Quote to Note: Traditional Media Companies Identify Change as an Issue
January 23, 2010
Last week a friend in the UK sent me a link to a Harvard Business Review comment about leadership and management. The addled goose is not much of a leader nor can he manage the goslings. The gist of this HBR write up is that certain skills are important; for example, pattern recognition.
I read that the outfit operating newspapers in San Jose and Denver was involved in one of those unpleasant financial dust ups. Sigh.
This morning I saw a great quote in today’s edition of the New York Times (January 18, 2010, page B 3). The quote—a headline as well:
It’s Not Jay and Conan Who Changed. We Did.
Right. Now click to the Wall Street Journal’s somewhat difficult to find table of newspapers with various financial challenges. You can find this “Pressure on the Presses” table and graphic that makes it easy to spot a pattern. (Validated at 9 30 am on January 18, 2010.)
Several observations:
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The pattern of demographic change is clear at least to the headline writer at the NYT
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The casual eye can discern the trend in the WSJ’s table “Pressure on the Presses”
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Traditional media has a voice saying to me, “Houston, we have a problem.”
More accurately, the children of the people who work in traditional media are among the reasons certain media are no longer getting traction. Heck, I am part of the problem because I am going to drop two of my four hard copy newspaper subscriptions. The news is old and an increasing number of stories come from third parties who write blogs or outfits set up to produce basic content chaff.
Stephen E Arnold, January 23, 2010
A freebie. I even threw away the bottle of shampoo that came in one of my newspapers the other day. I will report this to Health and Human Services. Clean readers are good readers I assume.
Startling Fact: Size of Cloud Computing Market
January 23, 2010
Tucked into a story about IBM landing Panasonic as a customer for Lotus Notes was a startling fact. “The global cloud computing market is expected to grow at a compounded annual rate of 28 percent from $47 billion in 2008 to $126 billion by 2012, according to IBM based on various market estimates.” You can see this gem in context at “Panasonic Ushers in the Cloud Computing Era with IBM LotusLive”. That’s a heck of a number.
Stephen E Arnold, January 23, 2010
A freebie. I don’t know what federal agency is in charge of numbers without back up. Maybe OMB?
Three Oddities: Online Data Findings
January 22, 2010
I have been involved in a project in a land with many consonants. Before heading to the airport, I was catching up on the goodies in my newsreader. Three items caught my attention, and I was surprised by each of them. Let me run down the list.
First, there is the report “US Internet Speed Is on the Decline”. This is a headline sure to catch attention. The only problem is that in my neck of woods, the local cable company continues to offer faster Internet speeds. The report surprised me because when rural Kentucky has zippy speeds, it raises some questions in my mind about methodology. The idea that the US is lagging in certain technology areas is a mini trend.
Second, the article Report: 44% Of Google News Visitors Scan Headlines, Don’t Click Through reported that Outsell (a consulting firm for publishers) conducted a survey of online news users. The finding that stopped me was that 44 percent of those in the sample of about 2,400 did not click to read the full news story. The number strikes me as high. I flip through a newspaper and read one story every two or three pages. Online I read even fewer. The number seems startling judging from the pick up and comments on the story. In our work, we have found more skimming than reading. I look at more short items and read only the longer items that hit one of my interests. My hunch is that I am not alone.
Third, I was surprised to read “Google Nexus One’s First Week of Sales Were Weak, Report Says.” Google is a secretive outfit. Where did these data originate? Flurry. That’s a research firm about which I know little. Google discloses a great deal. There are SEC filings, patent documents, and technical papers that appear in peer reviewed publications. Google cranks out blog content and generates a staggering amount of documentation for its various APIs and some services. I am not sure what “weak” means and I will wait until info from Google turns up in open source info streams.
These three stories are almost ideal for attracting clicks. Are these stories accurate? Maybe.
Stephen E Arnold, January 23, 2010
A story written for no dough. Trapped in an airport, I will alert the next uniformed professional whom I see of this sad situation.
Mainframe Hot Again: Really?
January 21, 2010
I like mainframes. My first content project was completed on one of these svelte—well, maybe that is not the best way to describe—IBM installations. A mainframe when I started fooling around in air conditioned rooms was an complex of hardware, software, cables, and assorted other components. If you wanted to get your class project or a bit of side work done quickly, you learned to work in the “computer center”. None of that waiting in a queue for a key punch machine (anyone remember those?) or for some 17 year old person with thick glasses like moi to put your cards in the processing queue. Nope. Work in the computer center, make some money, and get your work done without meatware latency.
I have written about mainframe in this Web log. Most of the write ups have been in response to IBM public relations and marketing. Now, I surmise, the IBM marketing machine has sent enough signals so that the sensitive antennae of The Economist editorial staff has reacted.
The article that caught my attention is “The Return of the Mainframe: Back in Fashion.” The sub title is, “The mother of all computers no longer looks that old.” The hook for the story is that the Bank of Namibia is getting its first mainframe. Obviously Namibia is proud to be on the bleeding edge of information technology, right out there with Hitachi (er, no), PSI (er, acquired by IBM), T3 (er, in the migration to distributed computing business), and I suppose you can argue that Dell, HP, and Sun, among others are in the “sort of” mainframe business.
I recall reading the 2005 news item that described the mainframe as “a falling star”. If you are not familiar with what’s inside a mainframe installation, check out the specs for various systems on the Tech News site.
The Economist said that mainframes are now distributed systems. I wonder if that means “like Google”? What the Economist told me was:
High “switching costs” explain in large part why mainframes are still a good business for IBM. It is the only big firm left selling them, at prices that start at $100,000 but often reach the millions. Sales of mainframes are said to have brought in about $3.5 billion a year, on average, in the past decade. Although this is only about 3.5% of the firm’s overall revenue, each dollar spent on hardware pulls in at least as much from sales of software and maintenance contracts. Toni Sacconaghi of Bernstein Research estimates that 40% of IBM’s profits are mainframe-related.
Ah, annuity and replacement revenue! I also like “high switching costs”. That is on the money. The reason the Namibia deal is “news” is that I assume it is one of those “emerging markets” that needs a mainframe. Next time I visit Namibia, maybe I will get a chance to see what the country bought?
In my opinion, the killer passage in the Economist story was this one:
More worrying to IBM is a run-in with Neon, a software company. It sells a program that allows computing tasks that usually run on a mainframe’s regular processors to be shifted to the discounted ones meant to run things like Linux. Predictably, IBM is not happy and is said to have threatened to charge higher licensing fees to customers using Neon’s software. This, in turn, has led Neon to file a lawsuit against IBM. Defeat would make a big dent in IBM’s mainframe revenues. Still, the computer industry seems to be moving IBM’s way. The mainframe may well find a new home in corporate computing clouds, the pools of data-processing capacity many firms are building. Many companies are also increasingly interested in buying simpler, more integrated computer systems, even if this means a higher price. Reacting to this, IBM’s rivals are making bets on mainframe-like products. On January 13th HP and Microsoft announced a pact to come up with tight packages of hardware and software. Brad Day of Forrester Research, another market-research group, puts it thus: “We are on the way back to the future.”
Quite a conclusion because IBM has responded to competitors in the mainframe sector by treating them to some of that Big Blue kindness. PSI was bought by IBM. T3 probably has its own view of how IBM has encouraged its business.
The impact of the story on me was:
- IBM is hustling mainframes because it is good money for services
- The marketing muscle of IBM is obvious to me
- The health of the mainframe “industry” is accomplished by shifting the definition of a mainframe to the more fuzzy distributed computing approach
Will I buy a mainframe? Nope. Here’s why:
- IBM hardware is over engineered and designed to create a demand for an IBM trained specialist to perform even basic fixes. FRU means an expensive tech roll and on site charges.
- A mainframe demands an ecosystem of specialists. When that ecosystem is not in place as it is at ArnoldIT.com, then you get to pay folks like ArnoldIT.com to work on mainframe projects. Linux is some help but in other ways, Linux is not the magic wand or part of the magic wand
- There are easier and cheaper ways to accomplish certain computing tasks
- A huge complex called a mainframe that runs Linux is a bit like putting a submarine’s nuclear power generation unit in my garage to generate electricity for my home. Interesting in a theoretical sort of way but otherwise pretty darned crazy.
I think it is super that an emerging market can afford a mainframe, but there may be other ways to provide the computing horsepower required. I am more impressed with the power of the IBM marketing machine.
Stephen E Arnold, January 18, 2010
No one paid me to point out that IBM has marketing muscle. I will report this to the Economic Development Administration at the Department of Commerce.
Quote to Note: Multicore Chips for Microsoft Devs
January 20, 2010
In “Windows & .NET Watch: Five Predictions for the Next Decade,” Larry O’Brien inked a quote to note. He said:
You cannot develop software for manycore using today’s mainstream concurrency models. I know I sound like a broken record on this, but too many people have stuck their heads in the sand and are willfully ignoring an enormous problem. Writing manycore programs is going to be the hardest technical challenge in your career: harder than understanding object-oriented or functional programming, harder than browser incompatibilities, harder than tracking down memory leaks in a C program.
Azure chip poobahs notwithstanding. Nailed and well stated, Mr. O’Brien.
Stephen E Arnold, January 20, 2010
A freebie. I must report this to the Bureau of Reclamation.
Google and Its Security Woes
January 18, 2010
There are some practical issues that must be addressed when dealing with security. First, the people working on the security problem have to be vetted. This requires time and organization. Organizations in a hurry and not well organized are at greater risk than a plodding, more methodical outfit. Although troubling to some, the security people have to be subject to some type of monitoring as well. The idea is that layers of security methods and procedures are required. Again, this takes expertise and experience. Short cuts can increase risk.
Then when something bad happens, it is a good idea to look for indications that someone close to the matter is involved, intentionally or unintentionally. Some countries use clever methods to socially engineer an opportunity to exploit a weakness in security. I know that the idea of a team implies that everyone is going to run the game plan. Alas, that’s not always accurate.
In my experience, keeping an issue contained is a prudent first step. The idea that quick reaction or chatter helps may be an inaccurate one. Some outputs are necessary, but crazy talk is rarely helpful whether from pundits, poobahs, satraps, or azure chip consultants.
I was surprised to read several widely circulated news stories that provide some additional “information” or “disinformation” about the Google security matter. The work “attack” is attached to this issue, but I don’t know enough to be able to say whether this was an “attack” or one of those cute things that math club members perpetrate as a way to get attention, change grades for the football team, or transfer cafeteria money to a charity like Midnight Auto Supply.
The Great Wall of China was built for a reason. Some of those reasons exist for today’s Chinese governmental entities. Those who build the Great Wall were not concerned with the environmental or financial impact of the Great Wall. Priorities may be different in China than in other geographic areas or nation states. Image source: http://www.globusjourneys.com/Common/Images/Destinations/great-wall.jpg
That’s the problem with lots of information or lots of disinformation. There is uncertainty, what I call a “cloud of unknowing”.
Here’s what’s caught my attention. (Keep in mind that I have no solid opinion on this matter because I only know what flops into my newsreader and that information or disinformation is suspect by definition.)
The Utility of Google Wave
January 18, 2010
Short honk: I have been describing Wave in my Google lectures for a while. I want to recommend “20 Real World Uses for Google Wave”. MacLife has gathered a number of interesting examples and screen shots. If you have been unsure of how to use Wave, this article is the one to read. Excellent.
Stephen E Arnold, January 18, 2010
No one paid me to write this. I think the publication originates in another country. I will report on my return to the IRA the poverty stricken state in which I existed when I praised this article.
Amazon and Traditional Publishers Anger Some eBook Buyers
January 17, 2010
Let me point out that the hype about eBook readers is entertaining. But the existence of eBook readers will not create overnight more people who buy and read lots of books. I use an eBook reader because I don’t have to carry a bunch of books on a long international flight. I read most of the way, so eBook readers allow me to carry one printed book (usually a small one about math) and a Kindle jammed with many different things. The book stores used to love me. Now I don’t bother. I order traditional books online and steer clear of the gift card and book light shops that book stores have become.
The article “Kindle Fans Punish Publisher For Delaying Ebook Releases By Giving Books One-Star Reviews” points out one of those delicious unexpected consequences type anecdotes. Publishers want to put out a new book like I, Sniper in hard copy and then later release an eBook version. This is one of those great ideas the folks who don’t understand the excitement that online often triggers. Annoyed book buyers have been giving books lousy reviews on Amazon.
To me the most interesting comment in the article was:
HarperCollins — one of the leading supporters of these silly “windowed” releases — is discovering that its well-hyped book Game Change is filling up with one-star reviews. Going against what your consumers want is almost never a good idea.
Too bad I will be in Europe Monday. I will have to check and see what the traditional publishers and that fine outfit Amazon will do to get book buyers to lay on their side and pant. Is this a job for the Dog Whisperer? Probably.
Stephen E Arnold, January 17, 2010
A freebie. Because this is about publishing, I must report non payment to the GPO.
Monetizing Information to Find a Job via Social Media
January 15, 2010
Two unrelated conversations triggered my alarm clock this morning. One conversation concerned the hot trend of social networking. The other conversation pivoted on the value of knowledge.
Value of Social Networking
The social networking conversation surfaced an observation that was completely new to me. The person who made the observation said to the best of my recollection:
I was surprised to learn that some of my friends from my MBA class did not make a connection between their activities on Facebook and their job hunt.
The link seems obvious to me. Anywhere there is a network, the possibility exists that one of the friends may know about an opportunity or may have an idea that the other party to the conversation did not know about. I have been thinking about how to convert this assertion into a fact backed by data. The more I thought about this comment, I wondered if that a “gap” problem exists for avid users of social networking tools like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
The question I considered this morning was, “What is the value of connecting a person looking for work with the method for finding work via social networking?” The use of social networking is widespread. How could this statement that “some of my friends from my MBA class did not make a connection between their activities on Facebook and their job hunt” be true? The “value” of social networking would rest on a more casual use of a powerful and, to my mind, flexible system. I poked around for some information about the use of social networks to find work and turned up lots of hits. Obviously quite a few blog writers and poobahs have written about the use of social networks to make money. Frankly the comment puzzles me.
A perpetual motion machine cannot exist in the real world. Can it exist in a virtual world? Google seems to be close to a subsidizing financial model that may be getting close to permanet. Image source: http://cdrucker.com/files/labsphys/forceworkenergy_files/b2-3.gif
Value of Knowledge-Based Services
The second conversation focused on an upcoming trip I am making to Europe. The deal is in place, and the job is underway. However, one of the coordinators for this project asked, “What is your method for calculating the value of the work you do?” That comment was surprising as well. Assigning value to an intangible like expertise or information triggers in my mind endless hours reading about Austrian economic theories. I asked the person, “Why?” Her reply to the best of my recollection was: “I want to be a consultant, and I don’t understand how to value my time.”
What joins these two comments is the issue of the value of knowing something. A person who can use social networks to find a job interview or maybe sell a consulting engagement has connected the dots in the fuzzy world of online. A person who has not may be unwilling to pay for the information necessary to use online to locate work in today’s economic siroccos. My hunch is that the value is going to tough to define accurately. The person who “doesn’t get it” may not pay anything due to a lack of understanding due to my inability to make something clear. A person who does get it may work like Mozart, who sucked in music data and could then with what looked like little mental strain generate new melodies. The budding Mozart of social media may be unwilling to pay because from that person’s point of view, the insight was a trivial one. Why pay for what’s obvious?
The pricing of services is in some ways faced with a similar problem. The customer who “gets it” may be willing to pay for certain types of knowledge work because its value is obvious. The customer who doesn’t “get it” may not want to pay anything. Thus, the European MBA’s question about charging for a consulting project is a valid one.
Information, not necessarily electronic, is a slippery fish. What struck me is that each domain or “era” in technology imparts a different spin on the notion of “value”.
In our technology-infused world, the domain of experience includes different options (maybe more options as well). The methods of exercising those options would be influenced by the person’s knowledge of methods, tools, and tactics. A person without an Internet connection might know about Amazon, but that person might not have the methods, tools, and tactics to take advantage of an Amazon discount.
A Domain Problem?
My present uncertainty about the value of social networking is a domain problem, not just a knowledge problem. The technology domain requires a different type of knowledge. Where knowledge is lacking, friction will exist between the abstractions and the specific activities required to buy a leather jacket from Amazon or from a local big box store.
The differences are not just in the “how” part of the process. The differences cut across social norms, methods, thought processes, and abstractions like figuring out what is the “right way” versus what is the “wrong way” to accomplish a task.
What about those MBAs who did not see Facebook or LinkedIn as the method for generating employment opportunities? Is that a failure of the instructor? A failure of that group of students? A failure on the part of Facebook and LinkedIn? In fact, how could anyone familiar with online or popular culture for that matter not “know” something about the utility and instrumentalities of Twitter.com?
What about the European who wanted to know how to put a price tag on expertise? What has happened in that person’s education to make fixed price and time and expense based pricing puzzling?
My hunch is that the factors at work are easy to spot and difficult to identify. Online and knowledge are paradoxical, and I think that quite a bit of mental friction takes place when domains collide. A publisher who creates a printed magazine or newspaper knows how to cost estimate, price single copies, and set ad rates. When that publisher moves the information online, the old rules don’t apply because online is a different domain. This means that a publisher trying to embrace a new domain may face the business process risks not “part of the woodwork”.
Google and Free Information
Online vendors in the 1980s charged a customer to run a query in a specific database. The customer paid even if the database did not contain the needed information. Explaining the value of a null set was tricky in my experience. Charging for certain types of information that is free on a government Web site or marketing blog like this on may find a small group of buyers willing to pay. But a lower cost or free service will reduce the for fee company’s options. The genius of Google is that people subsidize certain services. Users get something that looks free. It isn’t. Google has found a way to subsidize a service. The power of Google is its business model and the company’s technical expertise to keep the “perpetual motion machine” running. Advertisers who want sales leads have to advertise on Google. Google has magnetic power because its free services pull users to the service. Once this machine is running, competitors and others disrupted by the business model have to find a way to gum up the works.
Why should a customer pay for information and knowledge if the customer cannot know the value of the information and knowledge? A failure to communicate is easier to correct than a failure to understand. Is this a purloined letter problem or a certain blindness problem? Maybe it is a bit of both? Or, could it be a different class of problems entirely.
More Questions
What if individuals cannot connect the dots in a hyperspace, abstract world of information? Those who “get it” have an advantage in some situations. Those who don’t will find themselves baffled by certain informationized functions. I think an information flow about ways to use social networking for specific purposes like finding a job might be useful. I will have to think about that, of course. I don’t know how to tackle the gap between many dots that must be connected on a broader scale. Traditional education may be able to help some, but what about those who need information about knowledge value and are not in school? Maybe those who “get it” will become a new elite and those who don’t slip to a lower social stratum? If you don’t know what you don’t know, you may be behind the eight ball.
Stephen E. Arnold, January 14, 2010
It pains me to say, “No one paid me to record this ill formed ideas.” I suppose I am under the jurisdictional control of the American Battle Monuments Commission to which I shall report this sad fact.
ConceptSearching and Its Busy January 2010
January 14, 2010
Concept Searching (“Retrieval Just Got Smarter”) has had a busy January 2010.
The company made several announcements about its information retrieval software.
First the company inked a deal with Union Square Software to use the Concept Searching technology in Union Square’s Workspace product. The Union Square Workspace is an email, document, and knowledge management product for the construction industry.
Second, the company announced support for Microsoft Windows Server R2’s File Classification Infrastructure. Like other Microsoft centric solutions, Concept Searching provides a snap in that extends the features of the Microsoft product.
Third, the company landed a deal with the Consumer Products Safety Commission to deliver search and classification to the CPSC’s public Web site and for the corporate Intranet.
The company was founded in 2002 with the goal of developing statistical search and classification products that “delivered critical functionality… unavailable in the marketplace.” The company’s software processes text, identifies concepts, and allows unstructured information to be classified via semantic metadata. The company supports SharePoint and other platforms. The company says:
Concept Searching are the only company to offer a full range of statistical information retrieval products based on Compound Term Processing. Our unique technology automatically identifies the word patterns in unstructured text that convey the most meaning and our products use these higher order terms to improve Precision with no loss of Recall. The algorithms adapt to each customer’s content and they work in any language regardless of vocabulary or linguistic style.
The company’s headquarters is in the UK, and the firm’s marketing operations are in McLean, Virginia. If you want more information, you can download a 13 megabyte video from K2 Underground.
Stephen E. Arnold, January 14, 2010
Oyez, oyez. A freebie. I shall report this public service to Securities House next time I am in London.
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