Online and Medicine: Responsibility Falls on Customer
February 19, 2012
Sunday morning in Harrod’s Creek. Reasonably quiet for now. Gun fire will crackle when the sun rises. Police sirens will howl as some Commonwealth residents crash their cars after a late night run on the Bourbon Trail.
These are consequences of human choices. Guns do not fire themselves. Automobiles, at least so far, do not drive themselves.
Two stories caught my attention, and the way in which an “issue” was handled by writers and their publications make clear the odd handling of human intent.
First, navigate to “Infants’ Tylenol Recalled.” The hook is that a large company, Johnson & Johnson, manufactured or caused to be manufactured a medicine which can do harm not good. I do not know if the story is accurate, but it contains an interesting passage:
Company officials say in some cases the flow restrictor was pushed into the bottle when inserting the syringe. The recall applies to one-ounce bottles of grape flavored Infants Tylenol Oral Suspension. There have been no adverse events from the problem according to McNeil.
So no adverse effect to a child given Tylenol. Okay, the company is not chastised, nor is the article placing blame. On the surface, it seems that the company facing the allegation took action were it not for this statement: “Recall-plagued Johnson & Johnson is pulling all infant Tylenol off the U.S. Market.” So somewhere in this recall story people made decisions and people did the alleged action to put infants at risk.
Now point your browser thing at “Google’s Privacy Invasion: It’s Your Fault.” The story addresses the allegation that either Apple or Google took competitive actions. The online customer, in my opinion, is a clueless about the risk of certain online actions as is an infant taking medicine. Note what the “real” journalists at InfoWorld offer:
No, let’s put the blame where it belongs, on us, the users of the Internet. We rely on free services like Gmail while insisting on “privacy,” a term that we probably can’t even define to our collective satisfaction. We accept terms of service contracts and privacy policies that explain in excessive detail how we will not get privacy, how our information will be used, and then we object.
So instead of privacy, let’s talk about control. You do have some of that, still. Make some choices about how your information will be used–because it will be used–instead of accepting default settings.
Okay, online customers are at fault. Why are both stories giving the entities facing these allegations such gentle treatment. Humans make decisions at companies which have an impact on consumers who assume, trust, or expect products to work without a problem.
I find this interesting because as products and services become more complex, those using the problems are making decisions which deliver customer satisfaction. Maybe customer satisfaction is not a priority? Maybe journalists are finding it easier to ignore or shift the blame?
Fascinating. When one tries to search for information about these matters, the content which surfaces is not about the deeper problems. When content is removed or shaped, the “facts” of an issue become secondary to the spin. “Consumers, it is your fault” becomes the reality. I don’t believe this assertion for one New York minute. And pharma companies? Yikes.
Stephen E Arnold, February 19, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Palantir Applies Lipstick, Much Lipstick
February 16, 2012
I had three people send me a link to the Washingtonian article “Killer App.” On the surface, the write up is about search and content processing, predictive analytics, and the value of these next generation solutions. Underneath the surface, I see more of a public relations piece. but that’s just my opinion.
Let me point out that the article was more of a political write up than a technology article. Palantir, in my opinion, has been pounding the pavement, taking journalists to Starbuck’s, and working overtime. The effort is understandable. In 2010 and 2011, Palantir was involved in a dispute with i2 Group, now a unit of IBM, about intellectual property. The case was resolved and the terms of the settlement were not revealed. I know zero about the legal hassles but I did pick up some information that suggested the i2 Group was not pleased with Palantir’s ability to parse Analyst Notebook file types.
I steered clear of the hassle because in the past I have done work for i2 Ltd., the predecessor to the i2 Group. I know that the file structure was a closely held and highly prized chunk of information. At any rate, the dust is now settling, and any company with some common sense would be telling its story to anyone who will listen. Palantir has a large number of smart people and significant funding. Therefore, getting publicity to support marketing is a standard business practice.
Now what’s with the Washingtonian article? First, the Washington is a consumer publication aimed at the affluent, socially aware folks who live in the District, Maryland, and Virginia. The story kicks off with a description of Palantir’s system which can parse disparate information and make sense of items which would be otherwise lost in the flood of data rushing through most organizations today. The article said:
To conduct what became known as Operation Fallen Hero, investigators turned to a little-known Silicon Valley software company called Palantir Technologies. Palantir’s expertise is in finding connections among people, places, and events in large repositories of electronic data. Federal agents had amassed a trove of reporting on the drug cartels, their members, their funding mechanisms and smuggling routes.
Then the leap:
Officials were so impressed with Palantir’s software that seven months later they bought licenses for 1,150 investigators and analysts across the country. The total price, including training, was $7.5 million a year. The government chose not to seek a bid from some of Palantir’s competitors because, officials said, analysts had already tried three products and each “failed to provide the necessary comprehensive solution on missions where our agents risk life and limb.” As far as Washington was concerned, only Palantir would do. Such an endorsement would be remarkable if it were unique. But over the past three years, Palantir, whose Washington office in Tysons Corner is just six miles from the CIA’s headquarters, has become a darling of the US law-enforcement and national-security establishment. Other agencies now use Palantir for some variation on the challenge that bedeviled analysts in Operation Fallen Hero—how to organize and catalog intimidating amounts of data and then find meaningful insights that humans alone usually can’t.
Sounds good. The only issue is that there are a number of companies delivering this type of solution. The competitors range from vendors of SharePoint add ins to In-Q-Tel funded Digital Reasoning to JackBe, a mash up and fusion outfit in Silver Spring, Maryland. Even Google is in the game via its backing of Recorded Future, a company which asserts that it can predict what will happen. There are quite sophisticated services provided by low profile SAIC and SRA International. I would toss in my former employers Halliburton and Booz, Allen & Hamilton, but these firms are not limited to one particular government solution. Bottom line: There are quite a few heavy hitters in this market space. Many of them outpace Palantir’s technology and Palantir’s business methods, in my opinion
In short, Palantir is a relative newcomer in a field of superstar technology companies. In my opinion, the companies providing predictive solutions and data fusion systems are like the NFL Pro Bowl selections. Palantir is a player, and, in my opinion, a firm which operates at a competitive level. However, Palantir is not the quarterback of the winning team.
From my viewpoint in Harrod’s Creek, the Washingtonian writes about Palantir without providing substantive context. In-Q-Tel funds many organizations and has taken heat because many of these firms’ solutions are stand alone systems. Integrations without legal blow back is important. Firms which end up in messy litigation increase security risks; they do not reduce security risks. Short cuts are not unknown in Washington political circles. It is important to work with companies which demonstrate high value behaviors, avoid political and legal mud fights, and deliver value over time.
The Washingtonian article tells an interesting story, but it is a bit like a short story. Reality has been shaped I believe. Palantir is presented out of context, and I think that the article is interesting for three reasons:
- What it asserts about a company which is one of a number of firms providing next generation intelligence solutions
- The magazine itself which presented a story which reminded me of a television late night advertorial
- The political agenda which reveals something about Washington journalism.
In short, an quite good example of 21st century “real” journalism. That lipstick looks good. Does it contain lead?
Stephen E Arnold, February 16, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Rapidhog Has the Answers
February 15, 2012
We’ve found another information aggregation service that taps into the “collective wisdom” of the Web. Rapidhog is a place where folks can buy and sell knowledge. Its About page states:
Rapidhog connects the people who need to know and the people who do know to create a community of information exchange. The site allows people to freely ask questions and obtain answers while allowing those who answer to earn money for their help. It will also allow those who have information they find helpful such as video tutorials and walkthroughs to offer those to our members at a cost.
My question is about quality control. How do I know the person to whom I’m giving a few bucks to answer my question isn’t just making something up? Or, more likely, performing the Web search I could have done for free and probably in less time than it took to post my query?
With the Associated Press focusing on certain aggregation services, those offering new types of roll up services may want to check their rear view mirror.
Cynthia Murrell, February 15, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
New Oracle E-Book
February 3, 2012
Oracle brews a data latté with cinnamon you may enjoy if you if you suck down this new book. The Salvatoreyc blog presents for download, “Oracle XSQL: Combining SQL, Oracle Text, XSLT and Java to Publish Dynamic Web Content.” The product description states:
Welcome to the exciting world of eXtended Structured Query Language (XSQL). ‘Oracle XSQL: Combining SQL, Oracle Text, XSLT and Java to Publish Dynamic Web Content’ presents a complete approach to building XML Web applications and Web services with XSQL, Oracle Text, SQL, XSLT, and Java from data found in Oracle databases. Companion Web site contains the code examples in the book as well.
Sounds helpful. The download is only available to Media Search members, and the download page takes you right to their signup sheet. Naturally, there is a fee.
Cynthia Murrell, February 3, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Thomson Reuters Get Social
February 2, 2012
If you don’t association Thomson Reuters and social, you are not alone. Fresh from the innovative print magazine for the consumers at the World Economic Forum, Thomson Reuters is going social. You can check out the service at the Reuters Social site. According to “Introducing Reuters Social Pulse,”
Today we launched Social Pulse, our new social media hub on Reuters.com designed to show you the most talked-about news, companies and influencers across the Web. The first thing you’ll see on the page is the news most popular in Reuters social network.
Interesting. One question comes to mind, “How will this generate money to get the $13 billion dollar outfit growing and producing enough cash to pay dividends, debts coming due, and the costs of innovations like the social site and, of course, the consumer magazine for Davos types?”
Stephen E Arnold, February 3, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Chasing Revenue: Dreams into Dollars Redux
January 30, 2012
More than 20 years ago, I wrote an essay for Online Magazine, published at the time by Jeff Pemberton, a former New York Times executive. The title of the write up was “Dreams into Dollars.” The main point was that anyone involved in electronic information could see that eliminating the middle men (disintermediation) and near real time information dissemination (gravity free processes) could make a lot of money. My interest in search has been informed by my wrestling with the problems of finding digital information. Once produced, if one cannot fit a document, that document for most purposes does not exist. The more time between content creation and one’s looking for that information object, the greater the likelihood is that the content is gone forever. Now a Babylonian clay tablet does not share this characteristic.
The problem, I pointed out, was that most online products and services lost money. Only a few would turn a profit because the business models from pre-digital businesses looked as if they were congruent. Flash forward to 2012 and the lessons of the past are being relearned and presented as new ideas.
I don’t pay much, if any, attention to the azure chip consulting firms. I did note that a popular commentator does and thinks about their implications. Navigate to “Reconsidering Gartner’s Cycle of Hype.” The article points out that the middle of the pack consulting firm’s chart which purports to explain how hyperbole rises and falls around a technology product is wrong, off base, and out to lunch. To support this assertion, the article offers:
In fact, just about every innovation I know of has to make it through the wilderness before it gets anywhere close to a hype cycle. The wilderness is the term for the years (or decades) that a founder/entrepreneur/artist/technology must spend being ignored and unfunded before the breakthrough of overnight success occurs.
I agree.
What I found interesting was an article in the allegedly new media savvy Guardian, one of the UK’s “real” newspapers. The article is “The Self-Epublishing Bubble.” [The link was flakey, sometimes rendering and sometimes not. You are on your own, pilgrim.] The long article, which helpfully cites an economics essay “Financial Instability Hypothesis,” a working paper published as gray literature in 1992. If you overlooked this analysis by Hyman P. Minsky, snag it at this link.
“The Self Epublishing Bubble” summarizes what looks to me like a variant of the Gartner hype cycle debunked by “Reconsidering Gartner’s Cycle of Hype.” The Guardian article makes a compelling case that self publishing (probably like this blog) is a dead end. The implication is that once the self epublishing bubble explodes, there will be opportunities for traditional publishers to get back in the game.
Here’s a snippet I jotted in my Dollar General ruled notebook:
The “Lender in the Last Resort” cannot really step in to save the “investors”, as these are the hundreds of thousands of hopeful and now-disappointed first-time epublishers. Instead, the government (if we’re lucky) steps in to bail out the publishing industry, and to regulate the digital companies that created the bubble in the first place. Or the government could continue to subsidise these companies, as it does just now, and in so doing create the next bubble.
Now that is a fascinating hypothesis. The only hitch is that the few publishing outfits for which I have current information facing stagnant or declining revenues and razor blade thin profits. My hunch is that the hype cycle and the self epublishing analysis are roughly equal in long term value.
Oh, try and search for the article “The Self Epublishing Bubble” and the Guardian’s Web site times out. Your mileage may vary. That search function may be a commodity, but at least corn in a can sort of works.
Stephen E Arnold, January 30, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Elsevier Snapped by Price Elasticity
January 29, 2012
Interesting page about smart folks boycotting Elsevier. You don’t know Elsevier? Well, check out the company’s subscription prices to scientific, technical and medical journals. Now navigate to The Cost of Knowledge and see what an online push back looks like. The idea is that some smart folks will no longer do editorial work, review articles, and other tasks routinely expected of knowledge farmers who want to sell information nuggets to the Elsevier combine. Publishers have a number of challenges, including prayers for Barnes & Noble assault on Amazon. Good luck with that, publishers.
I don’t have a dog in this fight. I learned after publishing a number of books that it is better to output information in this free Web log than server as a knowledge farmer on subsistence income. I suppose Elsevier could try the Web censorship thing, but smart folks may be able to work around the technical efforts of print publishers trying to figure out the digital world. That price elasticity hurts when it snaps back in one’s face, doesn’t it?
Stephen E Arnold, January 29, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com, my current and friendly publisher in Oslo, Norway, where the water is generally safe to drink and the publishers quite civil.
Enough Already with the Books
January 29, 2012
The fire continues to burn. According to the IT World article “Google Wants Groups Removed From Books Lawsuits,” Google asked a federal court to dismiss copyright claims against its Google Books project by The Authors Guild and The American Society Of Media Photographers (ASMP). Google argues:
The associations are not proper parties to this copyright infringement case because they themselves do not claim to own any copyright at issue.
In 2005 The Authors Guild and The American Association of Publishers brought a lawsuit against Google in order to block them from scanning books and making the digital content available in libraries and online. They argue Google did not get permission to scan the books and by doing so they are violating copyright laws. ASMP filed their own lawsuit against Google in 2010 and the two lawsuits are being considered together. Interesting enough, Google did not file a dismissal motion against the Association of Publishers and it is believed that a settlement is in the works between the two.
Enough is enough, get on with it already. Hopefully an end is in sight because this fire fizzled ages go.
April Holmes, Janaury 29, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Reuters about Google Complexity
January 27, 2012
If a company knows about complicated corporate set ups, it is Thomson Reuters. I found the write up “Analysis: Wall Street Puzzles over Google’s New Direction” interesting because it shows what Thomson Reuters thinks about a company which is less complicated that Thomson Reuters. In fact, both Thomson Reuters and Google may share more characteristics than some imagine. For example, Thomson Reuters is a YouTube partner. And Thomson Reuters’ latest innovation is a print magazine for “consumers” at the World Economic Forum. Google has a magazine as well. It is Think Quarterly. At least Google does not describe the magazine as a consumer product, preferring to tackle themes such as speed, people, innovation, and data. which is a plus. I must admit I never thought of George Soros as a consumer, but I live in rural Kentucky. What do I know?
Thomson Reuters has a very complicated organizational set up and very confusing product and service names. You can check out both of these facets of the shot gun marriage of professional information and “real” journalism at http://thomsonreuters.com/products_services/.
So what does Reuters say about Google? Google “has become an increasingly tricky business to grasp.” Here’s the passage which caught my attention:
If Page’s bets pay off, search could represent just one of several large and thriving businesses as Google recasts itself as a full-fledged “media and services” company.
Since replacing Eric Schmidt last April as CEO, the Google co-founder has aggressively tossed out underperforming and non-essential projects and products. The idea is to put “more wood” behind the company’s most important arrows, he has said.
Among those arrows are Google+, the eight-month old social network; Android, the smartphone operating system; and YouTube, the video Website it bought six years ago for $1.65 billion.
Clearly, these have been very successful ventures. Android has become the world’s No. 1 smarpthone operating system, surging past Apple Inc’s iOS, the software that powers the popular iPhone. YouTube is delivering 4 billion video views per day. And 90 million users have signed up for Google+.
What is less clear is how much money Google can eventually generate from these largely free services, such as from advertising sales.
For Google to keep growing, it needs access to a wider range of content on which it can place ads and make money, particularly as the tech landscape shifts and consumers’ Internet habits evolve.
What I find interesting is that this analysis applies directly to Thomson Reuters. One can argue that Elektron, Eikon, and the Thomson Reuters health care business are equally big bets.
Fascinating how one troubled company can write about another troubled company. Which outfit is in better shape: Google or Thomson Reuters? My view: Google. One way to solve that content problem may be for Google to buy an outfit like Thomson Reuters.
Stephen E Arnold, sponsored by Pandia.com
Al Jazeera and Its US Reach
January 24, 2012
We were surprised, then resigned. Has the US slipped lower on yet another yardstick of achievement?
Al Jazeera English, an international 24 hour English-Language news and current affairs TV channel headquartered in Doha, Qatar, has now reached 250 million homes — 5 million of those being in the U.S.
The Los Angeles Times reported on this startling milestone in the article “Al Jazeera English Now Reaches 250 Million Households.”
We learned:
Five years after its launch, there are 130 countries that carry Al Jazeera English, but in the U.S., the channel has limited availability; it can be found on cable systems in Washington, D.C.; New York; Burlington, Vt.; Toledo, Ohio; and, recently, Chicago and in Los Angeles on KCET. And while the U.S. makes up a fraction of the quarter-billion households, it is a major source of AJE’s Web traffic, totaling 40 percent, according to the network.
The fact that Al Jazeera English has such a large web following in the United States despite its limited availability, leads me to think that a significant shift has taken place.
Jasmine Ashton, January 24, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
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