo realistic rendering and Scenario rendering for lack of better description.
The focus here is not on figuring out how to move nuclear fuel rods around a reactor core or adjusting coal fired power plant outputs to minimize air pollution. The synthetic databases have an application in image related disciplines.
The idea of using rendering engines to create images for facial recognition or for video games is interesting. The write up mentions a number of companies pushing forward in this field; for example, Cvedia.
However, the use of NuTech’s methods populated databases of fact. I think the use of synthetic methods has a bright future. Oh, NuTech was acquired by Netezza. Guess what company owns the prescient NuTech Solutions’ technology? Give up? IBM, a company which has potent capabilities but does the most unusual things with those important systems and methods.
I suppose that is one reason why old wine looks like new IBM Holiday Spirit rum.
Stephen E Arnold, February 5, 2017
HonkinNews for January 31, 2017 Now Available
January 31, 2017
This weeks’ seven minute HonkinNews includes some highlights from the Beyond Search coverage of Alphabet Google. If you have not followed, Sergey Brin’s participation at the World Economic Forum, you may have missed the opportunity that Google did not recognize. More surprising is that Alphabet Google owns a stake in a company which specializes in predicting the future. IBM Watson had a busy holiday season. The company which has compiled 19 consecutive quarters of declining revenue invented a new alcoholic “spirit”, sometimes referred to as booze, hooch, the bane of Mothers Against Drunk Driving. How did Watson, a software system, jump from reading text to inventing rum? We tell what Watson really did. How did Palantir Technologies respond to a protest in front of its Palo Alto headquarters, known by some as the Shire? Think free coffee, and we reveal what the Beyond Search goose wants when she attends a protest. Beyond Search has an interest in voice search, which seems to be more than an oddity. Learn about the battle between Amazon and Google. The stakes are high because Amazon is not a big player in search, but Alexa technology way be about to kick on of the legs from Google’s online hegemony. DuckDuckGo honked loudly that it experienced significant growth in online search traffic. How close is DuckDuckGo to Google? Find out. Mind that gap. Microsoft has “invented”, rediscovered, or simply copied Autonomy’s Kenjin service from the 1990s. The lucky Word users will experience automatic search and the display of third party information in an Outlook style paneled interface. HonkinNews believes that those writing term papers will be happy with the new “Research.” Yahoot or Yabba Dabba Hoot warrants a mention. The US Securities & Exchange Commission is allegedly poking into Yahoo’s ill timed public release of information about losing its users information. Yep, Yabba Dabba Hoot. Enjoy Beyond Search which is filmed on 8 mm film from the Beyond Search cabin in rural Kentucky.
If you are looking for previous HonkinNews videos, you can find them by navigating to www.googlevideo.com and running the query HonkinNews. Watch for Stephen E Arnold’s new information service, Beyond Alexa. Who wants to type a search query? That’s like real work and definitely not the future.
Kenny Toth, January 31, 2017
HonkinNews for January 24, 2017, Now Available
January 24, 2017
Another week and another search and content processing news round up is live. This week we cover the Dark Web delivery system known as the Royal Mail. Why are some Beltway Bandits developing a sudden craving for antacids? The transition from President Obama to President Trump may be a contributing factor. Some other government news caught out attention too; specifically. The slimming down of Darpa’s open source software catalog and the CIA Crest search for more than 10 million previously classified CIA documents. We also highlight IBM’s call for rules to make sure that artificial intelligence does not run amok. We are not sure if Big Blue is cracking the old buggy whip at speeding Teslas or if IBM has a grand plan to keep smart software on a short leash. Dear old Yahoot (sorry, I meant Yahoo or Yabba Dabba Hoot) figures in an anecdote about effective management. Yahoo USA is not able to convince Yahoo Japan that selling ivory is a bad thing. That item made it “tusk” in time for this week’s show. You can view the program at this link.
Kenny Toth, January 24, 2017
HonkinNews for January 17, 2017 Now Available
January 17, 2017
This week’s HonkinNews takes a look at Yahoo’s post Verizon name. No, our suggestion of yabba dabba hoo or was it “hoot” was not ignored by Yahoo’s marketing wizards. We also highlight Alphabet Google’s erasure of two letters from its “alphabet.” Goners are “S” and “T”. Palantir is hiring a people centric person. The fancy title may have an interesting spin. Two enterprise search vendors kick off 2017 with a blizzard of buzzwords. The depth of the cacaphones is remarkable because search by any other name would return results with questionable precision and recall. The featured story is the Mitre’s Corporation Jason Report. If you have an interest in artificial intelligence and warfighting, the report provides some insight into what the US Department of Defense may be considering. But the highlight of the unclassified document is a helpful description of Google’s TPU. The seven minute program is at this link. For fans of XQuery, we have a bit of input for you too. Proprietary XQuery too. The program is produced in old fashioned black and white and enhanced with theme music from the days of the Stutz Bearcat. From the hotbed of search and content processing, HonkinNews is different. We’re presenting information other big time outfits ignore. Mitre is a variant of Massachusetts Institute of Technology Research. There you go. Live from Harrod’s Creek.
Kenny Toth, January 17, 2017
HonkinNews for 10 January 2017 Now Available
January 10, 2017
This week’s HonkinNews introduces the concept of cacaphones. Check out the snippets of images. Tasty. We also discuss LucidWorks effort to generate revenue. The firm’s most recent dog paddle is with the USS IBM Watson’s life preserver. If you did not know, predictive analytics has given up the ghost. Don’t mourn, however. A better approach to analytics is driving the digital analysis Hummer now. Our favorite government search and content processing system is not sufficient for the US Air Force. BAE Systems will build custom software to “bridge gaps” and perform other feats of digital magic. Enjoy.
Kenny Toth, January 10, 2017
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