Word, Flawed as It Is, Embraces XML
December 2, 2010
I have fiddled with a number of editors that look like Microsoft Word or slap code on, over, and in Word to make it work like an XML editor. Sigh. Now, Word with its wacky automatic features has another function tossed in its 1990 retrorod truck bed.
“IXIASOFT Integrates Quark XML Author with its DITA CMS Solution” announces that Quark has partnered with IXIASOFT to integrate Quark XML Author for Microsoft Word into their content management solution. This will make it easy for anyone using Microsoft Word to edit or create content in XML. In short, “The combined solution improves cross-departmental collaboration on the production of technical documentation by making it possible for non-technical subject matter experts to create structured content without using complicated DITA or XML editors.” This solution will make life easier for the teems of people already using MS Word. Microsoft may score a bit hit with this one. There you go. Love that autonumbering too.
Alice Wasielewski, December 2, 2010
Google, France, and a Sacred Link
December 2, 2010
Short honk: Lots of chatter about Google just deciding to pay for content deals. The original approach seems to have been less than optimal. The new method is to write checks. Most folks are chasing the Miramax thread. I found “Google Signs France Artists Deal to Cool Tensions From Copyright Battles” more indicative of the Google Plan B. Will it work? I was tracking Google’s chit chat with Catch Media, a plays-anywhere outfit with some good-as-gold rich media content deals in place. According to the “we write checks in France” insight, I found this passage from the Bloomberg story interesting:
Google, the owner of the world’s largest search engine, is trying to build stronger relationships with regulators and copyright holders in France, where it has attracted scrutiny over its mapping, book-scanning, and advertising systems. Google Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt this year pledged to build a “European cultural institute” and a research and development center in Paris after meeting with President Nicolas Sarkozy. While the YouTube deal won’t produce large amounts of cash for artists in the short term, it re-establishes “the sacred link between the fortune of the work and the fortune of the author,” Laurent Heynemann, president of the 50,000 member SACD group, said at a Paris press conference. “The Internet is not a jungle, and an economic model is possible.
Heads of state: the country of France and the country of Google. And, the best phrase, “sacred link”. I like that elevation to even higher powers than mere heads of state and heads of publicly traded US companies. I keep asking, “How’s that Google TV working out for you?” No one in my office has much of an answer.
Stephen E Arnold, December 2, 2010
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Arnold For Fee Columns, December 2010
November 30, 2010
The December 2010 for-fee columns by Stephen E Arnold have gone to their respective editors. The topics covered this month are:
- For Enterprise Technology Management, “Google Street View: Fender Bender on the Information Highway”. Google’s avoided Street View collisions in the US and the UK. Elsewhere the mileage may vary.
- For Information Today, “RockMelt: Research Degrading to De-Search”. The idea is that social browsing puts another nail in the coffin for roll-up-your-sleeves research. Heck. It’s easier to ask a “friend”.
- For KMWorld, “The Semantics of Product Data.” In this column I discuss a domain of content ignored by most enterprise search systems. I profile a vendor tackling this opportunity.
- For Smart Business Network, “Hyperspace and Location, Location, Location.” I take a look at how small and mid-sized businesses can use location-specific advertising online.
- For Online Magazine, “Big Data: The New Information Challenge”. The write up looks at the opportunities big data create for publishers and information fusion companies.
I wrote a long piece for Information World Review, and I think the second part of my November submission will run in December. Also, my Google column has shifted from KMWorld to Enterprise Data World, and I have started a “semantics in the enterprise” column for KMWorld.
I can’t keep these outfits straight either. For copies of these articles, you will need to hound the publisher, not me. I just write ‘em. I don’t archive work for hire.
Stephen E Arnold, November 30, 2010
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Can You Digg It?
November 17, 2010
Automated systems with user generated content operate by rules different from those of traditional newspapers and magazines. Crowds can become mobs. Publishers prefer more genteel behaviors.
Digg, once your typical social information service, has now taken a vital step to become a market for socialization and newsgathering.
The site recently added a breaking news module and community team to aggregate should-be front page stories in efforts to become a source of news, says “Digg Adds Editors to Break News Faster.”
In the past, stories that garnered the most votes from users were then posted as front page articles, often taking a few hours for breaking news to become appropriate headlines. In today’s terms of real-time breaking news, this lengthy process made Digg a less than ideal destination for news junkies.
But with the addition of a new editorial layer, breaking news will now be posted in a more timely fashion for the typical online news seekers.
As the article says, the editors’ decisions “won’t directly affect the content that appears on the front page, but their recommendations will surely influence the stories that the Digg community will vote for.”
Hmm… sounds awfully familiar to Slashdot.
We think Digg is cool but we’d like to see something different and more innovated. Something that doesn’t resemble the recent past. Something…. What’s the word? Oh yeah, “new”. With some erratic online performance and stories that are not on the cutting edge, can you dig the service?
Leah Moody November 17, 2010
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AOL Morphing into a Digital Publishing Company
November 17, 2010
Some publishing companies are trying to morph into mini-motion picture or video game companies. But AOL is an online company, and it is going a different direction.
The headlines about AOL’s financial performance are sobering: Heavy declines in search and display advertising caused AOL’s quarterly revenue to fall 26 percent.
“I would hope AOL is growing at industry advertising rates at the second half of 2011,” Tim Armstrong, AOL’ s Chief Executive(www.aol.com), said in “AOL Revenue Drops 26 percent on Slumping Ad Sales.”
Armstrong has been trying to turn AOL into a media and entertainment powerhouse instead of its typical and most known image as a dial-up Internet access business.
Will AOL find a pot of gold with its rich media and reinvention of traditional content?
The steep decline in revenue suggests that the company needs to find more advertisers who are willing to spend big bucks with AOL. Advertising revenue fell 27 percent from declines in search, display and third-party ads, totaling $292.8 million.
In addition, revenue fell to $563.5 million in comparison to the $557 million expected by analysts.
A warning from AOL to Yahoo: sell, sell, sell, or risk ending up as an online has-been. We predict a 50/50 chance that Yahoo’s next challenge will be similar to AOL’s advertising dilemma. AOL needs to find a path to the end of the rainbow. The company needs a pot of gold to cope with the presence of Facebook, Apple, and a couple of other “with it” companies.
Leah Moody November 17, 2010
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New York Times Wrestles with Online Fees
November 16, 2010
I still pay for daily home delivery of my local paper even though most of the content is available online. However, my local paper is a great deal cheaper than the New York Times, which is $14.80 per week if you’re not in New York. Felix Simon reports in “The NYT’s Subscription Strategy” that not only has the NYT’s subscription rate been rising much faster than inflation, but that its website makes it difficult to find exactly how much you’re paying. Simon asserts that “the NYT has been stealthily hiking rates for decades now, and has signally failed to get a bad reputation for doing so. Clearly, it’s going to continue doing this: it’s one of the few successful business strategies in the newspaper publishing industry, so it’s obvious that the NYT should adopt it.” He goes on to theorize that the New York Times will also attract subscribers to its online subscriptions with lower fees and then surreptitiously start charging more and more. Simon also points out that this is a strategy that only works with older subscribers. I wonder how successful a strategy this can be for the long-term. Not only will the subscriber base eventually age out, but with the economy as it is, how many people can continue glossing over the $769.60 a year on their credit card statements? With so much news, including much of the NYT, available free online, it seems to me that their audience will eventually reach a breaking point.
Alice Wasielewski, November 16, 2010
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Quote to Note: Cannibal Surprise
November 14, 2010
Nifty quote caught my eye in “iPad Affecting Newspaper Sales.” Here’s the bit:
Murdoch said that the apps were “much more directly cannibalistic” than Web sites, as subscribers read the apps in a manner similar to how they read traditional newspapers. Web readers apparently consume their news somewhat differently. While he didn’t disclose sales numbers, Murdoch said that the newspapers affected include the Wall Street Journal, News of the World, and the Times of London.
I love the phrase “more cannibalistic”. Donner’s Pass, stranded mountain climbers, and … Hmmmm.
Stephen E Arnold, November 14, 2010
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Dyve Goes Deeper
November 13, 2010
DeepDyve has expanded the content on its interesting content rental service.
DeepDyve was launched in 2005 as a place for professionals in the fields of science, medicine, social science, humanities and information technology to rent the scholarly materials they wouldn’t have access to otherwise. The company asserts:
DeepDyve is continuing to advance its mission of providing affordable and convenient access to scientific and scholarly research articles for the tens of millions of users who are unaffiliated with a large institution.
In general only professionals who are tied to a large institution are able to use the big research engines that generate the most relevant information; DeepDyve is changing all of that by making available more than 30 million articles from thousands of reputable journals. At $9.99 a month it’s practically a steal and perfect for the start-up or individuals who need to learn more about a particular subject.
Leslie Radcliff, November 13, 2010
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MediaBriefing and Semantics
October 18, 2010
At a recent conference, a person mentioned the site, www.mediabriefing.com. I took a look at it and found its coverage on point. I am not too interested in the media sector, preferring to track the foibles and follies of search and content processing system vendors.
What did catch my attention was “New Site — and Semantic Technologies — May Help The Publishing Industry Sail To The New Media World.” The story reported:
Here’s where the semantic part comes in at TheMediaBriefing.com: It uses core aspects of idio’s semantic web technology to find, classify, tag, and index these sources to deliver to readers in the media industry what TheMediaBriefing.com says are very accurate matches to their information needs. Brown’s background in blogging, and searching and curating various sources of news pertaining to the media, led him to the conclusion that getting hold of and coalescing the data you really needed often involved following a big trail that combined everything from news sites to social media to non-traditional outlets that his peers didn’t always themselves think to go to.
I don’t have much detail about the semantic system in use, but I think the idea is a good one. If the write up is on the money, the notion of a news operation relying on semantic technology is an interesting use case.
Several observations:
- Big dog publishers like LexisNexis have been ankle deep in semantic technology and other content technologies for many years. The problem is that the financial situation at some big dogs is challenging. Semantic technology may not be the tow truck needed to drag the companies back from the brink.
- Semantic technology, as I have suggested, works best as plumbing. Will publishers and readers realize that semantic technology is behind the new site. My hunch is that some may; others will not.
- Publishing as an industry is experimenting with new partners and different business models. The good news is that some of the partners are tech savvy. The bad news is that some of the business models don’t generate the margins that the old business models did. Semantic technology may not be able to change the bad news into good news quickly enough.
Check out the links in this article. Interesting stuff.
Stephen E Arnold, October 18, 2010
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Quote to Note: Time Warner on Content vs Interface
October 10, 2010
I spotted a quote to note in the Hollywood Report’s story “time Warner CEO Calls Google an Ally.” That is a high potential phrase “Google an ally”. What caught my attention is that statement in the write up:
Said Bewkes [Time Warner big dog]: “When all of the content on the big screen works like the content on the little screen, what will happen? The programming will trump the interface.”
Yesterday we dusted off our old Apple TV and fired up two iPads, an iPhone, and two desktop Macs. We wanted to see what happened when we tried to use the iPads and the iPhone to control the Apple TV. Now I have some reasonably alert goslings helping me with this type of one in a million test, but we were indeed puzzled. The big iMac lit up and showed what looked like an iTunes interface and then closed the app. The little iMac took over. The Apple TV and the iMac auto discovered the iPhone, but the two iPads required some fiddling to get the codes into the Apple TV.
No big deal, but we concluded:
- If the auto-magic stuff doesn’t work, most folks are going to be baffled
- The interfaces across the Apple computers, the iPad and the Apple TV were different enough to give us some serious hunt and browse work.
- The potential for major home entertainment chaos is pretty high.
In short, the quote to note makes clear that a content company (albeit one in a state of change) sees the world as hungry for content. The hapless user may indeed want to watch content but if the interface sucks, no joy.
Like any complex system, the components have to work seamlessly. At this time, not even Apple has the rough edges polished. Does this tell us anything about the rush of new “consumer” add ons for one’s TV entering the market? I still can’t use my remotes without a magnifying glass and the Windows Office ribbon continues to baffle me. I must be one in a million goose.
Stephen E Arnold, October 10, 2010
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