Finnish Content Discovery Case Study
July 31, 2015
There are many services that offer companies the ability to increase their content discover. One of these services is Leiki, which offers intelligent user profiling, context-based intelligence, and semantic SaaS solutions. Rather than having humans adapt their content to get to the top of search engine results, the machine is altered to fit a human’s needs. Leiki pushes relevant content to a user’s search query. Leiki released a recent, “Case Study: Lieki Smart Services Increase Customer Flow Significantly At Alma Media.”
Alma Media is one of the largest media companies in Finland, owning many well-known Finnish brands. These include Finland’s most popular Web site, classified ads, and a tabloid newspaper. Alma Media employed two of Leiki’s services to grow its traffic:
“Leiki’s Smart Services are adept at understanding textual content across various content types: articles, video, images, classifieds, etc. Each content item is analyzed with our semantic engine Leiki Focus to create a very detailed “fingerprint” or content profile of topics associated with the content.
SmartContext is the market leading service for contextual content recommendations. It’s uniquely able to recommend content across content types and sites and does this by finding related content using the meaning of content – not keyword frequency.
SmartPersonal stands for behavioral content recommendations. As it also uses Leiki’s unique analysis of the meaning in content, it can recommend content from any other site and content type based on usage of one site.”
The case study runs down how Leiki’s services improved traffic and encouraged more users to consume its content. Leiki’s main selling point in the cast study is that offers users personal recommendations based on content they clicked on Alma Media Web sites. Leiki wants to be a part of developing Web 3.0 and the research shows that personalization is the way for it to go.
Whitney Grace, July 31, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
On Embedding Valuable Outside Links
July 21, 2015
If media websites take this suggestion from an article at Monday Note, titled “How Linking to Knowledge Could Boost News Media,” there will be no need to search; we’ll just follow the yellow brick links. Writer Frederic Filloux laments the current state of affairs, wherein websites mostly link to internal content, and describes how embedded links could be much, much more valuable. He describes:
“Now picture this: A hypothetical big-issue story about GE’s strategic climate change thinking, published in the Wall Street Journal, the FT, or in The Atlantic, suddenly opens to a vast web of knowledge. The text (along with graphics, videos, etc.) provided by the news media staff, is amplified by access to three books on global warming, two Ted Talks, several databases containing references to places and people mentioned in the story, an academic paper from Knowledge@Wharton, a MOOC from Coursera, a survey from a Scandinavian research institute, a National Geographic documentary, etc. Since (supposedly), all of the above is semanticized and speaks the same lingua franca as the original journalistic content, the process is largely automatized.”
Filloux posits that such a trend would be valuable not only for today’s Web surfers, but also for future historians and researchers. He cites recent work by a couple of French scholars, Fabian Suchanek and Nicoleta Preda, who have been looking into what they call “Semantic Culturonomics,” defined as “a paradigm that uses semantic knowledge bases in order to give meaning to textual corpora such as news and social media.” Web media that keeps this paradigm in mind will wildly surpass newspapers in the role of contemporary historical documentation, because good outside links will greatly enrich the content.
Before this vision becomes reality, though, media websites must be convinced that linking to valuable content outside their site is worth the risk that users will wander away. The write-up insists that a reputation for providing valuable outside links will more than make up for any amount of such drifting visitors. We’ll see whether media sites agree.
Cynthia Murrell, July 21, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
On Embedding Valuable Outside Links
July 17, 2015
If media websites take this suggestion from an article at Monday Note, titled “How Linking to Knowledge Could Boost News Media,” there will be no need to search; we’ll just follow the yellow brick links. Writer Frederic Filloux laments the current state of affairs, wherein websites mostly link to internal content, and describes how embedded links could be much, much more valuable. He describes:
“Now picture this: A hypothetical big-issue story about GE’s strategic climate change thinking, published in the Wall Street Journal, the FT, or in The Atlantic, suddenly opens to a vast web of knowledge. The text (along with graphics, videos, etc.) provided by the news media staff, is amplified by access to three books on global warming, two Ted Talks, several databases containing references to places and people mentioned in the story, an academic paper from Knowledge@Wharton, a MOOC from Coursera, a survey from a Scandinavian research institute, a National Geographic documentary, etc. Since (supposedly), all of the above is semanticized and speaks the same lingua franca as the original journalistic content, the process is largely automatized.”
Filloux posits that such a trend would be valuable not only for today’s Web surfers, but also for future historians and researchers. He cites recent work by a couple of French scholars, Fabian Suchanek and Nicoleta Preda, who have been looking into what they call “Semantic Culturonomics,” defined as “a paradigm that uses semantic knowledge bases in order to give meaning to textual corpora such as news and social media.” Web media that keeps this paradigm in mind will wildly surpass newspapers in the role of contemporary historical documentation, because good outside links will greatly enrich the content.
Before this vision becomes reality, though, media websites must be convinced that linking to valuable content outside their site is worth the risk that users will wander away. The write-up insists that a reputation for providing valuable outside links will more than make up for any amount of such drifting visitors. We’ll see whether media sites agree.
Cynthia Murrell, July 17, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
How Not to Drive Users Away from a Website
July 15, 2015
Writer and web psychologist Liraz Margalit at the Next Web has some important advice for websites in “The Psychology Behind Web Browsing.” Apparently, paying attention to human behavioral tendencies can help webmasters avoid certain pitfalls that could damage their brands. Imagine that!
The article cites a problem an unspecified news site encountered when it tried to build interest in its videos by making them play automatically when a user navigated to their homepage. I suspect I know who they’re talking about, and I recall thinking at the time, “how rude!” I thought it was just because I didn’t want to be chastised by people near me for suddenly blaring a news video. According to Margalit, though, my problem goes much deeper: It’s an issue of control rooted in pre-history. She writes:
“The first humans had to be constantly on alert for changes in their environment, because unexpected sounds or sights meant only one thing: danger. When we click on a website hoping to read an article and instead are confronted with a loud, bright video, the automatic response is not so different from that our prehistoric ancestors, walking in the forest and stumbling upon a bear or a saber-toothed hyena.”
This need for safety has morphed into a need for control; we do not like to be startled or lost. When browsing the Web, we want to encounter what we expect to encounter (perhaps not in terms of content, but certainly in terms of format.) The name for this is the “expectation factor,” and an abrupt assault on the senses is not the only pitfall to be avoided. Getting lost in an endless scroll can also be disturbing; that’s why those floating menus, that follow you as you move down the page, were invented. Margalit notes:
“Visitors like to think they are in charge of their actions. When a video plays without visitors initiating any interaction, they feel the opposite. If a visitor feels that a website is trying to ‘sell’ them something, or push them into viewing certain content without permission, they will resist by trying to take back the interaction and intentionally avoid that content.”
And that, of course, is the opposite of what websites want, so giving users the control they expect is a smart business move. Besides, it’s only polite to ask before engaging a visitor’s Adobe Flash or, especially, speakers.
Cynthia Murrell, July 15, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Kashman to Host Session at SharePoint Fest Seattle
July 14, 2015
Mark Kashman, Senior Product Manager at Microsoft, will deliver a presentation at the upcoming SharePoint Fest Seattle in August. All eyes remain peeled for any news about the new SharePoint Server 2016 release, so his talk entitled, “SharePoint at the Core of Reinventing Productivity,” should be well watched. Benzinga gives a sneak peek with their article, “Microsoft’s Mark Kashman to Deliver Session at SharePoint Fest Seattle.”
The article begins:
“Mark Kashman will deliver a session at SharePoint Fest Seattle on August 19, 2015. His session will be held at the Washington State Convention Center in downtown Seattle. SharePoint Fest is a two-day training conference (plus an optional day of workshops) that will have over 70 sessions spread across multiple tracks that brings together SharePoint enthusiasts and practitioners with many of the leading SharePoint experts and solution providers in the country.”
Stephen E. Arnold is also keeping an eye out for the latest news surrounding SharePoint and its upcoming release. His Web service ArnoldIT.com efficiently synthesizes and summarizes essential tips, tricks, and news surrounding all things search, including SharePoint. The dedicated SharePoint feed can save users time by serving as a one-stop-shop for the most pertinent pieces for users and managers alike.
Emily Rae Aldridge, July 14, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Algorithmic Art Historians
July 14, 2015
Apparently, creativity itself is no longer subjective. MIT Technology Review announces, “Machine Vision Algorithm Chooses the Most Creative Paintings in History.” Traditionally, art historians judge how creative a work is based on its novelty and its influence on subsequent artists. The article notes that this is a challenging task, requiring an encyclopedic knowledge of art history and the judgement to decide what is novel and what has been influential. Now, a team at Rutgers University has developed an algorithm they say is qualified for the job.
Researchers Ahmed Elgammal and Babak Saleh credit several developments with bringing AI to this point. First, we’ve recently seen several breakthroughs in machine understanding of visual concepts, called classemes. that include recognition of factors from colors to specific objects. Another important factor: there now exist well-populated online artwork databases that the algorithms can, um, study. The article continues:
“The problem is to work out which paintings are the most novel compared to others that have gone before and then determine how many paintings in the future have uses similar features to work out their influence. Elgammal and Saleh approach this as a problem of network science. Their idea is to treat the history of art as a network in which each painting links to similar paintings in the future and is linked to by similar paintings from the past. The problem of determining the most creative is then one of working out when certain patterns of classemes first appear and how these patterns are adopted in the future. …
“The problem of finding the most creative paintings is similar to the problem of finding the most influential person on a social network, or the most important station in a city’s metro system or super spreaders of disease. These have become standard problems in network theory in recent years, and now Elgammal and Saleh apply it to creativity networks for the first time.”
Just what we needed. I have to admit the technology is quite intriguing, but I wonder: Will all creative human endeavors eventually have their algorithmic counterparts and, if so, how will that effect human expression?
Cynthia Murrell, July 14, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Facebook Offers Ad Revenue for Streamlined News Experience
May 28, 2015
Facebook is offering an interesting carrot to certain publishers, like the New York Times and National Geographic, in the interest of streamlining the Facebook use-experience; CNet reports, “Facebook Aims to Host Full Stories, Will Let Publishers Keep Ad Revenue, Says Report.” Of course, the project has to have a hip yet obvious name: “Instant Articles” is reportedly the feature’s title. Writer Nate Ralph cites an article in the Wall Street Journal as he tells us:
“The move is aimed at improving the user experience on the world’s largest social network. Today, clicking on a news story on Facebook directs you to the news publication’s website, adding additional time as that site loads and — more importantly for Facebook — taking users away from the social network. With Instant Articles, all the content would load more or less immediately, keeping users engaged on Facebook’s site. The upside for publishers would be increased money from ads, the Journal said. With one of the versions of Instant Articles that’s being considered, publishers would keep all the revenue from associated ads that they sold. If Facebook sold the ads, however, the social network would keep 30 percent of the revenue.”
Apparently, some news publishers have been “wary” of becoming tightly integrated into Facebook, perhaps fearing a lack of control over their content and image. The write-up goes on to note that Facebook has been testing a feature that lets users prioritize updates from different sources. How many other ways to capture and hold our attention does the social media giant have up its sleeve?
Cynthia Murrell, May 28, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Peruse Until You Are Really Happy
May 22, 2015
Have you ever needed to quickly locate a file that you just know you made, but were unable to find it on your computer, cloud storage, tablet, smartphone, or company pool drive? What is even worse is if your search query does not pick up on any of your keywords! What are you supposed to do then? VentureBeat might have the answer to your problems as explained in the article, “Peruse Is A New Natural Language Search Tool For Your Dropbox And Box Files.” Peruse is a search tool that allows users to use their natural flow of talking to find their files and information.
Natural language querying is already a big market for business intelligence software, but it is not as common in file sharing services. Peruse is a startup with the ability to search Dropbox and Box accounts using a regular question. If you ask, “Where is the marketing data from last week?” The software will be able to pull the file for you without even opening the file. Right now, Peruse can only find information in spreadsheets, but the company is working on expanding the supported file types.
“The way we index these files is we actually look at them visually — it understands them in a way a person would understand them,” said [co-founder and CEO Luke Gotszling], who is showing off Peruse…”
Peruse’s goal is to change the way people use document search. Document search has remained pretty consistent since 1995, twenty years later Gotszling is believes it is time for big change. Gotzling is right, document search remains the same, while Web search changes everyday.
Whitney Grace, May 22, 2015
Stephen E Arnold, Publisher of CyberOSINT at www.xenky.com
Make Mine Mobile Search
May 21, 2015
It was only a matter of time, but Google searches on mobile phones and tablets have finally pulled ahead of desktop searches says The Register in “Peak PC: ‘Most’ Google Web Searches ‘Come From Mobiles’ In US.” Google AdWords product management representative Jerry Dischler said that more Google searches took place on mobile devices in ten countries, including the US and Japan. Google owns 92.22 percent of the mobile search market and 65.73 percent of desktop searches. What do you think Google wants to do next? They want to sell more mobile apps!
The article says that Google has not shared any of the data about the ten countries except for the US and Japan and the search differential between platforms. Google, however, is trying to get more people to by more ads and the search engine giant is making the technology and tools available:
“Google has also introduced new tools for marketers to track their advertising performance to see where advertising clicks are coming from, and to try out new ways to draw people in. The end result, Google hopes, is to bring up the value of its mobile advertising business that’s now in the majority, allegedly.”
Mobile ads are apparently cheaper than desktop ads, so Google will get lower revenues. What will probably happen is that as more users transition to making purchases via phones and tablets, ad revenue will increase vi mobile platforms.
Whitney Grace, May 21, 2015
Stephen E Arnold, Publisher of CyberOSINT at www.xenky.com
Explaining Big Data Mythology
May 14, 2015
Mythologies usually develop over a course of centuries, but big data has only been around for (arguably) a couple decades—at least in the modern incarnate. Recently big data has received a lot of media attention and product development, which was enough to give the Internet time to create a big data mythology. The Globe and Mail wanted to dispel some of the bigger myths in the article, “Unearthing Big Myths About Big Data.”
The article focuses on Prof. Joerg Niessing’s big data expertise and how he explains the truth behind many of the biggest big data myths. One of the biggest items that Niessing wants people to understand is that gathering data does not equal dollar signs, you have to be active with data:
“You must take control, starting with developing a strategic outlook in which you will determine how to use the data at your disposal effectively. “That’s where a lot of companies struggle. They do not have a strategic approach. They don’t understand what they want to learn and get lost in the data,” he said in an interview. So before rushing into data mining, step back and figure out which customer segments and what aspects of their behavior you most want to learn about.”
Niessing says that big data is not really big, but made up of many diverse, data points. Big data also does not have all the answers, instead it provides ambiguous results that need to be interpreted. Have questions you want to be answered before gathering data. Also all of the data returned is not the greatest. Some of it is actually garbage, so it cannot be usable for a project. Several other myths are uncovered, but the truth remains that having a strategic big data plan in place is the best way to make the most of big data.
Whitney Grace, May 14, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
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