Google Plus Once the Future of Google Is NOT a Gone Goose
May 31, 2015
I read “Death of Google+ Greatly Exaggerated, Says Its Chief.” This came as a surprise to me. I don’t use any of the social media directly. We have software which squirts some info into various social media channels, but I am happily oblivious to the bloviating about the social media revolution. Isn’t Facebook a version of Geocities? Isn’t Twitter a messaging application? Isn’t Google Plus a chat/bulletin board system? You may find truth, beauty, and the American way in these social apps, but I see variations of email, the telephone, and the old school video conferencing of Databeam (a client decades ago).
The article reports that Google Plus is not dead. Okay, but I didn’t know it was doing much more than trying to figure out how to do what Orkut did before it found itself the object of a certain user cohort’s affections. What did those Brazilians do with Orkut? Gee, I just don’t know.
The write up says:
Google’s embattled social network is alive and well, the product’s boss said at a press event Thursday. But the team behind the product — which has had trouble gaining traction with consumers — is rethinking the goal of the service.
I suppose it is good to have a goal for an expensive, complex service which, if I read the passage correctly, is not exactly growing like Topsy, an electrocuted elephant. Those amusement parks are interesting places.
The new Google Plus will do the Flickr thing with automatic categorization. The new push is, according to the write up:
So why separate the photo features from Google+? Bradley said the social network has a new mission: to connect people based on shared interests. Earlier this month, Google announced a new feature for the product called Collections, which is similar to what rival Pinterest does with its online bulletin boards.
Now there is a “goal”? Splitting up Google Plus services? That rethinking is moving like the pre-electrocution elephant it seems.
Stephen E Arnold, May 31, 2015
SharePoint Is Back and Yammer Is Left Behind
May 28, 2015
Many old things become trend and new again, and even that holds true with software, at least in principle. The old functions of SharePoint are withstanding the test of time, and the trendy new buzzwords that Microsoft worked so hard to push these last few years (cloud, social, collaborative) are fading out. Of course, some of it has to do with perception, but it does seem that Microsoft is harkening back to what the tried and true longtime users want. Read more in the CMS Wire article, “SharePoint is Back, Yammer… Not So Much.”
The article sums up the last few years:
“But these last few years, Microsoft seemingly didn’t want to talk about SharePoint. It wanted to talk about Office 365, the cloud, collaboration, social, mobile devices and perpetual monthly licensing models. Yet no one appears to have told many of the big traditional SharePoint customers of these shifts. These people are still running SharePoint 2007, 2010 and 2013 happily in-house and have no plans to change that for many years.”
So it seems that with the returned focus to on-premises SharePoint, users are pleased in theory. However, it remains to be seen how satisfying SharePoint Server 2016 will be in reality. To stay tuned to the latest reviews and feedback, keep an eye on ArnoldIT.com and his dedicated SharePoint feed. Stephen E. Arnold is a longtime leader in search with an interest in SharePoint. His reporting will shed a light on the realities of user experience once SharePoint Server 2016 becomes available.
Emily Rae Aldridge, May 28, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Tweet This: Ephemera in Google Search Results
May 20, 2015
Short honk: I know the tweet thing is popular with folks in San Francisco, law enforcement, and marketers with degrees in art history. For me, the tweet thing is a “feature” implemented by one of the goslings fooling around with this blog and our posts on Xenky.com about my new cyberosint book. Now the GOOG has re-embraced Twitter content. The read about this innovation, navigate to “A New Way to Discover Tweets.” The write up uses a compelling example; to wit: Taylor Swift.
Stephen E Arnold, May 20, 2015
Popular and Problematic Hadoop
May 15, 2015
We love open source on principle, and Hadoop is indeed an open-source powerhouse. However, any organization considering a Hadoop system must understand how tricky implementation can be, despite the hype. A pair of writers at GCN asks and answers the question, “What’s Holding Back Hadoop?” The brief article reports on a recent survey of data management pros by data-researcher TDWI. Reporters Troy K. Schneider and Jonathan Lutton explain:
“Hadoop — the open-source, distributed programming framework that relies on parallel processing to store and analyze both structured and unstructured data — has been the talk of big data for several years now. And while a recent survey of IT, business intelligence and data warehousing leaders found that 60 percent will Hadoop in production by 2016, deployment remains a daunting task. TDWI — which, like GCN, is owned by 1105 Media — polled data management professionals in both the public and private sector, who reported that staff expertise and the lack of a clear business case topped their list of barriers to implementation.”
The write-up supplies a couple bar graphs of survey results, including the top obstacles to implementation and the primary benefits of going to the trouble. Strikingly, only six percent or respondents say there’s no Hadoop in their organizations’ foreseeable future. Though not covered in the GCN write-up, the full, 43-page report includes word on best practices and implementation trends; it can be downloaded here (registration required).
Cynthia Murrell, May 15, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Emojis Spur Ancient Language Practices
May 12, 2015
Emojis, different from their cousin emoticons, are a standard in Internet jargon and are still resisted by most who grew up in a world sans instant connection. Mike Isaac, who writes the New York Times Bits blog, tried his best to resist the urge to use a colon and parentheses to express his mood. Isaac’s post “The Rise Of Emoji On Instagram Is Causing Language Repercussions” discusses the rise of the emoji language.
Emojis are quickly replacing English abbreviations, such as LOL and TTYL. People are finding it easier to select a smiley face picture over having to type text. Isaac points to how social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat users are relying more on these pictograms for communication. Instagram’s Thomas Dimson mentioned we are watching the rise of a new language.
People string emojis together to form complete sentences and sentiments. Snapchat and Instagram rely on pictures as their main content, which in turn serves as communication.
“Instagram itself is a means of expression that does not require the use of words. The app’s meteoric rise has largely been attributed to the power of images, the ease that comes, for instance, in looking at a photo of a sunset rather than reading a description of one. Other companies, like Snapchat, have also risen to fame and popularity through the expressive power of images.”
Facebook and Twitter are pushing more images and videos on their own platforms. It is a rudimentary form of communication, but it harkens back to the days of cave paintings. People are drawn to images, because they are easy to interpret from their basic meaning and they do not have a language barrier. A picture of a dog is still the same in Spanish or English. The only problem from using emojis is actually understanding the meaning behind them. A smiley face is easy to interpret, but a dolphin, baseball glove, and maple leaf might need some words for clarification.
Isaac finishes that one of the reasons he resisted emojis so much was that it made him feel childish, so he reserved them for his close friends and family. The term “childish” is subjective, just like the meaning of emojis, so as they become more widely adopted it will become more accepted.
Whitney Grace, May 12, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Reading in the Attention Deficit World
May 12, 2015
The article on Popist titled Telling the Truth with Charts outlines the most effective and simple method of presenting the information on the waning of book-reading among Americans. While the article focuses on the effectiveness of the chart, the information in the chart is disturbing as well, stating that the amount of Americans who read zero books in 2014 is up to 23% from 8% in 1987. The article links to another article on The Atlantic titled The Decline of the American Book Lover. That article presents an argument for some hope,
“The percentage of young folks reading for pleasure stopped declining. Last year, the NEA found that 52 percent of 18-24 year-olds had read a book outside of work or school, the same as in the pre-Facebook days of 2002. If book culture were in terminal decline, this is the demographic where you’d expect it to be fading fastest. Perhaps the worst of the fall is over. “
The article demonstrates the connection between education level and reading for pleasure, which may be validation for many teachers and professors. However, there also seems to be a growing tendency among students to read, even homework, without absorbing anything, or in other words, to skim texts instead of paying close attention. This may be the effect of too much TV or
Facebook, or even the No Child Left Behind generation entering college. Students are far more interested in their grades than in their education, and just tallying up the numbers of books they or anyone else read is not going to paint an accurate portrait. Similarly, what books are the readers reading? If they are all Twilight and 50 Shades of Grey, do we still celebrate the accomplishment?
Chelsea Kerwin, May 12, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Search Left Out of the Collaborative Economy Honeycomb
May 8, 2015
I must admit that I knew very little about the collaborative economy. I used AirBnB once time and worried about my little test. I survived. I rode in an Uber car one time because my son is an aficionado. I am okay with the subway and walking. I ignore apps which allegedly make my life better, faster, and more expensive.
I saw a post which pointed me to the Chief Digital Officer Summit and that pointed me to this page with the amazing honeycomb shown below. The title is “Collaborative Economy Honeycomb 2: Watch It Grow”
The hexagons are okay, but the bulk of the write up is a listing of companies which manifest the characteristics of a collaborative honeycomb outfit.
Most of the companies were unfamiliar to me. I did recognize the names of a couple of the honeycombers; for example, Khan Academy, Etsy, eBay (ah, delightful eBay), Craigslist, Freelancer, the Crypto currencies (yep, my Dark Web work illuminated this hexagon in the honeycomb for me), and Indiegogo (I met the founder at a function in Manhattan).
But the other 150 companies in the list were news to me.
But what caused me to perk up and pay attention was one factoid:
There were zero search, content processing, or next generation information access companies in the list.
I formed a hypothesis which will probably give indigestion to the individuals and financial services firm pumping money into search and content processing companies. Here it is:
The wave of innovation captured in the wonky honeycomb is moving forward with search as an item on a checklist. The finding functions of these outfits boil down to social media buzz and niche marketing. Information access is application centric, not search centric.
If I am correct, why would honeycomb companies in collaboration mode want to pump money into a proprietary keyword search system? Why not use open source software and put effort into features for the app crowd?
Net net: Generating big money from organic license deals may be very difficult if the honeycomb analysis is on the beam. How hard will it be to sell a high priced search system to the companies identified in this analysis? I think that the task might be difficult and time consuming.
the good news is that the list of companies provides outfits like Attivio, BA Insight, Coveo, Recommind, Smartlogic, and other information retrieval firms with some ducks at which to shoot. How many ducks will fall in a fusillade of marketing?
One hopes that the search sharpshooters prevail.
Stephen E Arnold, May 8, 2015
Microsoft Goes Mobile with Delve
April 30, 2015
Microsoft has made enhancements to the core functionality of Delve, as well as rolling out native mobile app versions for iOS and Android. ZDNet breaks the news in their article, “Microsoft Delivers iOS, Android Versions of Delve.”
The article begins:
“Microsoft has made native mobile versions of its Delve search and presentation app available for Android phones, Android wear devices and iPhones. Delve presents in card-like form information from Exchange, OneDrive for Business, SharePoint Online and Yammer enterprise-social networking components. Over the coming months Delve will be adding more content sources, including email attachments, OneNote and Skype for Business.”
This seems like a Microsoft component that has great potential for mobile use, since its focus is “at a glance” information retrieval. Keep an eye on ArnoldIT.com to see what Stephen E. Arnold has to say about it in coming months. Arnold has made a career out of following all things search and enterprise, and he reports his findings at ArnoldIT.com. His dedicated SharePoint feed collects a lot of interesting reporting regarding SharePoint and the rest of Microsoft productivity offerings.
Emily Rae Aldridge, April 30, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Tweet Storm: Ah, Social Media Mavens at Work
April 29, 2015
I think we tweet stories posted to this blog. Don’t know. Don’t care. A while back someone sent me an email pointing out that I was promoting a naked Miley Cyrus. Odd. I write about online information and content processing. Not much about naked. Not much about Miley Cyrus, a Disney confection, right? When I think of Disney, I recall a conversation with one of that outfit’s senior managers. The message conveyed to me was that Infoseek was the greatest thing since sliced bread. My analysis was different. Fortunately I think the invoice cleared. Maybe not. Disney is not an IT outfit at its core. But Twitter somehow had connected Beyond Search with the aforementioned Miley person. I think we had to call some folks we knew. Even then, Twitter required several weeks to figure out how Miley and me became digitally connected. Shudder.
I read with considerable amusement “How One Tweet Wiped $8bn Off Twitter’s Value.” Compared to other high tech issues, the single tweet thing is indicative of the importance of a single action. According to the write up, Twitter did something. Nasdaq did something. A filtering outfit did something. Bingo. Stock goes down. The write up stated:
It has all left Twitter, which did not have great news to share with investors anyway, somewhat red-faced.
Yep, Twitter seemed concerned that whatever happened was not so good. Twitter did not demonstrate the same concern and alacrity when Beyond Search and Miley were exchanging bits. Why am I not surprised. A single tweet is really important when it costs Twitter money. Other misconnects in the Twitter system are not quite as important in my experience.
Stephen E Arnold, April 29, 2015
Attensity’s Semantic Annotation Tool “Understands” Emoticons
April 27, 2015
The article on PCWorld titled For Attensity’s BI Parsing Tool, Emoticons Are No Problem explains the recent attempts at fine-tuning the monitoring and relaying the conversations about a particular organization or enterprise. The amount of data that must be waded through is massive, and littered with non-traditional grammar, language and symbols. Luminoso is one company interested in aiding companies with their Compass tool, in addition to Attensity. The article says,
“Attensity’s Semantic Annotation natural-language processing tool… Rather than relying on traditional keyword-based approaches to assessing sentiment and deriving meaning… takes a more flexible natural-language approach. By combining and analyzing the linguistic structure of words and the relationship between a sentence’s subject, action and object, it’s designed to decipher and surface the sentiment and themes underlying many kinds of common language—even when there are variations in grammatical or linguistic expression, emoticons, synonyms and polysemies.”
The article does not explain how exactly Attensity’s product works, only that it can somehow “understand” emoticons. This seems like an odd term though, and most likely actually refers to a process of looking it up from a list rather than actually being able to “read” it. At any rate, Attensity promises that their tool will save in hundreds of human work hours.
Chelsea Kerwin, April 27, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
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