Alphabet Google Ideas Becomes a Jigsaw
February 21, 2016
Please, do not confuse this “jigsaw” with Salesforce.com’s Jigsaw (now Data.com), Jigsaw Puzzles (online puzzles), Jigsaw (online clothing for women), Jigsaw (the learning strategy), Jigsaw (a marketing company), Jigsaw (the font), Jigsaw (an open source thing), Jigsaw (Ireland’s youth mental health program), Jigsaw (the band of merry music makers), Jigsaw (the real estate outfit), Jigsaw (the WordPress plug in), Jigsaw (the scalable cache method), Jigsaw (a now defunct “zine”), Jigsaw (the time travel-oriented interactive story), Jigsaw (the film), and the Bow Handle Jigsaw (Bosch power tool).
Locating one of these Jigsaws may be an interesting task. Why? Alphabet Google has rebranded Ideas as Jigsaw. Guess what pops to the top of a Google results list. Check it out with the query “jigsaw”.
I read “Google’s Think Tank ‘Google Ideas’ Becomes Alphabet’s Jigsaw.” I learned there was an entity called Google Ideas. I did not know that. The write up stated:
Alphabet’s Executive Chairman, Eric Schmidt, has now confirmed the next department to see an identity change and this time it is ‘Google Ideas’, which has now become ‘Jigsaw’. Google Ideas was the company’s think tank and as Schmidt notes, was created with the original intention to try and bring to the forefront ideas on how to “help the next five billion people coming online for the first time”.
The search engine optimization for “jigsaw” is working as well as Loon balloons which may loom soon.
Puzzle? Nope. A search for revenue as the traditional desktop search upon which Google was assembled is getting a touch of arthritis.
Stephen E Arnold, February 21, 2016
Print and Digital: Both Goners
February 20, 2016
I read in McPaper this article: “Wolff: Print’s Dead — but So Is Digital.” Okay, I learned from Dr. Francis Chivers (Duquesne University professor in the 1960s) that God is dead. I learned from Francis Fukuyama (assorted universities) that history is dead. Now I learn from McPaper that print and digital are dead. A two’fer! That is what makes McPaper so darned compelling.
The article informed me:
the effort to compete with native digital news outlets like BuzzFeed means traditional news organizations, with traditional share price values, must, like the venture-capital supported natives, pay more for traffic than can ever hope to be made back from advertisers. In this model, the digital natives can yet hope to sell to deep-pocket buyers, whereas the traditionals can only go out of business.
Where does McPaper land in this business scenario?
I noted this passage and its nod to the recently acquired yellow orange newspaper, the Financial Times:
At present, the FT concludes, there is no viable economic model for a written news product. Hence, in some ever-increasing existential darkness, it’s back to the drawing board in search of one.
Question: How many trips to the drawing board do traditional newspaper publishers get to make? I thought the digital revolution kicked off 40 or 50 years ago. I wonder if the drawing board is okay, but the folks visiting it are in a digital version of Sartre’s No Exit.
Well, well, I dare say one gets used to it in time.
Stephen E Arnold, February 20, 2016
The Independent: Gets with Digital Finally
February 20, 2016
I read “Independent to Cease as Print Edition.” The write up contained several interesting statements:
- Some folks will be terminated but there “would be 25 new digital content roles.” There you go. No teaching old dogs new tricks.
- The likely new owners of the “i newspapers” are Johnston Press. What? Who?
- The London Evening Standard continues as it is.
Here’s the quote I circled:
The Independent’s editor Amol Rajan tweeted: “Impossible to over-state how proud I am of the most dedicated, clever, industrious and brave staff in the history of Fleet St.”
Excluding the folks who will be cut loose I assume.
Stephen E Arnold, February 17, 2016
Google in London
February 19, 2016
I know that the Sun newspaper is not an academic journal. I admit to reading its football coverage once every week or so. Enjoyable stuff.
I noted a example of “real” journalism with the alluring title “Kicked in the Googlies.” I am not sure what a “googlie” is, but the notion of kicking reminded me of football, so I read the article.
I learned that the focus of the story was Alphabet Google. The article presented some interesting “real” journalistic facts; to wit:
- Google’s London office has a dance studio
- There are 5,000 Googlers in the Covent Garden office, which is definitely good news for the vendors next to their stalls selling oddments
- Breakfast, lunch and dinner are free. Well, bad news for the food emporia in the new Covent Garden which was Ludenwic and then became a fruit and veggie garden. The gardens gave way to folks who sported at theatres and ogled other folk.
- Onsite haircuts are available in the event that the locks need trimming.
I liked this phrase:
The company is spending £1billion on a new London HQ which has more in common with a holiday camp than an office.
Whoa, Nellie. The write up reveals that Alphabet Google is proposing a new structure near King’s Cross station. The idea is to include “a meditation room, a running track, a games area, and five massage parlors.”
The point of the article is that these offices (real and proposed) are not permanent. The idea that Google is not paying its fair share of taxes holds the disparate factoids together in a chewy caramel of modern fiscal responsibility.
Interesting write up. I envision the ghosts of medieval life enjoy a return to life as it once was. I say, did we ride our horses through your home? Pity that.
Stephen E Arnold, February 19, 2016
Computational Demand: Not So Fast
February 19, 2016
Analytics, Big Data, and smart software. The computer systems today can handle the load.
The death of Moore’s Law; that is, the drive to make chips ever more capable is dead. I just learned this. See “Moore’s Law Really Is Dead This Time.” If that is the case, too bad for some computations.
With the rise of mobile and the cloud, who worries about doing complex calculations?
As it turns out, some researchers do. Navigate to “New Finding May Explain Heat Loss in Fusion Reactors.”
Here’s the passage that underscores the need to innovate in computational systems:
it requires prodigious amounts of computer time to run simulations that encompass such widely disparate scales, explains Howard, who is the lead author on the paper detailing these simulations. Accomplishing each simulation required 15 million hours of computation, carried out by 17,000 processors over a period of 37 days at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center — making this team the biggest user of that facility for the year. Using an ordinary MacBook Pro to run the full set of six simulations that the team carried out…would have taken 3,000 years.
The next time you buy into the marketing baloney, keep in mind the analyses which require computational horsepower. Figuring out who bought what brand of candy on Valentine’s Day is different from performing other types of analyses.
Stephen E Arnold, February 19, 2016
Hobbit: Not Palantir Hobbits
February 19, 2016
I read “Hobbit—First Deliverables and Online Presence.” The news item reminded me that a European consortium “aims to develop a holistic benchmarking platform for big linked data and corresponding industry grade benchmarks.” The article pointed out an open benchmarking platform to evaluate the performance of state of the art systems on standardized hardware. To learn more about this European initiative navigate to this link. Will vendors participate so that meaningful performance data become available? That’s the hope.
Stephen E Arnold, February 19, 2016
Recommind Enables Easier Oversight into E-Discovery for Legal Industry
February 19, 2016
A recent article, entitled Recommind Adds Muscle to Cloud e-Discovery from CMS Wire, highlights an upgrade to Recommind’s Axcelerate e-discovery platform. This information intelligence and governance provider for the legal industry has upped their offering by adding a new efficiency scoring feature to enable “extensive visibility into the overall e-discovery review process.” Recommind make the updated based on polling their clients and finding 80 percent do not have oversight in regards to the technological competency of their outside counsel:
“Citing the same survey, he added that 72 percent of respondents pointed to insufficient visibility into the discovery practices of their outside counsel — legal professionals working with them but outside the firm — as a major concern. Axcelerate Cloud also eliminates the cost unpredictability that arises with traditional hosting charges with cloud-based e-discovery tools providers and the infrastructure maintenance required for on-premises solutions.”
When insights from big data is what a company is after, stronger cloud-based functionality is often the first step. Reminds us of enterprise search firm Autonomy which was eventually sold to HP. What will be next for Recommind?
Megan Feil, February 19, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Search Vendor RAVN Systems Embraces Buzzwords
February 19, 2016
The article titled RAVN Systems Releases RAVN ACE for Automated Data Extraction of ISDA Documents Using Artificial Intelligence on BobsGuide details the needs of banks and other members of the derivatives market. Risk mitigation leads to ongoing negotiations that result in major documentation issues to keep up with the changes. The article explains how RAVN has met these challenges,
“RAVN ACE can extract the structure of the agreement, the clauses and sub-clauses, which can be very useful for subsequent re-negotiation purposes. It then further extracts the key definitions from the contract, including collateral data from tabular formats within the credit support annexes. All this data is made available for input to contract or collateral management and margining systems or can simply be provided as an Excel or XML output for analysis.”
Not only does RAVN ACE do the work in a fraction of the amount of time it would take a person, the output is also far more accurate, always good news when handling legal documents. The service also includes an audit service that compares terms from the documents with the manual abstraction. By doing so, RAVN ACE is able to analyze the risks and even estimate the amount of negotiating necessary to complete the contract.
Chelsea Kerwin, February 19, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Unicorn Valuations and Paybacks
February 18, 2016
I read “The Terms behind Unicorn Valuations.” Valentine’s Day seemed to be an ideal time to think about billion dollar outfits and those who fund them. Note: I did not get a valentine this year.
The law firm generating the document is a specialist in unicorn analysis. The most recent report represents 2015 data. The major takeaway in my opinion is that 2015 was the Year of the Unicorn. With the Chinese New Year in mind, 2016 is the Year of the Monkey as I recall.
I noted that some investors in unicorns get “downside protection.” I interpreted this to suggest that some folks have a shot at getting some of the money back if their unicorn catches pneumonia or worse. I like the discovery that flexibility may have been used to achieve the $1 billion valuation.
For me the key finding was:
the beginning of the period covered by the survey was markedly stronger than the end of the period covered by the survey.
The economic uncertainty may have been a factor. The report does not dip into psycho socio economic reasons for the dip.
The write up concludes:
companies in need of additional funds might find it necessary to provide new investors liquidation or other rights superior to their unicorn (and other) investors to attract needed capital. This happened frequently when the dotcom bubble burst in the early 2000s. Although the use of structures that reduce or eliminate outstanding investor rights is uncommon during most of the venture cycle, they become more common during significant downturns in the venture economy.????
What about the financing of search and content processing vendors? Only one is a unicorn, Palantir. Worth watching.
Net net: No valentines for those who get bitten by a unicorn.
Stephen E Arnold, February 18, 2016
Smart Software: In the Race Are…
February 18, 2016
I read “How the Rest of Tech Is Playing Catch-Up to Facebook and Google in Artificial Intelligence.” I would summarize the article in one word: “Scrambling.” Alphabet Google and Facebook are leaders in smart software; others must catch up.
I thought about this idea when I read “Intelligent Assistant Landscape Shows Slow Growth but Huge Potential.” Of particular interest was a graphic composed of the logos of companies competing in the smart software revolution.
I noted the grouping for conversational technologies which seem to be nudging into functions which I follow from my redoubt in a hollow in rural Kentucky.
Here are the companies in this “talk to computers” cluster:
- Aivo
- Anboto
- Artificial Solutions
- Aspect Software
- Avaya Ava
- Bot Ego
- Botgenes
- CodeBaby
- Creative Virtual
- CX Company
- Denise Systems
- Do You Dream Up
- Existor
- Fetch
- Genee
- GetAbby
- Google Now
- Here
- IBM Watson
- Inbenta
- Inteliwise
- Intelliresponse
- LinguaSys
- Microsoft
- MindMeld
- Next IT
- NoHold
- Nuance Nina
- Speaktoit
- SRI International
- Synthetix
- Viclone
An interesting and eclectic list. The conversational cluster is very similar to the Virtual Agents and Customer Assistant cluster. My thought is that some specialists have been overlooked.
If you like these logo clusters, check this one out. Perhaps the next Facebook is on the list?
My reaction is that more precision in the groupings would have been helpful to me. Overall most of these outfits are in search and content processing businesses. A few have embraced smart software as the with-it way to generate leads and sales.
Stephen E Arnold, February 18, 2016
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