MySpace: Keep Moving or Fall Behind
October 24, 2009
I don’t pay much attention to MySpace.com. When I looked at the service years ago, I was amazed with the graphics and weird interface. The fact that some demographic segments found the service useful made me happy that I was old. I thought I should pay attention to “MySpace Stopped Innovating Says News Corp.’s Jonathan Miller”. The write up promised a flash of insight about the dog eat dog world of social network services. For me the most significant statement in the write up was:
Miller [a MySpace executive] said, “Everybody in the company is upset that we didn’t keep going when we had the real momentum. Regaining momentum is always much harder than keeping momentum going.”
Has News Corp. learned a lesson after school was closed for summer vacation? The changes in any online service must be meaningful. In my experience the changes must increase a service’s magnetism. No change or the incorrect change repels users. My view is that MySpace.com may have its magnetic poles flipped.
Stephen Arnold, October 24, 2009
A New Page in Google Books
October 23, 2009
Short honk: How do I know Google Books is important to Google? One clue is available when I look at the inventors of Google’s scanning technology, systems, and methods. Take a gander at US7,605,844, “Imaging Opposing Bound Pages at High Speed Using Multiple Cameras”. granted on October 20, 2009 and filed in November 2003. The inventor? Larry Page. Here’s the abstract:
Systems and methods for capturing images of opposing pages in a bound document at high speed using multiple cameras are disclosed. The system generally includes a cradle preferably tilted toward an operator for holding a bound document having two opposing sides, and two cameras each positioned to capture an image of a corresponding side, each camera having an image capture size approximately the size of each side. The cameras may be high definition and store images via direct high speed data communication interfaces, e.g., firewire. A controller and/or foot pedal may provide control of the cameras. The controller may control flashes to selectively light each side simultaneous with each camera capturing the image of the corresponding side. A positioner may position a light-absorbing page between opposing sides.
My research suggests that the inventions of Google founders are significant, acting like beacons in a sea of innovations. In short, Google Books is an important project.
Stephen Arnold, October 22, 2009
No dough from the Google for this write up.
IBM Has Cloudy Day with Air New Zealand
October 17, 2009
With cloud computing getting attention, the SiliconValley.com story “Air New Zealand Boss Lands Hard on IBM” provides one view of what a customer perceives when service goes out. The quote below is attributed to Air New Zealand CEO Rob Fyfe:
In my 30-year working career, I am struggling to recall a time where I have seen a supplier so slow to react to a catastrophic system failure such as this and so unwilling to accept responsibility and apologize to its client and its client’s customers… We were left high and dry and this is simply unacceptable. My expectations of IBM were far higher than the amateur results that were delivered yesterday, and I have been left with no option but to ask the IT team to review the full range of options available to us to ensure we have an IT supplier whom we have confidence in and one who understands and is fully committed to our business and the needs of our customers.
IBM is expanding its cloud services. Most recently it announced a low-cost alternative for email positioned to compete with such services from Google.
Stephen Arnold, October 17, 2009
Youth, the Web, and the Coming Work Process Upheaval
October 17, 2009
The BBC reported that 75 percent of young people in a survey sample cannot live without access to the Web. “Youth ‘Cannot Live’ without Web” included this comment, which I found interesting:
Probably the middle-aged are the most vulnerable,” said Open University psychologist Graham Jones. “I think children, teenagers and people under their mid-20s have grown up with technology and they understand it deeply,” he said.
As young people move into the work force, these individuals will bring different views, behaviors, and work methods. Established institutions face significant external pressures from financial, regulatory, competitive and technical externalities. Now virtually any organization adding young staff will find internal pressures increasing when new work methods collide with established work processes. This is not flattening or converging. This is a significant reshaping of the way certain types of work will be performed. Just my opinion.
Stephen Arnold, October 17, 2009
Google Wave Analysis: Closer but Not Quite Spot On
October 16, 2009
I found Daniel Tenner’s article one of the better discussions of Google Wave. If you have an interest in Google Wave, read “What Problems Does Google Wave Solve?”. Mr. Tenner addresses specific issues and points out how Google Wave approaches each. One example is lost attachments. The idea is that people read email, download an attachment, delete or file the original email, and then have a tough time locating a specific attachment. This is an annoyingly common problem for quite a few people. Google Wave is a digital plastic bag. Stuff in the bag is together so the lost email attachment is in the plastic bag and indexed by the Google. Ergo, no more lost attachments. This way of describing Google Wave is a lot better than most I have read.
The problem is that relating Google Wave to what is familiar is not exactly what my research suggests the Google is doing. Wave is a subset, like the programmable search engine or the trust method, of a larger data management issue on which
Google is working. Explaining that broader initiative is difficult because it leapfrogs over the “common problems” and delivers new types of queries and, therefore, new types of applications.
Wave is not a finished product or even a complete service. Wave is a component. Just as folks are learning that Chrome is not a “just a browser”, analysts have to step bag and put Wave into its Google context. Until that takes place, Wave like many other Google betas will be perceived as one thing. Then when the full picture is complete, the “one thing” morphs into a more complex suite of services.
Google is a clever beastie, allowing analysts to define their products while the broader picture remains undetected. Wave is such a creature.
Stephen Arnold, October 16, 2009
Web Search Usage Statistics
October 16, 2009
comScore has responded to earlier data from about Web search vendors’ September 2009 market share. I found the write up What 5% Drop? ComScore Says Bing Search Share Stayed Steady In September in TechCrunch thought provoking. For me, the meat of the article was this comment:
According to comScore, Bing’s U.S. search market share remained steady at 9.4 percent in September, up from 9.3 percent in August. That is not blowing the doors off of anything, but it is at least holding its own.
I find it interesting that the estimates of traffic are viewed as absolutes. Most of the companies creating league tables use proprietary methods to generate their data. Variances are to be expected. The margins of error can be significant. In one case in 2008, I looked at data for companies in one industry in Europe. I had “real” logs. I also had reports on traffic from a number of vendors. What I learned was that the variance between the actual logs of the sites’ traffic and the commercial league tables was a variance of as much as 20 percent.
I don’t have an answer for the usage variances. The advantage goes to the company that can count everything and avoid statistical methods. Estimates are going to create some false impressions in my experience.
Stephen Arnold, October 16, 2009
Government Attic
October 16, 2009
A happy quack to the reader who sent me a link to Government Attic. The Web site is a repository of US government documents obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request. The site uses a Google custom search engine, which works quite well. The site says:
Governmentattic.org provides electronic copies of hundreds of interesting Federal Government documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. Fascinating historical documents, reports on items in the news, oddities and fun stuff and government bloopers, they’re all here. Think of browsing this site as rummaging through the Government’s Attic — hence our name.
Useful.
Stephen Arnold, October 16, 2009
Guha and the Google Trust Method Patent
October 16, 2009
I am a fan of Ramanathan Guha. I had a conversation not long ago with a person who doubted the value of my paying attention to Google’s patent documents. I can’t explain why I find these turgid, chaotic, and cryptic writings of interest. I read stuff about cooling ducts and slugging ads into anything that can be digitized, and I yawn. Then, oh, happy day. One of Google’s core wizards works with attorneys and a meaningful patent document arrives in Harrod’s Creek goose nest.
Today is such a day. The invention is “Search Result Ranking Based on Trust” which you can read courtesy of the every reliable USPTO by searching for US7,603,350 (filed in May 2006). Dr. Guha’s invention is described in this patent in this way:
A search engine system provides search results that are ranked according to a measure of the trust associated with entities that have provided labels for the documents in the search results. A search engine receives a query and selects documents relevant to the query. The search engine also determines labels associated with selected documents, and the trust ranks of the entities that provided the labels. The trust ranks are used to determine trust factors for the respective documents. The trust factors are used to adjust information retrieval scores of the documents. The search results are then ranked based on the adjusted information retrieval scores.
Now before you email me and ask, “Say, what?”, let me make three observations:
- The invention is a component of a far larger data management technology initiative at Google. The implications of the research program are significant and may disrupt the stressed world of traditional RDBMS vendors at some point.
- The notion of providing a “score” that signals the “reliability” or lack thereof is important in consumer searches, but it has some interesting implications for other sectors; for example, health.
- The plumbing to perform “trust” scoring on petascale data flows gives me confidence to assert that Microsoft and other Google challengers are going to have to get in the game. Google is playing 3D chess and other outfits are struggling with checkers.
You can read more about Dr. Guha in my Google Version 2.0. He gets an entire chapter (maybe 30 pages of 10 pt type) for a suite of inventions that make it possible for Google to be the “semantic Web”. lever company, brilliant guy, Guha is.
Stephen Arnold, October 15, 2009
Dust Up between Libraries and Publishers Possible
October 16, 2009
The New York Times reported that some libraries are lending digital books. You will want to read the original article “Libraries and Readers Wade Into Digital Lending” yourself. For me the most important statement in the write up was:
Publishers, inevitably, are nervous about allowing too much of their intellectual property to be offered free. Brian Murray, the chief executive of HarperCollins Publishers Worldwide, said Ms. Smith’s proposal was “not a sustainable model for publishers or authors.”
I am intrigued that Microsoft and Yahoo pulled out of the digital book game. Google faces tough sledding but a compromise seems to be possible. Even government national libraries are slow to the starting line.
The world’s traditional book foundations seem to be under increasing stress. Exciting. The business model of libraries is about to collide with the business model of publishers. After centuries of living in harmony, friction seems to be increasing.
Stephen Arnold, October 17, 2009
Google Probes the Underbelly of AutoCAD
October 15, 2009
Remember those college engineering wizards who wanted to build real things? Auto fenders, toasters, and buildings in Dubai. Changes are the weapon of choice was a software product from Autodesk. Over the years, Autodesk added features and functions to its core product and branched out into other graphic areas. In the end, Autodesk was held captive by the gravitational pull of AutoCAD.
In one of my Google monographs, I wrote about Google’s SketchUp program. I recall several people telling me that SketchUp was unknown to them. These folks, I must point out, were real, live Google experts. SketchUp was a blip on a handful of users’ radar screen. I took another angle of view, and I saw that the Google coveted the engineering wizards when they were in primary school and had a method for keeping these individuals in the Google camp until they designed their last, low-cost fastener for a green skyscraper in Shanghai.
No one really believed that this was possible.
My suggestion is that some effort may be prudently applied to rethinking what the Google is doing with engineering software that makes pictures and performs other interesting Googley tricks. The first step could be reading the Introducing Google Building Maker article on the “official” Google Web log. I would gently suggest that the readers of this Web log buy a copy of the Google trilogy, consisting of my three monographs about Google technology. Either path will give you some food for thought.
For me, the most interesting comment in the Google blog post was:
Some of us here at Google spend almost all of our time thinking about one thing: How do we create a three-dimensional model of every built structure on Earth? How do we make sure it’s accurate, that it stays current and that it’s useful to everyone who might want to use it? One of the best ways to get a big project done — and done well — is to open it up to the world. As such, today we’re announcing the launch of Google Building Maker, a fun and simple (and crazy addictive, it turns out) tool for creating buildings for Google Earth.
The operative phrase is “every built structure on early”. How is that for scale?
What about Autodesk? My view is that the company is going to find itself in the same position that Microsoft and Yahoo now occupy with regard to Google. Catch up is impossible. Leap frogging is the solution. I don’t think the company can make this type of leap. Just my opinion.
Stephen Arnold, October 15, 2009
Another freebie. Not even a lousy Google mouse pad for my efforts.
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