Microsoft and MySpace: Two Headlines that Reveal Much
March 30, 2009
A short honk: two headlines. The first is “MySpace Shrinks as Facebook, Twitter and Bebo Grab Its Users” from the Guardian (a UK dead tree outfit). You can read the story here which makes the point that MySpace is in decline. The second is “MySpace and Microsoft Team Up: What Does it Mean for Facebook and Google?” from Mashable here. For the addled goose, the two headlines provide a clear look at Microsoft’s social software timing. I get the same feeling when I miss my bus. I don’t think the GOOG will lose much sleep.
Stephen Arnold, March 30, 2009
Interview with a Chrome Plated Googler
March 30, 2009
The dead tree Financial Times published “The Genius behind Google’s web Browser” here. If you are Google watcher you will want to read the interview. For me the most interesting comment in the interview was:
Many computer programs are built using previous versions, or related code, but V8 was started from scratch – a blank slate.
Bold statement. I think it may need some qualification, but that would interrupt the flow of a story that creates a story about two guys working in isolation to craft Chrome. My sources tell me that the Danes hooked into MOMA, collaborated with various Google wizards, and used that which was already hardened and available to Google wizards. I like the FT’s spin, but I think my understanding reflects a more likely work approach. If you know something different, honk at me via the comments. I can’t contain my enthusiasm. That’s contain as in “containers”, a Google innovation that seems quite useful to me when I run ig in Chrome. Well, maybe not because the FT says Chrome began with a “blank slate.”
Stephen Arnold, March 31, 2009
Microsoft’s Live Search Becomes an Application
March 30, 2009
Is this the way to close the gap in Web search? I don’t know. I read the article “Your Next Live Search Destination: Flight Status” by Stuart Johnson here and came away with a hunch that Microsoft is changing direction. I am an addled goose and usually heading south when other geese go north. Judge for yourself. Here’s my suggestion for the key sentence in the article:
“Live Search is becoming more than just a place to get information — it is also a place you can do things,” Lee wrote. “We are simplifying key tasks with Active Answers, a new method of retrieving up-to-the-minute data from the Web.”
I interpreted this to mean that Live Search is no longer about search. The key phrase is “you can do things.” Now Microsoft can claim a number one position in a portal that allows users to do things. Oh, I forgot. AOL and Yahoo do that already. Hmmm.
Stephen Arnold, March 30, 2009
Google Go Back and Managerial Guidance
March 30, 2009
If I were a Google top dog, I think I would want my suggestions followed. Well, I was in for a surprise when I read “Hacking Google: Retro Links Revives Old Google Feature” here. The addled goose knows that he is creeping close to April Fool’s Day. You read this post and decide for yourself. The main point is that allegedly a Googler can allegedly work around a Google function that has allegedly been terminated. “Allegedly” is important when writing about Googlers who hack. For me, the most interesting comment in the post was:
Why not recreate this search feature on Google with modern search engines and Web sites? Because of the pain of maintaining an “official” list, we probably couldn’t turn this on for every user (plus not every user wants a lot of extra links added to their search results). But why not provide a completely unofficial option that people could install? Thus was born Retro Links, which is a Greasemonkey script to add new search options to Google’s search results page.
Let’s think about this, hypothetically, of course. Please, note the “hypothetical” nature of this thought experiment.
If Googlers can create unofficial work arounds, what does this imply for assurances that certain data are scrubbed on a cycle, available only to certain Googlers, and other points where privacy intersect with human Googlers?
If a feature is disabled, presumably by an alleged manager, and we have this alleged informal and fun hack, what happens when a manager says, “This information is confidential” or “This personnel information about an employee must not be discussed”?
Make up your own mind. I don’t work for a real company any more. I recall a couple of outfits such as Halliburton’s Nuclear Utilities Services unit where hacking around a company action could produce some interesting visits from non Googley people.
Times are indeed different. I’m glad I am here in the mine drainage pond with my un Googley goslings. These folks follow guidelines, suggestions, and policies in my experience.
Check out this “hack” or April Fool’s Day levity. Oh, something struck me. What if this alleged hack is not a joke at all. Yikes!
Stephen Arnold, March 30, 2009
Google and the Gray Lady
March 30, 2009
Short take only: Read Valleywag’s “Times Nukes Itself on Google” here. The influential Web log reminded me that the New York Times has angled for getting its stories boosted in a Google results list. The Valleywag correctly observes that the New York Times has made it difficult to take advantage of its visibility and its existing Web sites. Valleywag’s Ryan Tate wrote:
The Times‘ longtime online chief, Martin Niesenholtz, recently whined that a Google search on the word “Gaza” didn’t include any of his content on the first results page. And yet he just nuked 121,000 of his own articles [via a redirect] containing that keyword.
I don’t have much to add when outfits needing traffic to generate revenue make a decision to reduce traffic. Amazing and not surprising. I bet the Times’s professionals have a well written, detailed analysis of why their decision should work. Obviously to the Times’s analysts Google is the problem. I don’t think so. Google’s not perfect, but not even Googzilla can save some publishers from themselves.
Stephen Arnold, March 30, 2009
Cuil.com Gets Better
March 30, 2009
I did a fly over of the Cuil.com Web site. What triggered an overflight was a Google patent; specifically, US20090070312, “Integrating External Related Phrase Information into a Phrase-Based Indexing Information Retrieval System”. Filed in September 2007, the USPTO spit it out on March 12, 2009. I discussed a chain of Dr. Patterson’s inventions in my 2007 study Google Version 2.0 here. Dr. Patterson is no longer a full-time Googler, the tendrils of her research from Xift to Cuil pass through the GOOG. When I looked at Cuil.com today (March 29, 2007), I ran my suite of test queries. Most of them returned more useful and accurate results than my first look at the system in July 2008 here.
Several points I noticed:
- The mismatching of images to hits has mostly been connected. The use of my logo for another company, which was in the search engine optimization business was annoying. No more. That part of the algorithm soup has been filtered.
- The gratuitous pornography did not pester me again. I ran my favorites such as pr0n and similar code words. There were some slips which some of my more young at heart readers will eagerly attempt to locate.
- The suggested queries feature has become more useful.
- My old chestnut “enterprise search” flopped. The hits were to sources that are not particularly useful in my experience. The Fast Forward conference is no more, but there’s a link to the now absorbed user group. The link to the enterprise search summit surprised me. The conference has been promoting like crazy despite the somewhat shocking turn out last year in San Jose, so it’s obvious that flooding information into sites fools the Cuil.com relevancy engine.
- The Explore by Category is now quite useful. One can argue if it is better than the “improved” Endeca. I think Cuil.com’s automated and high-speed method may be more economical to operate. Dr. Patterson and her team deserve a happy quack.
I am delighted to see that the improvements in Cuil.com are coming along nicely. Is the system better than Google’s or Microsoft’s Web search system? Without more testing, I don’t think I can make a definitive statement. I am certain that there will be PhD candidates or ASIS members who will rise to fill this gap in my understanding.
I have, however, added the Cuil.com system to my list of services to ping when I am looking for information.
Stephen Arnold, March 30, 2009
Journalists Struggle with Web Logs
March 30, 2009
Gina M. Chen asked, “What do you think?” at the foot of her essay “Is Blogging Journalism”. You can read her write up here. My answer is, “Nope. Web logs are a variant of plain old communications.” Before I defend my assertion, let’s look at the guts of her essay is that “fear of change” creates the challenge. She asserted that blogging is a medium.
Web logs are not causing traditional media companies to collapse. Other, more substantive factors are eroding their foundations. Forget fear. Think data termites.
Okay, I can’t push back too much on these points, which strike me as tame and somewhat obvious. I also understand the fear part mostly because my brushes with traditional publishers continue to leave them puzzled and me clueless.
The issue to me is mostly fueled by money. Here’s why:
Google in Knowledge Grab
March 30, 2009
Google keeps getting on the wrong side of the UK newspapers. The Times of London’s “Google Makes a Grab for E-Books” here gives the company some of that put down jabber for which Oxford-style debaters are noted. (I debated a team from Oxford when in university. My partner and I won, but we had some mud sticking to our suits.) The Times said:
This move [Google’s deal with Sony] is merely the tip of an iceberg. Late last year Google settled a class-action lawsuit with the two most powerful authors’ and publishers’ associations in America. In exchange for a $125m (£86m) payment, the groups agreed that Google would set up and administer a publishing-rights register designed to match up new and existing electronic books to their copyright owners, and manage payments for anyone who wanted to download them. Unlike ePub, this would be a closed — and profit-generating — system owned and managed by Google. The system would effectively make Google the sole distributor — and seller — of many electronic books.
Googzilla needs to get its public relations program on track in the UK. The traditional book publishing industry may be in a death spiral, but it has the incentive to make life miserable for the laddies and lassies in Google offices.
Stephen Arnold, March 29, 2009
Desktop Operating Systems: A Partial Romp through the Graveyard
March 30, 2009
I was enticed by the title of this ComputerWorld article here: “Gone But Not Forgotten: 10 Operating Systems the World Left Behind” by Matt Lake. I am an old and addled goose, so the amount of detail provided for each of the 10 operating systems varies quite a bit. Mr. Lake does a good job with the highest profiles systems, less well with the older, smaller OSes. What struck me when I read the article was that none of the operating systems differed significantly under the kimono. I grant the coding was different and features available to developers varied. The significant difference was the interface. What I noticed from the screen shots was that the look and feel of the operating systems converged. Over time, the interfaces moved from the inscrutable to the explicit. My take away from the article was that the operating system has become mostly irrelevant to the user. The interface is shifting from the explicit to the anticipative. The implications of this in my opinion translate to significant market upheavals. Who will suffer? Most of the enterprise software vendors will find themselves on the wrong side of shift. Interoperability will eventually become a smart software problem. Products like Chrome, therefore, which look like a browser but are in effect software versions of space ports that connect the world of the user’s data craft with the larger universe, are important.
Stephen Arnold, March 29, 2009
Online Revenue Options
March 29, 2009
A happy quack to the reader who sent me a link to Long Tail’s round up of online revenue models. You can find “Terrific Survey of Free Business Models Online” here. I walked through the examples, and the number and variety remarkable. Some of the lingo baffled me, but my reaction was similar to my trying to decide which flavor of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream to get. The milk and other ingredients are the same, but a seemingly wide range of unique flavors baffles me. I suggest you print out the tables and study them. Buy a cone and combine the tasks. Thr graphic may require another single dip to figure out.
Stephen Arnold, March 29, 2009
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