Library of Congress Makes Citizens as Fish Splash
March 28, 2009
For me, the Library of Congress is more of a museum than a research facility. Even Google looks like a limping dog when compared to the zippy content flashing across the Twitter spam machine. The Library of Congress, according to TechWhack here, is going to put some of its info on YouTube.com and Apple iTunes. Okay. But the best part of the TechWhack write up was this statement, a true classic in my opinion:
Matt Raymond, the library’s director of communications spoke about the new developments: “Our broad strategy is to ‘fish where the fish are,’ and to use the sites that give our content added value — in the case of iTunes, ubiquity, portability, etc.”.
I do like that citizens, users, customers, whatever as “fish”. Good stuff.
Stephen Arnold, March 28, 2009
Business Intelligence Dies, Business Analytics Lives
March 28, 2009
The SAS marketing and public relations machine shifted into high gear in the last two weeks. I received some news releases, and I have seen references to various new SAS initiatives, including the almost obligatory shift to a cloud option for SAS customers. The cloud and Software as a Service are positive steps for vendors of certain types of complex software. Licensees of some complicated systems can’t afford the headcount needed to configure and maintain these brain busters.
The most interesting article I saw referencing SAS was Kathleen Lau’s “Analytics Versus Intelligence” here. The key point in this SAS-centric write up is that business intelligence is a gone goose (no reference to the goslings here in Harrod’s Creek). The future belongs to business analytics. The statement in the write up that bolstered this assertion in wordsmithing was:
Gaurav Verma, global marketing manager for business analytics with SAS, said customers have to deal with ever-diverse and complex business issues, and are demanding tools with a short return on investment that enable “proactive, predictive, and fact-based decision-making.” Using the word “framework” and not “platform,” said Davis, reflects the fact that the latter implies two to three years of implementation and an over-shot budget, a scenario that organizations must avoid. But a framework “implies an iterative approach” that renders a faster return on investment. “The reality is, the framework becomes the platform over time,” said Davis, referring to a company’s ability to leverage existing investments.
Okay, I think I see the difference, but will customers? More important to me is that I have found that organizations are pushing back against hugely complex systems that are tough to understand and even more difficult to measure in concrete financial payback.
My hunch is that SAS may be on the front edge of traditional number crunching software vendors who find that the old formula no longer works. Business analytics, if I read Ms. Lau’s article correctly, may be the new wonder drug, designed to cure revenue and competitive pains.
Stephen Arnold, March 28, 2009
Microsoft and the Secret Cloud
March 27, 2009
I am in Houston and several people asked me about the story “Microsoft Criticizes Drafting of Secret ‘C loud Manifesto’”. I looked for the document and located a version here. If something is secret, I find it hard to get excited about a secret that has been exposed. The secret document is now in the wild. This is a matter for the company and its own controls. My view: irrelevant matter to me.
Stephen Arnold, March 27, 2009
Google Glitch Rationalized
March 27, 2009
Google has become a chatty Cathy of late. An interesting and insightful l example is “How Google Routes Around Outages” here. Writing in Data Center Knowledge, Rich Miller’s summary of a conversation with Googler Urs Holzle provides some information about the recent Gmail outage. For me, the most interesting comment by Mr. Holzle was:
There are several different layers of “routing around” problems – a failing Google File System (GFS) chunkserver can be routed around by the GFS client automatically, whereas a datacenter power loss may require some manual intervention. In general, we try to develop scalable solutions and build in the “route around” behavior into our software for problems with a clear solution. When the interactions are more complex and require sequenced steps or repeated feedback loops, we often prefer to put a human hand on the wheel.
There are other interesting factoids in the write up. Useful information. However, Gmail went down. This is the issue, not what Google does to stay online.
Stephen Arnold, March 27, 2009
Google Apps Book Review
March 26, 2009
Quick hit: Slashdot ran a useful book review by Lorin Ricker of a new book called “Google Apps Deciphered — Compute in the Cloud to Streamline Your Desktop”. Click here to read the review. I found it helpful.
Stephen Arnold, March 26, 2009
Database Alternatives
March 25, 2009
I did not like the title of this article, “Slacker Databases Break All the Old Rules” here. I skipped the title and went directly to the write up, and I strongly recommend that you navigate to the article, read it, and save it in your useful info slide. The write up by Peter Wayner explains and to some depth analyzes the following data management tools:
- Amazon’s SimpleDB
- Apache’s CloudDB
- Google’s App Engine
- Persevere.
Take away: InfoWorld sees these as experiments. I see them as the future.
Stephen Arnold, March 25, 2009
Google Interview Worth Reading
March 25, 2009
The interview with Alfred Spector in ComputerWorld is interesting for what it says and what it omits. You can find the article “The Grill: Google’s Alfred Spector on the Hot Seat” here. This is a three part interview. Mr. Spector is billed as Google’s vice president of research. For me, the most interesting comment was:
Do you have plans to go after that huge body of information on the Internet that is not currently searched? There is stuff on the Web, the so-called Deep Web, that is only “materialized” when a particular query is given by filling fields in a form. Since crawlers only follow HTML links, they cannot get to that “hidden” content. We have developed technologies to enable the Google crawler to get content behind forms and therefore expose it to our users. In general, this kind of Deep Web tends to be tabular in nature. It covers a very broad set of topics. It’s a challenge, but we’ve made progress.
I would hope so. Google has Drs. Guha and Halevy chugging away or had them chugging away on this problem. Furthermore, Google bought Transformics, a company that most of the Google pundits have paid scant attention to. Yep, Googzilla is making progress. Just plonking along with the fellow who worked on the semantic Web standards and the chap who invented the information manifold. I enjoy Google understatement.
Stephen Arnold, March 24, 2009
Google Slowing Down, Sitting on the Sidelines
March 24, 2009
IDC has been showing some zip. Two articles caught my attention because both point out vulnerabilities in this formidable company. You must read both of these articles. They were:
- The ComputerWorld story “Pentaho and Amazon.com Deliver BI to the Cloud” here. The story reported that Amazon, the cloud computing retailer, hooked up with Pentaho. The goal is to deliver business intelligence. How is this germane to Google? In my opinion, Google is not in this game. The company’s failure to respond to Amazon’s cloud computing challenge underscores the fact that Google is not as nimble as Google. I was hoping that Eric Lai would have pointed out that Google is simply not at this dance.
- The IDG news service story “Google Apps Missing Enterprise Social-Networking Revolution” here. This story was distributed by Reuters and it pointed out that Google’s Orkut is not hooked into Google Apps.”
Is Google falling behind? In my view, Google is the cat’s meow. To some Google watchers, I think one can make a case that the GOOG is not able to keep pace with some of its more nimble rivals. IDC seems to be on top of this issue.
Stephen Arnold, March 24, 2009
Search in the Cloud… Get a Snack, Take a Nap
March 23, 2009
Very interesting table of content delivery network latency here. There are some surprises in Mudy’s Blog. For example, the two fastest CDNs were Akamai and AOL. Yep, AOL. Amazon, in the middle of the pack, aced Google’s Home Page, Google’s Ajax Library, and Google’s App Engine. No data for Azure, Microsoft’s cloud beta. What’s this mean for search enabled applications? My hunch is that latency will boost snack sales and reduce users’ sleep deficit.
Stephen Arnold, March 25, 2009
Entitlement Generation Wins
March 20, 2009
Sarah Perez has an interesting write up in ReadWriteWeb.com. Her story “Why Gen Y Is Going to Change the Web” here explains why Google is a big threat to companies who don’t see Google as much more than a Web search company peddling ads. On the surface, her story is about 13 to 31 year-olds. I am plagued by these folks but that’s normal. Old age home candidates face a big hurdle when understanding those a half century younger. I don’t want to summarize the characteristics of this cohort. Read her list first hand.
My view is that Google and Googley things are part of the this cohort’s environment. This means that it makes no difference what I and those like me have as information behaviors. The Googley groups are going to make social computing, cloud computing, pervasive computing, and other types of computing the norm. Companies that think Google, Twitter and similar services are not in their business or mildly disruptive are going to be in for a jolt. Big changes coming. And fast.
Stephen Arnold, March 20, 2009
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