AOL, Search, and Management
January 18, 2011
I miss Relegence.com, a property acquired by AOL and now subsumed into the various consumer services AOL offers. I used to enjoy testing AOL Search. The company once had PLS (Personal Library Software), then Thunderstone, then Fast Search & Transfer, and now I just don’t know.
What is interesting are two stories I saw today (January 17, 2011). The first appeared in the hard copy of the New York Times I get each morning. Well, most mornings. Delivery is a challenge in Harrod’s Creek when the weather does not cooperate. The article explained that AOL was doing well with Patch.com, a locality information service. You may be able to read the NYT article at this link, but, like home delivery in Harrod’s Creek, access can be a hit and miss affair. This is a Kool-Aid story, sparkling with good news. Now Patch.com is interesting because the company was the or one of the founders. See “Tim Armstrong’s Patch to Cash In on Death of Newspapers.” Xoogler Armstrong is the top dog at AOL. I find this interesting and amusing, particularly because the NYT often gilds lilies.
The other interesting story is the dust up between two AOL information services. I don’t understand what the hassle between two Web logs concerns. What does interest me is that Xoogler Armstrong is not able to manage the issue. You can one blog’s view at “Dear Michael Arrington.” You can get the other blog’s angle at “Blog Fight Rules of Engagement.”
My view is:
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- AOL management should focus on making its services and content findable
- The content side of the business may want to brand its properties so what is really a snit among siblings is easily identified as an in-house affair. Do you know what Project Phoenix is?
- The notion that working at Google translates to management expertise gets another dent in its sleek, retro rod exterior.
Just our opinion where the newspapers may not get delivered and the local citizens shoot squirrels with big guns.
Stephen E Arnold, January 18, 2011
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Exclusive Interview: Sam Brooks, EBSCO Publishing
January 18, 2011
We have been covering “discovery” in Beyond Search since 2008. We added a discovery-centric blog called IntelTrax to our line up in September 2010. One of the companies that caught our attention was EBSCO Publishing, one of the leaders in the commercial database, library information, and electronic publishing sectors. EBSCO has embraced discovery technology, making “search without search”, faceted navigation, and other user-centric features available to EBSCO customers. Chances are your university, junior college, middle school, and primary school libraries use EBSCO products and services. Thousands of organizations world wide rely on EBSCO for high-value, third party content, including rich media. You can get the details of the EBSCO content and information services offerings at http://www.ebscohost.com/.
I wanted to know how a company anchored in online technology moved “beyond search” so effectively. I spoke last week with Sam Brooks, senior vice president of EBSCO Publishing. He told me:
As library users have grown accustomed to the simplicity and one-stop shopping of web search engines, EDS allows users to initiate a comprehensive search of a library’s entire collection via a single search box. The true value of EDS is that while providing a simple, familiar search experience to end users, the sophistication of the service combined with the depth of available metadata allows EDS to return extensive results as if the user had performed more advanced searches across a number of premium resources.
EBSCO’s presentation is easily customized. This particular user interface matches the rich options available from such companies as i2 Ltd. and Palantir, two leaders in the “beyond search” approach to information.
The new discovery interface makes it easy to pull together a broad range of content to answer a user’s query. The interface then goes farther. Exploring a topic or following a research thread is facilitated with the hot links displayed to the user. The technology for the user interface is intuitive. Mr. Brooks told me:
By using our EBSCOhost infrastructure as the foundation for EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS), the entire library collection becomes available through a fast, familiar, full-featured experience that requires no additional training. Additionally, unprecedented levels of interface customization allow libraries to use EDS as the basis for creating their own “discovery” service. Currently, users can access EDS via the mobile version of the EBSCOhost interface. Further, there will soon also be a dedicated iPhone/iPad app for use with EDS as well.
For the full text of the exclusive interview, navigate to the Search Wizards Speak feature at this link.
Stephen E Arnold, January 18, 2011
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Revolutionary, My Dear Watson
January 16, 2011
One can only imagine what heights AI will reach in say, five years. The exciting news is that there is a glimpse of the future today with the first tangible steps taken by IBM. Per an article on InfoWorld.com, Watson, IBM’s new supercomputer, has been introduced on the game show circuit of all places.
During an exhibition round of “Jeopardy”, Watson faired well against the top reigning human champs, winning by a handy $1100. While literally a trivial endeavor, Watson’s game performance proves some noteworthy achievements. Watson possesses “sufficient artificial intelligence to ably play a game like “Jeopardy” that not only tests the amount of raw data a machine (or human) has stored away, but also an ability to analyze natural language — “Jeopardy” categories and answers contain puns, for example — so as to understand what sort of information is really being requested and to present that information clearly, concisely, and quickly.”
The extensions of Watson’s abilities are far-reaching, including value-adding services to nearly any industry, bringing to the table the power to evaluate huge collections of data and find correlated relationships humans would often miss. The potential for gaining momentum on the cure for cancer has even been tossed around.
So great job, IBM! You have achieved what has to date been the unachievable. Now, if only those pesky kinks in the search on your public facing Web site could be ironed out. Maybe Watson could be put on the case? Does Watson use OminiFind?
Sarah Rogers, January 16, 2011
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Content Freedom Threatened
January 15, 2011
I am not sure if I agree that Apple’s App Store is a threat to Internet freedom. “Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales: App Stores a Clear and Present Danger” voices this concern. I know that walled gardens are in the future. Money flows when folks control the customer. Loss of control of the customer spells trouble at some point in a company’s future. I think it is easier to make money when one has a customer list and keeps it secret.
Content is a magnet, so in order to increase the “pull” of content, walls are a useful architectural consideration. In fact, walls are going up everywhere. Facebook is a big walled garden. Oracle’s database is a big walled garden. Even open source friendly companies are going to need a walled garden. Without walls, an smart 20 something can nuke a business intentionally or inadvertently. Facebook, for example, wants to reinvent or support the reinvention of enterprise applications as social apps and services within its walled garden. How do you think that will work as more Facebook users enter the workforce. Even companies “on top of Facebook” are likely to have some heart stopping moments.
Here’s a snippet I liked from the article about Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales:
The app store model is a more immediate threat to internet freedom than breaches of net neutrality. That’s the opinion of Wikipedia chief Jimmy Wales. According to Wales — who was quick to stress he was speaking in a purely personal capacity — set-ups such as the iTunes App Store can act as a “chokepoint that is very dangerous.” He said such it was time to ask if the model was “a threat to a diverse and open ecosystem” and made the argument that “we own [a] device, and we should control it.”
Walled gardens are not new. As the competitive arena heats in the warm financial gusts flowing across certain areas of the online ecosystem, old style information silos are going to be built inside these walls. The challenge will be choosing which garden is the one to make home.
Stephen E Arnold, January 15, 2011
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Google and Multi-Community Content
January 15, 2011
I found Google’s patent application US20110010384, “Multi-Community Content Sharing in Online Social Networks” for two reasons. First, the inventors scattered across three Google offices. The participation of the Beijing engineer was interesting. Microsoft also seems to be tapping China for some of its ideas. Second, the invention points to social content federation. Here’s the abstract:
An online social networking system (100) can be used to distribute content within an online social network. The product comprises code for carrying out a method that begins with receiving content to be posted to a host community. Labels (420) are also provided to associate with the content. The labels (420) are used to identify communities in the online social network to which to post the content. Code is generated that, when executed, displays the content on a webpage of the host community, and displays the content on a webpage of each of the identified communities. The content may comprise one or more events, images, forum and topics.
Facebook does; Google describes. Which company has social momentum?
Stephen E Arnold, January 15, 2011
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Social Media, Niches, and Search
January 14, 2011
MySpace seems to be struggling. “Struggling” may be the wrong word, particularly if you were one of the hundreds of employees nuked in the riffing a few days ago. You can get the “real” news from Silicon Republic’s “MySpace Confirms Layoffs of 500 Staff Members.” I never was a MySpacer.
Image Source: http://www.webguild.org/20110104/myspace-to-layoff-50-of-employees. Good write up too.
The last time I watched a demo, the page on display flickered and brayed noise. What I do associate with MySpace are:
- iPad publisher and financial expert, Rupert Murdoch paid $580 million for the ur-Facebook.
- Mr. Murdoch’s comment: “The world is changing very fast. Big will not beat small anymore. It will be the fast beating the slow.” Source: Woopidoo.com here. I think of this quote when I read about Facebook’s Goldman Sachs’s deal and the MySpace “challenge”.
But what is interesting is that social media content is moving into a walled garden. Facebook’s content has value partly because of its walled garden. Even Google’s shift in support for content on YouTube reminds me of an exclusionary move. The chatter about curation, filtering, and controls translate in my addled goose brain to a shift from open to closed.
This has several implications for search:
First, the idea of going one place to access content is getting more and more difficult. I think the hurdles posed by registration processes and other methods of capturing “value” are building blocks of a new type of digital real estate: the private park, the walled garden, and a snooty country club. Who will be able to access which service for information.
Second, search is going to require a user to run the same query in different systems and then aggregate the meaningful results. Federated search is going to be increasingly important. Few users will tolerate manual hunting for a content collection, registering and maybe paying for access, and then figuring out what to do with results from different collections.
A bastion of the old way in the online walled garden business.
Third, because of the difficulty in accessing content, users—particularly in North America—will create an interesting new market for snippets, digests, and nuggets. Research for some people will become variations on “Farmville for Dummies” and “How to Lose 10 Pounds in 10 Days.”
What I find really interesting is that “the Internet” seems to be shaping into a variant of the original online industry. Content islands have to be visited by a researcher on a digital cruise ship. The pricing, access methods, and restrictions will vary. I thought research the pre-Internet way was gone for good.
Nope.
It’s 1980 all over again.
Stephen E Arnold, January 14, 2011
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Poobah Tilts at Azure Windmill
January 11, 2011
Before reading my comments, point your browser thingy at “Gartner Gets It Wrong With Cloud Quadrant.” Read it. Note this set up paragraph, worded to avoid litigation but worded to make the azure chip outfit “pundits” steam:
The Gartner Magic Quadrant isn’t an entirely accurate, or even objective, measure of who’s who in any given IT field. If you haven’t heard, the analyst firm’s ranking system has been called out as being everything from merely subjective (as opposed, I guess, to being only partially subjective like every other list of industry leaders) to rewarding vendors that have paid Gartner the most money for its services. I can’t comment on these allegations, nor do I care to. What I can say is that with its latest Magic Quadrant for Cloud Infrastructure as a Service and Web Hosting, Gartner just flat got it wrong.
So what’s the subject?
Cloud computing, one of the many, many next big things in computing. Never mind that timesharing and online services have become part of the furniture for living. Cloud computing is a big deal. Gartner sees the cloud revolution one way and the author of the “Gets It Wrong” write up another. I am not sure either is correct. The one true way is a tough path to discern.
Where did Gartner allegedly slip off the gravel path and tumble in the muck? Here’s the passage I noted:
Initially, it seems inconceivable that anybody could rank IaaS providers and not list Amazon Web Services among the leaders.
Yeah, mon. Gartner excludes outfits who don’t match their criteria. Don’t like it. Well, there are some options, which I will leave to your imagination.
What outfits are leaders in cloud ystuff? My view is just check out the vendors in lists like this one. You can get some color on this Y Combinator list here.
🙂
What happens when poobahs fight? Clarity gets trampled. Loss of clarity, just another way to say marketing.
Stephen E Arnold, January 11, 2011
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Semantics: Hot Again?
January 11, 2011
We hear this each year: Semantics will be hot in [fill in the year].
Kazeon’s The Future eDiscovery Arms Race: It is all about the Semantics investigates where the eDiscovery market must go in order to handle the growing volume of ESI while progressing the efficiency, accuracy and reliability of the search result process. After posing this question, where does Kazeon end up? At the doorstep of Semantics Future Institute.
Those who only speak English may not realize what a complicated language we really have. Words used regularly often carry several meanings, at times even four or more definitions to a single word. This is known as polysemy, and it throws a huge wrench in the search method.
We are beginning to see some workarounds to this issue finally realized. One of the major players is Latent Semantic Analysis, which plainly “searches documents for themes within the language usage and extracts the concepts, which are common to the documents”, helping to alleviate false positive results. Other aides include Word Search Disambiguation, which focuses on word meaning rather than merely matching character strings and Local Co-Occurrence Statistics, which counts how often sets of terms appear together within a predetermined period.
These tools will no doubt be helpful in refining search techniques, but our main question is, where was Kazeon five years ago when the semantic buzz began?
Sarah Rogers, January 11, 2011
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Mastering the Android OS Universe
January 10, 2011
Google’s quest for world domination of the smartphone operating systems’ universe may be thwarted says the ZDNet article, “Android’s Biggest Worry: Fragmentation,” . Despite growing market share and popular applications, the Android is fragmented by many complex issues including OEMs software, carrier applications, and multiple operating system versions.
“Android is growing, but it’s also growing complexity at the same time. Device fragmentation is not the issue, but rather the fragmentation of the ecosystem. So many different shops, so many different models. The carriers messing with the experience again. Open but not really open, a very Google-centric ecosystem,” says Peter Vesterbacka, one of Rovio’s founders and an Angry Bird developer, in a Tech N’ Marketing interview.
My money’s on Google. They’ve managed to conquer (or at least be a top contender) in the vast and complex information world, making search easy and effortless. Perhaps they can do the same for the Android? Is Google confident that Android fragmentation is a trivial problem?
Christina Sheley, January 10, 2011
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Nuggets: Real or Fake Gold?
January 10, 2011
Xoogler Daniel Tunkelang wrote a short item back linking to his earlier write up about information nuggets. You may want to take a look at “Exploring Nuggetize”. The illustration shows how the “nugget” method converts Noisy Channel articles into what are digital Post It notes with the key points extracted from the source. In the “Exploring Nuggetize” article there are references to facets, snippets, and search.
The key point in “Exploring Nuggetize” in my opinion was:
The nuggets are full sentences, and thus feel quite different from conventional search-engine snippets. Conventional snippets serve primarily to provide information scent, helping users quickly determine the utility of a search result without the cost of clicking through to it and reading it. In contrast the nuggets are document fragments that are sufficiently self-contained to communicate a coherent thought. The experience suggests passage retrieval rather than document retrieval.
Overall I am okay with the notion of nuggets and the highlighting of Dhiti and its Dive service. You can learn more about both at http://dhiti.com.
What caught my attention was the response by Dhiti in the comments section to the follow on write up “Enabling Exploratory Search with Dhiti”. The question Dhiti answered was related to the user’s behavior when the Dhiti “nuggetizing” widget is implemented on a blog.
Here’s the comment. Please, check the original here because I have trimmed the remarks for this post. Emphasis added by Beyond Search as well:
We [Dhiti] observe the following patterns…:
1) The widget does contribute to increased engagement. We see about 5-10% of readers “interact” with the widget, either to click through on an article… About 60% of the interactions are clicks on articles.
2) We notice that there’s a higher probability of readers reading the articles fully than normal…
3) We observe search referrals interact a lot more with the widget…. So there is more likelihood for exploration.
4) When a search query brings traffic to a page, Users … want to explore the site more for the same query!
5) Through the pivots, the publisher gets to know what their readers [are] … interested to explore around….
6) The pivots also provide cues to the publisher to create reference pages (like Wikipedia) …
Several observations:
First, “nuggets” is probably the wrong metaphor for this type of “informed extraction.”
Second, the approach offers some useful opportunities to metrics about a blog reader’s behavior. My reaction was, “Ah, something more useful than AdSense clicks or traditional log files.”
Third, the company has a good idea, is small with “three co-founders,” and based in Bangalore. Good idea and I have a hunch some of the big outfits in the world of search may be thinking about this function.
Stephen E Arnold, January 10, 2011
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