Microsoft TomTom
March 2, 2009
My hunch is that the Microsoft challenge to Tom Tom over the FAT32 file format may be an important sign of a rebirth of litigation. When companies find themselves behind the curve, management asks staff to come up ideas for protecting existing customer strongholds, generate revenue from innovations, and tap the money making potential of intellectual property.
There’s a useful analysis of the Tom Tom matter at Datamation. The Web site has the url ITManagement and you can find the article “Analyzing Microsoft’s TomTom Lawsuit” by Bruce Perens here. Mr. Perens focuses on the weaknesses of the Tom Tom matter. I am not an attorney, but I came away from the article with renewed concern about about the Microsoft Linux tie up.
My concern was that some search vendors offer appliances that can process FAT32 file systems. There are companies that create code widgets that can hook into various Windows repositories so the indexing system can pull content and make it searchable. I know that several of the systems we have examined make this process seamless. In fact, one aims the appliance at servers and folders and the content becomes available. In my mind, the Tom Tom matter could be a probe to give Microsoft live data useful in other legal actions.
I want to talk with my attorney about the Tom Tom matter on March 2, 2009. For now, I am no longer disinterested in the Tom Tom matter. I am moving it to flashing yellow light status. Check out Mr. Perens’ comments, and post your thoughts in the comments section of this Web log. I want to know why I should * not * worry about more Fat32 actions.
Stephen Arnold, March 2, 2009
Harry Collier, Infonortics, Exclusive Interview
March 2, 2009
Editor’s Note: I spoke with Harry Collier on February 27, 2009, about the Boston Search Engine Meeting. The conference, more than a decade into in-depth explorations of search and content processing, is one of the most substantive search and content processing programs. The speakers have come from a range of information retrieval disciplines. The conference organizing committee has attracted speakers from the commercial and research sectors. Sales pitches and recycled product reviews are discouraged. Substantive presentations remain the backbone of the program. Conferences about search, search engine optimization, and Intranet search have proliferated in the last decade. Some of these shows focus on the “soft” topics in search and wrap the talks with golf outings and buzzwords. The attendee learns about “platinum sponsors” and can choose from sales pitches disguised as substantive presentations. The Infonortics search conference has remained sharply focused and content centric. One attendee told me last year, “I have to think about what I have learned. A number of speakers were quite happy to include equations in their talks.” Yep, equations. Facts. Thought provoking presentations. I still recall the tough questions posed to Larry Page (Google) after his talk in at the 1999 conference. He argued that truncation was not necessary and several in attendance did not agree with him. Google has since implemented truncation. Financial pressures have forced some organizers to cancel some of their 2009 information centric shows; for example, Gartner, Magazine Publishers Association., and Newspaper Publishers Association. to name three. Infonortics continues to thrive with its reputation for delivering content plus an opportunity to meet some of the most influential individuals in the information retrieval business. You can learn more about Infonortics here. The full text of the interview with Mr. Collier, who resides in the Cotswolds with an office in Tetbury, Glou., appears below:
Why did you start the Search Engine Meeting? How does it different from other search and SEO conferences?
The Search Engine Meeting grew out of a successful ASIDIC meeting held in Albuquerque in March 1994. The program was organized by Everett Brenner and, to everyone’s surprise, that meeting attracted record numbers of attendees. Ev was enthusiastic about continuing the meeting idea, and when Ev was enthusiastic he soon had you on board. So Infonortics agreed to take up the Search Engine Meeting concept and we did two meetings in Bath in England in 1997 and 1998, then moved thereafter to Boston (with an excursion to San Francisco in 2002 and to The Netherlands in 2004). Ev set the tone of the meetings: we wanted serious talks on serious search domain challenges. The first meeting in Bath already featured top speakers from organizations such as WebCrawler, Lycos, InfoSeek, IBM, PLS, Autonomy, Semio, Excalibur, NIST/TREC and Claritech. And ever since we have tried to avoid areas such as SEO and product puffs and to keep to the path of meaty, research talks for either search engine developers, or those in an enterprise environment charged with implementing search technology. The meetings tread a line between academic research meetings (lots of equations) and popular search engine optimization meetings (lots of commercial exhibits).
Pictured from the left: Anne Girard, Harry Collier, and Joan Brenner, wife of Ev Brenner. Each year the best presentation at the conference is recognized with the Evvie, an award named in honor of her husband, and chair of the first conference in 1997.
There’s a great deal of confusion about the meaning of the word “search”, what’s the scope of the definition for this year’s program?
Yes, “Search” is a meaty term. When you step back, searching, looking for things, seeking, hoping to find, hunting, etc are basic activities for human beings — be it seeking peace, searching for true love, trying to find an appropriate carburetor for an old vehicle, or whatever. We tend now to have a fairly catholic definition of what we include in a Search Engine Meeting. Search — and the problems of search — remains central, but we are also interested in areas such as data or text mining (extracting sense from masses of data) as well as visualization and analysis (making search results understandable and useful). We feel the center of attention is moving away from “can I retrieve all the data?” to that of “how can I find help in making sense out of all the data I am retrieving?”
Over the years, your conference has featured big companies like Autonomy, start ups like Google in 1999, and experts from very specialized fields such as Dr. David Evans and Dr. Liz Liddy. What pulls speakers to this conference?
We tend to get some of the good speakers, and most past and current luminaries have mounted the speakers’ podium of the Search Engine Meeting at one time or another. These people see us as a serious meeting where they will meet high quality professional search people. It’s a meeting without too much razzmatazz; we only have a small, informal exhibition, no real sponsorship, and we try to downplay the commercialized side of the search world. So we attract a certain class of person, and these people like finding each other at a smaller, more boutique-type meeting. We select good-quality venues (which is one reason we have stayed with the Fairmont Copley Plaza in Boston for many years), we finance and offer good lunches and a mixer cocktail, and we select meeting rooms that are ideal for an event of 150 or so people. It all helps networking and making contacts.
What people should attend this conference? Is it for scientists, entrepreneurs, marketing people?
Our attendees usually break down into around 50% people working in the search engine field, and 50 percent those charged with implementing enterprise search. Because of Infonortics international background, we have a pretty high international attendance compared with most meetings in the United States: many Europeans, Koreans and Asians. I’ve already used the word “serious”, but this is how I would characterize our typical attendee. They take lots of notes; they listen; they ask interesting questions. We don’t get many academics; Ev Brenner was always scandalized that not one person from MIT had ever attended the meeting in Boston. (That has not changed up until now).
You have the reputation for delivering a content rich program. Who assisted you with the program this year? What are the credentials of these advisor colleagues?
I like to work with people I know, with people who have a good track record. So ever since the first Infonortics Search Engine Meeting in 1997 we have relied upon the advice of people such as you, David Evans (who spoke at the very first Bath meeting), Liz Liddy (Syracuse University) and Susan Feldman (IDC). And over the past nine years or so my close associate, Anne Girard, has provided non-stop research and intelligence as to what is topical, who is up-and-coming, who can talk on what.These five people are steeped in the past, present and future of the whole world of search and information retrieval and bring a welcome sense of perspective to what we do. And, until his much lamented death in January 2006, Ev Brenner was a pillar of strength, tough-minded and with a 45 year track record in the information retrieval area.
Where can readers get more information about the conference?
The Infonortics Web site (www.infonortics.eu) provides one-click access to the Search Engine Meeting section, with details of the current program, access to pdf versions of presentations from previous years, conference booking form and details, the hotel booking form, etc.
Stephen Arnold, March 2, 2009
Google a Twittering
March 1, 2009
On March 1, 2009, another story about a possible tie up between Google and Twitter surfaced. The source? Jennifer Bosavage and CRNCanada. You can read the story “Wedding bells for Google and Twitter?” here. For me, the most interesting comment in the article was:
Could Google be eyeing Twitter as an acquisition? That possibility’s got the blogosphere all “a-twitter,” pardon the pun. Earlier this week, Google activated its Twitter account and all Tweets broke loose. As of Friday morning, Google had more than 26,000 followers. The speculation is that, in a move similar to its purchase of YouTube, Google is interested in buying Twitter.
Google has been somewhat clumsy in the real time news space. Maybe Ms. Bosavage and CRNCanada have an inside track on this alleged tie up.
Stephen Arnold, March 2,, 2009
Google-opoly under Conceptual Assault
March 1, 2009
The Google-as-monopoly bandwagon started to roll a little faster. You may want to read Eric Clemons’ “What an Anti Trust Case against Google Might Look Like” here. The article appeared in TechCrunch on March 1, 2009. If you have an MBA from Wharton, you will feel right at home. Others may have to read the analysis closely. The short take: Google is a monopoly and after a decade of lava lamps and Odwalla beverages, legal eagles are taking notice. For me the most important comment in the write up was:
I believe the Department of Justice will be able to establish monopoly power and the abuse of that power. Ultimately, the Department of Justice will seek to demonstrate consumer harm, direct or indirect, caused by the high fees charged for sponsored search, and, ultimately, I believe that the DoJ will succeed in establishing this, but these are not essential to establishing the presence of and abuse of market power.
I want to steer clear of this argument. What is clear to me is that Google faces choppy water. Even in the post meltdown economy, Google can ill afford increased legal engagements. Google has a couple of tough customers on its hands; namely, Facebook and Twitter. The increase in technical glitches is a cause for concern. Now the sound of a freight train of litigation might be heard in the near future. The Google-opoly is officially under conceptual assault.
Stephen Arnold, March 2, 2009
Twitter Facebook Round Up
March 1, 2009
Michael J. Wolf, writing for Forbes, did a good job summarizing the Twitter world. He included some useful information about Facebook as well. I saw the story on CTV.ca here. If you are following the real time search sector, you may want to clip this item and tuck it away for reference. He touched on the question of “Will Social Networks on the Web Ever Make Money?” He hedged his answer. I won’t. I think real time search is a hot sector and it has left some of the Big Boys wondering where their mobiles phones are.
Stephen Arnold, March 1, 2009
InOrder Conceptual Search
March 1, 2009
Update: link updated, March 2, 2009
A happy quack to the reader who sent me a link to the conceptual search engine InOrder.org here. Here’s the description of the system from the organization’s Web site:
InOrder is a collaborative conceptual search interface. It is being developed by Garrett Camp at the EIS Lab at the University of Calgary. It’s design premise is that search engines such as Google already find relevant results for well-formed queries, but do not efficiently elicit these search needs from users. InOrder solves this issue by creating an interactive environment for collective group search. InOrder acquires domain knowledge of semantic relevance within a given search context. Mediated sets of “topics” and “terms” guide search exploration by collective intuition, reusing search strategies utilized by ones peers. Incremental and explicit elicitation of these collective strategies enables participants to make better-informed search decisions. In terms of existing web media InOrder may be viewed as a structured weblog of the semantic interactions of those with similar search goals.
We ran several test queries and found the system interesting. Here’s a screen shot of the result for our query “enterprise search”:
We will do some more testing.
Stephen Arnold, February 28, 2009
Wh-Eu, the Power of Google
March 1, 2009
Amit Agarwal wrote an interesting, brief item here. The French town of Eu changed its name. The reason? To improve its Google ranking. Agarwal said:
The query “eu” is fairly popular among Google users but a lot of potential tourists may be missing the scenic beauty of this French town as it doesn’t rank that well in search engines.
Good example of the power of Google. I can’t get the French to talk to me. Google gets the French to change the name of town. The addled goose is in awe of Googzilla.
Stephen Arnold, March 1, 2009
Twitter in Play
March 1, 2009
Jennifer LeClaire, Newsfactor.com, here wrote “Google Tweets on Twitter Amid Acquisition Rumors” here has an interesting speculation about Google. Her article describes Google’s new interest in Twitter. At the top of the write up, she wrote:
Google may be late to the Twitter party, and its sudden entrance has many speculating about whether it plans to purchase the micro-blogging service that allows 140 characters to tell people what you’re doing. If it’s more search assets Google is after, Twitter would be a prime candidate.
Then she came back to the idea at the foot of the story with a quote from an industry wizard:
“It makes a lot of sense for Google to look at it and think about buying it,” Sterling said. “But what’s it worth and is buying it as a defensive measure sufficient, or does it need to generate revenue commiserate with the purchase price?”
My sources suggested that Google was “conflicted” about Twitter. When I heard this, I considered the notion that Google may have lost some of its agility in recent months. Reorganizing its foundation struck me as a distraction from more important management tasks… like Google’s failure to gain traction in real time search. If Ms. LeClaire is right, then Googzilla may be on the prowl for another high traffic snack. I’m on the fence with this one. I don’t think Google is the same creature it was in its salad days between 2004 and 2006. YAGGs were less frequent, and the company was, well, different. (As a reader named “Alex” knows, a YAGG is yet another Google glitch. You know. Like Gmail becoming Gfail. That sort of “different” in my opinion.
Stephen Arnold, March 1, 2009
Social Security: Back Up Goofiness
March 1, 2009
I don’t know much about Federal News Radio. I don’t listen to the radio when I am in DC and I don’t look at the radio station’s Web site. But this headline stopped me in my webby tracks. Federal News Radio reported in “SSA Data Backup Six Months Away” here is interesting. A chatty Cathy told me that the SSA (Social Security Administration) has a mashup of mainframes, branded servers, and other gear that are loosely federated. (This is a nice way of saying that the architecture is approaching entropy.) The article presents some government double talk about the special needs of the SSA. But the comment that I found most interesting was this:
The data backup problem is part of a larger technology challenge SSA faces. Astrue (an SSA executive) says the agency still is using more than 38 million lines of Cobol code in a siloed and mainframe environment.
Yep, 38 million lines of Cobol and a mainframe. Wow and double wow. I wondered why my father couldn’t check his benefits online. Now I know why. The Web site has to hook into the mainframe without losing state and the connection. I think the system was unable to reset his password either. Maybe a crash would be the best approach. Think of a greenfields project or a phone call to Google. I wonder of the SSA thinks its data are bigger than Google’s?
Stephen Arnold, February 28, 2009
Microsoft: Reality Like Dawn Rises
March 1, 2009
Activewin had a wonderful quote from the New Zealander turned software financial wizard. You can read the short item “Microsoft Says Yahoo No Silver Bullet to Fix Online” here. The financial wizard is Chris Liddell. He allegedly said:
“Yahoo doesn’t have the magic solution,” Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell said yesterday at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc. conference in San Francisco. “No one should think it will transform the industry.”
A glimmer of reality is evident in this remark in my opinion. Now I want to hear about the $1.2 billion acquisition of the Fast Search & Transfer outfit, the police action, the integration of Fast ESP into SharePoint and its financial implications.
Stephen Arnold, March 1, 2009
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
