Search Data from Bing for 2015 Yields Few Surprises
December 11, 2015
The article on Search Engine Watch titled Bing Reveals the Top US and UK Searches of 2015 in the extremely intellectual categories of Celebs, News, Sport(s), Music, and Film. Starting with the last category, guess what franchise involving wookies and Carrie Fisher took the top place? For Celebrity searches, Taylor Swift took first in the UK, and Caitlyn Jenner in the US, followed closely by Miley Cyrus (and let’s all take a moment to savor the seething rage this data must have caused in Kim Kardashian’s heart.) What does this trivia matter? Ravleen Beeston, UK Sales Director of Bing, is quoted in the article with her two cents,
“Understanding the interests and motivations driving search behaviour online provides invaluable insight for marketers into the audiences they care about. This intelligence allows us to empower marketers to create meaningful connections that deliver more value for both consumers and brands alike. By reflecting back on the key searches over the past 12 months, we can begin to anticipate what will inspire and how to create the right experience in the right context during the year to come.”
Some of the more heartening statistics were related to searches for women’s sports news, which increased from last year. Serena Williams was searched more often than the top five male tennis players combined. And saving the best for last, in spite of the dehumanizing and often racially biased rhetoric we’ve all heard involving Syrian refugees, there was a high volume of searches in the US asking how to provide support and aid for refugees, especially children.
Chelsea Kerwin, December 11, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Google Executives Have a Look but No Touch Rule
December 11, 2015
Have you ever been to a museum and the curator told you to “look, but don’t touch the exhibits?” The phrase comes into play, because museums want to protect the integrity of the exhibits and to keep them preserved for the ages. One of the draws about these new, modern companies is that all employees are allowed to engage with each other in different departments and the higher-ups are available without a hassle. Or at least that is the image they want to project to the public, especially Google. Business Pundit exposes bow Google CEOs interact with their employees in “Google’ s Top Execs Are Always Visible But Almost Never Approachable” like a museum exhibit.
Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Sundar Pichai make themselves seen at their Mountain View headquarters, but do not even think about going near them. They are walled off to small talk and random interactions because all of their time is booked.
Company developer advocate Don Dodge wrote on a Quora Q&A that Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Sundar Pichai are in the no approach zone, Dodge explains:
“However, that doesn’t mean they are easy to approach and engage in discussion. They are very private and don’t engage in small talk. They are usually very focused on their priorities, and their schedule is always fully booked. Larry is a notoriously fast walker and avoids eye contact with anyone so he can get to his destination without disruption.”
Get Larry a Segway or one of those new “hoverboard” toys, then he will be able to zoom right past everyone or run them over. Add a little horn to warn people to get out of the way.
Whitney Grace, December 11, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Medical Search Solved Again
December 10, 2015
I have looked at a wide range of medical information search systems over the years. These range from Medline to the Grateful Med.
I read “A Cure for Medical Researchers’ Big Data Headache.” The Big Data in question is the Medline database. The new search tool is ORiGAMI (I love that wonky upper and lower case thing).
The basic approach involves:
Apollo, a Cray Urika graph computer, possesses massive multithreaded processors and 2 terabytes of shared memory, attributes that allow it to host the entire MEDLINE database and compute multiple pathways on multiple graphs simultaneously. Combined with Helios, CADES’ Cray Urika extreme analytics platform, Sukumar’s team had the cutting-edge hardware needed to process large datasets quickly—about 1,000 times faster than a workstation—and at scale.
And the payoff?
Once the MEDLINE database was brought into the CADES environment, [Sreenivas Rangan Sukumar’s [a data scientist at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory] team applied advanced graph theory models that implement semantic, statistical, and logical reasoning algorithms to create ORiGAMI. The result is a free online application capable of delivering health insights in less than a second based on the combined knowledge of a worldwide medical community.
My view is that Medline is not particularly big. The analysis of the content pool can generate lots of outputs.
From my vantage point in rural Kentucky, this is another government effort to create a search system. Perhaps this is the breakthrough that will surpass IBM Watson’s medical content capabilities?
Does your local health care provider have access to a Cray computer and the other bits and pieces, including a local version of Dr. Sukumar?
Stephen E Arnold, December 10, 2015
Metanautix: Big Data Search
December 9, 2015
I read “Ex-Google, Facebook Duo Aim to Simplify Big Data Search.” The idea is that people with Big Data cannot find what is needed to answer a question. The fix may be developed by Matanautix.
Sound familiar?
I have heard this user requirement for what is it now? 25, 30 years, or more?
According to the write up:
When a company wants to analyze data, typically it first has to input all of that information all into some type of database. Then an engine can be built to bring about answers to any inquires. What Metanautix does, however, is build-in search capabilities for an existing database.
I thought that a number of other firms have developed solutions for Big Data search; for example, Lucidworks. If the article is correct, the fine folks at Lucidworks will have to content with a competitor that does more than put out marketing assertions.
Stephen E Arnold, December 9, 2015
Understanding Trolls, Spam, and Nasty Content
December 9, 2015
The Internet is full of junk. It is a cold hard fact and one that will never die as long as the Internet exists. The amount of trash content was only intensified with the introduction of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterst, and other social media platforms and it keeps pouring onto RSS feeds. The academic community is always up for new studies and capturing new data, so a researcher from the University of Arkansas decided to study mean content. “How ‘Deviant’ Messages Flood Social Media” from Science Daily is an interesting new idea that carries the following abstract:
“From terrorist propaganda distributed by organizations such as ISIS, to political activism, diverse voices now use social media as their major public platform. Organizations deploy bots — virtual, automated posters — as well as enormous paid “armies” of human posters or trolls, and hacking schemes to overwhelmingly infiltrate the public platform with their message. A professor of information science has been awarded a grant to continue his research that will provide an in-depth understanding of the major propagators of viral, insidious content and the methods that make them successful.”
Dr. Nitin Agarwal and will study what behavioral, social, and computational factors cause Internet content to go viral, especially if they have deviant theme. Deviant means along the lines something a troll would post. Agarwal’s research is part of a bigger investigation funded by the Office of Naval Research, Air Force Research, National Science Foundation, and Army Research Office. Agarwal will have a particular focus on how terrorist groups and extremist governments use social media platforms to spread their propaganda. He will also be studying bots that post online content as well.
Many top brass organizations do not have the faintest idea of even what some of the top social media platforms are, much less what their purpose is. A study like this will raise the blinders about them and teach researchers how social media actually works. I wonder if they will venture into 4chan.
Whitney Grace, December 9, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
The Google Cultural Institute Is a Digital Museum
December 8, 2015
Museums are the cultural epicenters of the human race, because the house the highest achievements of art, science, history, and more. The best museums in the world are located in the populous cities and they house price works of art that represent the best of what humanity has to offer. The only problem about these museums is that they are in a stationary location and unless you have the luck to travel, you can’t see these fabulous works in person.
While books have often served as the gateway museums’ collection, it is not the same as seeing an object or exhibit in real life. The Internet with continuously evolving photographic and video technology have replicated museums’ collection as life like as possible without having to leave your home. The only problem with these digital collections are limited to what is within a museums’ archives, but what would happen if an organization collected all these artifacts in one place like a social networking Web site?
Google has done something extraordinary by creating the Google Cultural Institute. The Google Cultural Institute is part digital archive, part museum, part Pinterest, and part encyclopedia. It is described as:
“Discover exhibits and collections from museums and archives all around the world. Explore cultural treasures in extraordinary detail, from hidden gems to masterpieces.”
Users can browse collections of art, history, and science ranging from classical works to street art to the Holocaust and World War I. The Google Cultural Institute presents information via slideshows with captions. Collections are divided by subject and content as well as by the museum where the collections originate. Using Google Street View users can also view the very place where the collections are stored. Users can also make their own collections and share them like on Pinterest.
This is an amazing step towards bringing museums into the next step of their own evolution as well as allowing people who might not have the chance to access them see the collections. The only recommendation is that it would be nice if they put more advertising into the Google Cultural Institute so that people actually know it exists.
Whitney Grace, December 8, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Bing Uses Image Search for Recipes
December 8, 2015
Recipe websites have become the modern alternative to traditional cookbooks, but finding the perfect recipe through an Internet search engine can be tedious. LifeHacker informs us that Bing is now using image search technology to help users whittle down the results in, “Find Recipes by Image in Bing’s Image Search.” Writer Melanie Pinola describes how it works:
“When you look up ‘baked ziti’ or ‘roast turkey’ or any other food-related term and then go to Bing’s images tab, photos that you can access recipes for will have a chef’s hat icon, along with a count of how many sites use that image. Click on the image to see the recipe(s) related to the image and load them in your browser. You’ll save some time versus click through to every recipe in a long list of search results, especially if you’re thinking of making something that looks a particular way, such as bacon egg cups.”
So remember to use Bing next time you’re hunting for a recipe online. Image search tech continues to improve, and there are many potential worthwhile uses. We wonder what it will be applied to next.
Cynthia Murrell, December 8, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
European ECommerce Search Vendors
December 7, 2015
I read “Suchfunktion: Mehr Treffer – mehr Umsatz. “ If you read German, you will learn about several eCommerce search solutions. These are:
- Epoq Search
- Exorbyte
- Fact Finder
- Findologic
- SDL Fredhopper
- Searchperience
Epoq Search, according to the firm’s Web site delivers error tolerant eCommerce search.
Exorbyte is an eCommerce search system which can also handle some enterprise search tasks.
Fact Finder, the best German search engine, according to the company’s Web site, delivers a new backend experience. You can learn more about this firm’s approach to eCommerce search at this link.
Findologic wants to have customers stop searching and find. The system’s features are described briefly at this link.
SDL Fredhopper. I have always liked the name Fredhopper. The system is now SDL eCommerce Optimization. Farewell, Fredhopper. You can learn about the system which is about 20 years old at this link. SDL is the translation outfit.
Searchperience is a cloud and eComerce search system. The system does “professional indexing.” More information is available at this link.
Why did I provide links? The reason is that the source article did not include links. The descriptions of the system are helpful, but the value of the write up pivots on companies not mentioned in the write ups about search originating in the US.
Stephen E Arnold, December 7, 2015
Apple App Store: Uber Where Are You?
December 5, 2015
Short honk: Navigate to the Apple iTunes app store. (Heads up! The link won’t work from this blog post.) Plug in the query “Uber.” What do you get? No Uber app. To find the app, navigate to travel and scroll through the listings. I am not sure which giant vendors’ eCommerce search is worse: Apple’s, Amazon’s, or eBay’s. Nifty when a key word, which is the company’s name and the product name, are not in the search results listings. Very tasty.
Stephen E Arnold, December 5, 2015
Vic Gundotra Restarts His Career
December 2, 2015
Google+ is a social media failure and its creator Vic Gundotra doesn’t like talking about. No one can blame him after he created the social media equivalent of the ET Atari videogame, often dubbed the worst videogame in history. According to Mashable in the article, “Here’s What You Do After Google+: Start Fresh,” Gundotra left Google and was gun shy to accept another job in the technology field. He continued to get daily job offers as he spent over a year traveling and spending time with his family, but he finally decided to focus on his career again by accepting a job with AliveCor.
AliveCor is a heath startup that has received FDA approval to use mobile devices to detect heart problems. Gundotra was interested in taking a job with a health technology startup after his father suffered from two heart attacks.
“AliveCor, while a big step removed from working on building a social network, nonetheless got him excited because of his interests in machine learning and wearable health. It also appealed to him on a more personal level.”
The health tech startup is proud to announce their new employee, but they do not include Google+ in the list of accomplishments in the press release. Gundotra recognizes he did good work at Google, but that his vision for social network to compete with Twitter and Facebook was a washout. He’s eager to move onto more fruitful endeavors, especially technology that will make people’s lives better.
Whitney Grace, December 2, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
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