Amazon Updates Sneaker Net
October 8, 2015
I remember creating a document, copying the file to a floppy, and then walking up one flight of steps to give the floppy to my boss. He took the floppy, loaded it into his computer, and made changes. A short time later he would walk down one flight of steps, hand me the floppy with his file on it, and I would review the changes.
I thought this was the cat’s pajamas for two reasons:
- I did not have to use ledger paper, sharpen a pencil, and cramp my fingers
- Multiple copies existed so I no longer had to panic when I spilled my Fresca across my desk.
Based on the baloney I read every day about the super wonderful high speed, real time cloud technology, I was shocked when I read “Snowball’s Chance in Hell? Amazon Just Launched a Physical Data Transfer Service.” The news struck me as more important than the yap and yammer about Amazon disrupting cloud business and adding partners.
Here’s the main point I highlighted in pragmatic black:
A Snowball device is ordered through the AWS Management Console and is delivered to site within a few days; customers can order multiple devices and devices can be run in parallel. Described as coming in its “own shipping container” (it doesn’t require packing or unpacking) the Snowball is entirely self-contained, complete with 110 Volt power, a 10 GB network connection on the back and an E Ink display/control panel on the front. Once received it’s simply a matter of plugging the device in, connecting it to a network, configuring the IP address, and installing the AWS Snowball client; a job manifest and 25 character unlock code complete the task. When the transfer of data is complete the device is disconnected and a shipping label will automatically appear on the E Ink display; once shipped back to Amazon (currently only the Oregon data center is supporting the service, with others to follow) the data will be decrypted and copied to S3 bucket(s) as specified by the customer.
There you go. Sneaker net updated with FedEx, UPS, or another shipping service. Definitely better than carrying an appliance up and down stairs. I was hoping that individuals participating in the Mechanical Turk system would be available to pick up an appliance and deliver it to the Amazon customer and then return the gizmo to Amazon. If Amazon can do Etsy-type stuff, it can certainly do Uber-type functions, right?
When will the future arrive? No word on how the appliance will interact with Amazon’s outstanding search system. I wish I knew how to NOT out unpublished books or locate mysteries by Japanese authors available in English. Hey, there is a sneaker net. Focus on the important innovations.
Stephen E Arnold, October 8, 2015
Compare Cell Phone Usage in Various Cities
October 8, 2015
Ever wonder how cell phone usage varies around the globe? Gizmodo reports on a tool that can tell us, called ManyCities, in their article, “This Website Lets You Study Cell Phone Use in Cities Around the World.” The project is a team effort from MIT’s SENSEable City Laboratory and networking firm Ericsson. Writer Jamie Condliffe tells us that ManyCities:
“…compiles mobile phone data — such as text message traffic, number of phone calls, and the amount of data downloaded —from base stations in Los Angeles, New York, London, and Hong Kong between April 2013 and January 2014. It’s all anonymised, so there’s no sensitive information on display, but there is enough data to understand usage patterns, even down the scale of small neighbourhoods. What’s nice about the site is that there are plenty of intuitive interpretations of the data available from the get-go. So, you can see how phone use varies geographically, say, or by time, spotting the general upward trend in data use or how holidays affect the number of phone calls. And then you can dig deeper, to compare data use over time between different neighbourhoods or cities: like, how does the number of texts sent in Hong Kong compare to New York? (It peaks in Hong Kong in the morning, but in the evening in New York, by the way.)”
The software includes some tools that go a little further, as well; users can cluster areas by usage patterns or incorporate demographic data. Condliffe notes that this information could help with a lot of tasks; forecasting activity and demand, for example. If only it were available in real time, he laments, though he predicts that will happen soon. Stay tuned.
Cynthia Murrell, October 8, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Restlet Promotes Paul Doscher to the Cloud
October 8, 2015
What has Paul Doscher been up to? We used to follow him when he was a senior executive over at LucidWorks, but he has changed companies and is now riding on clouds. PRWeb published the press release “Restlet Appoints Paul Doscher As New CEO To Accelerate Deployment Of Most Comprehensive Cloud-Based API Platform.” Doscher is the brand new president, CEO, and board member at Restlet, leading creators of deployed APIs framework. Along with LucidWorks, Doscher held executive roles at VMware, Oracle, Exalead, and BusinessObjects.
Restlet hot its start as an open source project by Jerome Louvel. Doscher will be replacing Louvel as the CEO and is quite pleased about handing over the reins to his successor:
“ ‘I’m extremely pleased that we have someone with Paul’s experience to grow Restlet’s leadership position in API platforms,’ said Louvel. ‘Restlet has the most complete API cloud platform in the industry and our ease of use makes it the best choice for businesses of any size to publish and consume data and services as APIs. Paul will help Restlet to scale so we can help more businesses use APIs to handle the exploding number of devices, applications and use cases that need to be supported in today’s digital economy.’ ”
Doscher wants to break down the barriers for cloud adoption and take it to the next level. His first task as the new CEO will be implementing the API testing tools vendor DHC and using it to enhance Restlet’s API Platform.
Restlet is ecstatic to have Doscher on board and Louvel is probably heading off to a happy retirement.
Whitney Grace, October 8, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Watson Weekly: Chasing Sales via Ads. Forget Thought Leadership
October 6, 2015
I was exploring the topics business intelligence and Big Data. I was intrigued by “Is Thought Leadership a Waste of Money?” My reaction was, “Nope, thought leadership is good.” Who wants to fool around with regular marketing methods.
What’s the write up say?
I highlighted this passage from a person who does not know about the genesis of Strategy & Business and the somewhat addled Booz, Allen executive who wanted a BAH branded Economist to generate revenue:
Once upon a time back in 1994, Joel Kurtzman, the then-editor-in-chief of Strategy & Business, coined the term “thought leader” as a means for identifying people within the business marketplace that merited our attention. Thought leaders were the individuals within their respective industries who offered fresh, creative ideas and commentary on industry problems and trends. Two decades later, much of today’s thought leadership has gone from original to repetitive. It’s not that business leaders, C-level executives, or entrepreneurs don’t have great ideas or valuable insights. The problem is a bit more complex.
But here’s the shocker. Strategy & Business was a reaction by Booz, Allen & Hamilton to publications and marketing campaigns mounted by other blue chip consulting firms.
Advertising, at least for blue chip firms, was somewhat low brow. The notion of pumping drivel into the in boxes of Fortune 1000 executives was also distasteful. Today advertising is the cat’s pajamas.
IBM is proving that nothing beats banging one’s own drum even if no one knows what the band is playing.
I opened my dead tree edition of the New York Times this morning )October 6, 2015), and what did I see? The work of Ogilvy & Mather? Sure looks like it. Big ad buy. Big images. Big assertions.
Cognitive computing via Watson. Yikes, where is the smarter planet? I did some poking around and came across “Tangled Up in Big Blue: IBM Replaces Smarter Planet With … Bob Dylan.”
IBM began to realize that the message of Smarter Planet — basically that computing is and will be integral to everything, as manifested in innovations such as smart power grids and connected cars — is no longer a differentiator for the business, explained Mr. Iwata. The emerging pattern, as harnessed and fostered by its Watson technology, is that these super computing capabilities can be built into anything digital because they live in the cloud.
IBM’s senior vice president of marketing Jon Iwata allegedly said:
“This will resonate strongly with not only our current clients but…companies and decision makers and software developers who aren’t currently IBM clients.”
The result in the dead tree newspapers I saw presented page upon page of IBM Watson marketing. Here are some of the pages from this morning’s print campaign in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal:
The massive ad campaign reveals that Watson consists of 100 million lines of code. No comment about bugs counts, however.
Obviously, this snapshot is too small to read. Put down your smartphone and buy the dead tree newspapers. Here are the themes I noted:
- Buzzwords
- Components that you, gentle reader, can assemble like Potassium ferrocyanide in chem lab when the teacher is inattentive
- Images of youthful, diverse people who are obviously into Watson
- Copy, lots of copy.
The information recycles that which is available on the IBM Watson Web site. The difference is that the multi page ads are the equivalent of a Bunker Buster dropped into the somewhat indifferent world of search and content processing. How will the likes of minnows like Coveo, dtSearch, Elasticsearch (now Elastic), Recommind, Sinequa, legions of business analytics firms, the specialists pitching everything from indexing (Smartlogic) to semantics (SenseBot), and all manner of information access vendors scattered across a somewhat Martian like landscape. Sure, there may be water, but can one survive on the stuff?
IBM is skipping the thought leader thing and going right to big buck advertising. I can imagine this scenario taking place in Joe Coffee’s. The IBM marketing team is meeting with the ad agency’s equivalent of Bindy Irwin. The scene is a hip coffee shop near the Watson office in Manhattan.
IBM Watson Wizard (IWW): We need something big to get this Watson bandwagon rolling?
Mad Ave Ad Exec (MAAE): Yes, big. We need to do big.
IWW: Let’s brainstorm here? Do you want another cappuccino with the neat latte art?
MAAE: Sure, sure. But make mine a macchiato.
[IBM Watson executive returns with more cappuccino and one artisan cafe macchiato.]
IWW: Who wants the macchiato? What have you got for me?
MAAE: Okay, we have been talking while you were standing on line? By the way, do you want one of us to pay for the coffee?
IWW: Nah, we’ve got more than a billion to burn. Let’s get to it.
MAAE: Here’s the idea. Imagine putting the Watson cognitive computing message in front of every, and I mean every, New York Times and Wall Street Journal reader. We warm up with some Monday Night Football buys and then, bang, we hit the buyers with the message, “Cognitive computing.”
IWW: Well, print? What about viral videos? What about social media?
MAAE: We will do that. We can pay some mid tier consulting types to send out Watson tweets?
IWW: But that did not get any traction?
MAAE: Tweets are good. We need to provide a big bang to make the tweet thing happen.
IWW: What’s the message?
MAAE: We were thinking think. But 21st century style. We want to go with outthink thing.
IWW: Out think. I like it.
MAAE: Now picture this. You know how everyone learned about chemical symbols in high school?
IWW: Yes, but I got a D.
MAAE: No problem. Here’s the picture. [Ad person grabs napkin and sketches a hexagon with a happy face.
We show the components of the Watson system as little chemical symbols with codes in them.
IWW: Symbols? Codes? It looks like a happy face with an F in it.
MAAE: Grab your mental iPhone. Snap this happy icon with the Fd. You see “face detection.” Fd. Crystal clear. Non verbal. Immediate.
IWW: I don’t understand.
MAAE: Work with me on this. We make a list of the APIs and the buzzwords and put them into a graphic. We call the page “IBM Watson is the platform for cognitive business.”
IWW: Oh, like the structures computational chemists use to visualize complex constructs?
MAAE: What’s a computational structure whatever? I know a happy face thing with a hexagon. This gets the message across. Zap. Like an Instagram, right?
IWW: I get it. I get it.
MAAE: You like it, right? Big bang. Big splash. Big message but simple, clear, easy to grasp.
IWW: How many New York Times and Wall Street Journal readers know what API means?
MAAE: We’ve grab the upside. Wait for it. We will hook the Watson cognitive thing with a superstar. We are thinking Bob Dylan.
IWW: Bob Dylan. I remember him. Butwasn’t there some talk about drugs, political activism, maybe something with Croatia in France?
MAAE: Ancient history and myth. He’s an icon. Picture this. Bob Dylan becomes the image of cognitive computing. Can’t miss. Cannot miss. Winner. We become the messaging for API. Watson APIs will be huge. The chatter about text extraction, image tagging, and concept expansion. Deafening.
IWW: Wow, that sounds almost as powerful as the Jeopardy game show promotion. I really liked that game show thing. Watson won too.
MAAE: Right. That’s the value of post production. Now. One final point. Jules here came up with a great idea while you were waiting on line. We take the rock solid facts about Watson. Jules thinks this was your idea, and it is a great one. Watson. Only 100 million lines of code, you know, more than in a Volkswagen-type fuel emission system. We sprinkle these facts under a headline like “A cognitive business is a business that thinks.” Stir in Dylan and you can write your own ticket in this cognitive computing thing.
IWW: But what about outthink thing? You said the new hook was outthink.
MAAE: Yes, yes, outthink is the glue. Cognitive API outthink. Huge. I will send a contract over to you later today.
IWW: Do you think we will make any sales?
MAAE: Sales? Sure, sure. Winner. Be sure to turn around that contract. We need to get rolling like a rolling stone. Winner.
What other boosters did Watson receive on October 6, 2015. Well, the IBM Big Blue Boss is on CNBC. Not as perky as Bindy, but pretty excited about granting CNBC an exclusive.
One question: What about revenues? You know three years of declining revenue.
Stephen E Arnold, October 6, 2015
Stephen E Arnold, October 6, 2015
Full Text Search Gets Explained
October 6, 2015
Full text search is a one of the primary functions of most search platform. If a search platform cannot get full text search right, then it is useless and should be tossed in the recycle bin. Full text search is such a basic function these days that most people do not know how to explain what it is. So what is full text?
According to the Xojo article, “Full Text Search With SQLite” provides a thorough definition:
“What is full text searching? It is a fast way to look for specific words in text columns of a database table. Without full text searching, you would typically search a text column using the LIKE command. For example, you might use this command to find all books that have “cat” in the description…But this select actually finds row that has the letters “cat” in it, even if it is in another word, such as “cater”. Also, using LIKE does not make use of any indexing on the table. The table has to be scanned row by row to see if it contains the value, which can be slow for large tables.”
After the definition, the article turns into advertising piece for SQLite and how it improves the quality of full text search. It offers some more basic explanation, which are not understood by someone unless they have a coding background. It is a very brief with some detailed information, but could explain more about what SQLite is and how it improves full text search.
Whitney Grace, October 6, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Visual Analytics Makes Anyone a Data Expert
October 5, 2015
Humans are sight-based creatures. When faced with a chunk of text or a series of sequential pictures, they will more likely scan the pictures for information than read. With the big data revolution, one of the hardest problems analytics platforms have dealt with is how to best present data for users to implement. Visual analytics is the key, but one visual analytics is not the same as another. DCInno explains that one data visual company stands out from the rest in the article, “How The Reston Startup Makes Everyone A Big Data Expert.”
Zoomdata likes to think of itself as the one visual data companies that gives its clients a one up over others and it goes about it in layman’s terms.
“Zoomdata has been offering businesses and organizations a way to see data in ways more useful than a spreadsheet since it was founded in 2012. Its software offers real-time and historical explorations of data streams, integrating multiple sources into a cohesive whole. This makes the analytics far more accessible than they are in raw form, and allows a layperson to better understand what the numbers are saying without needing a degree in mathematics or statistics.”
Zoomdata offers a very interactive platform and is described to be the only kind on the market. Their clients range from government agencies, such as the Library of Congress, and private companies. Zoomdata does not want to be pigeonholed as a government analytics startup. Their visual data platform can be used in any industry and by anyone with the goal of visual data analytics for the masses. Zoomdata has grown tremendously, tripled its staff, and raised $22.2 million in fundraising.
Now let us sit back and see how their software is implemented in various industries. I wonder if they could make a visual analytics graphic novel?
Whitney Grace, October 5, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Google Express Pales in Comparison to Amazon Prime
October 5, 2015
The article on Business Insider titled Google Should Be Very Scared of What Amazon Built, According to Investor Bill Gurley, details Gurley’s comments. Amazon Prime, according to Gurley, is challenging Google’s top dog position by offering inventory in addition to search capabilities. Shopping on Google might seem like a waste of time to many Prime members, who go directly to Amazon to search for what they are looking for. The article explains,
“Over many years, Amazon has built up this logistics framework and their one click feature and their Prime program to the point where the consumer has zero anxiety about the quality of the product, immense trust about the deliverability, down to a day and a half for most people, less than a day for some items. They trust on price. That doesn’t mean they are the absolute lowest price, but people don’t think Amazon’s trying to get ’em.”
Gurley estimates that Amazon may have as many as 90 million Prime Members loyal to their search engine for shopping, and using Google only as a last resort. Google Express, which most of us have never heard of, was Google’s “lame” answer to Amazon Prime, but without the years of planning and creating worldwide distribution centers. However, the article does not address that people use Google for quite a bit more than shopping, and Amazon Prime is limited that way.
Chelsea Kerwin, October 5, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Google Faces Sanctions over Refusal to Embrace Right to Be Forgotten Ruling
October 2, 2015
The article on Reuters titled France Rejects Google Appeal on Cleaning Up Search Results Globally explores the ramifications of Europe’s recently passed Right to be Forgotten law. The law stipulates that search engines be compelled by requests to remove information. Google has made some attempts to yield to the law, granting 40% of the 320,000 requests to remove incorrect, irrelevant, or controversial information, but only on the European version of its sites. The article delves into the current state of affairs,
“The French authority, the CNIL, in June ordered Google to de-list on request search results appearing under a person’s name from all its websites, including Google.com. The company refused in July and requested that the CNIL abandon its efforts, which the regulator officially refused to do on Monday…France is the first European country to open a legal process to punish Google for not applying the right to be forgotten globally.”
Google countered that while the company was happy to meet the French and European standards in Europe, they did not see how the European law could be globally enforced. This refusal will almost certainly be met with fines and sanctions, but that may be the least of Alphabet Google’s troubles considering its ongoing disapproval by Europe.
Chelsea Kerwin, October 02, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Legacy Servers: Upgrade Excitement
October 2, 2015
Enterprise management systems (ECM) were supposed to provide an end all solution for storing and organizing digital data. Data needs to be stored for several purposes: taxes, historical record, research, and audits. Government agencies deployed ECM solutions to manage their huge data loads, but the old information silos are not performing up to modern standards. GCN discusses government agencies face upgrading their systems in “Migrating Your Legacy ECM Solution.”
When ECMs first came online, information was stored in silos programmed to support even older legacy solutions with niche applications. The repositories are so convoluted that users cannot find any information and do not even mention upgrading the beasts:
“Aging ECM systems are incapable of fitting into the new world of consumer-friendly software that both employees and citizens expect. Yet, modernizing legacy systems raises issues of security, cost, governance and complexity of business rules — all obstacles to a smooth transition. Further, legacy systems simply cannot keep up with the demands of today’s dynamic workforce.”
Two solutions present themselves: data can be moved from an old legacy system to a new one or simply moving the content from the silo. The barriers are cost and time, but the users will reap the benefits of upgrades, especially connectivity, cloud, mobile, and social features. There is the possibility of leaving the content in place using interoperability standards or cloud-based management to make the data searchable and accessible.
The biggest problem is actually convincing people to upgrade. Why fix what is not broken? Then there is the justification of using taxpayers’ money for the upgrade when the money can be used elsewhere. Round and round the argument goes.
Whitney Grace, October 2, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
HP and Its Glorious DEC and Compaq Past
October 1, 2015
Gentle reader, I know you remember that beloved Alta Vista once was a Hewlett Packard property. Ah, what might have been.
I though about HP’s muffed bunnies when I read “Carly Fiorina’s Legacy as CEO of Hewlett Packard.” The write up summarizes an academic approach to figuring out what happened at HP before Carly Fiorina was replaced by Mark Hurd was replaced by Leo Apotheker was replaced by Meg Whitman.
What type of manager was Ms. Fiorina? Here’s the objective assessment in the article:
When Fiorina came to HP, the culture that she walked into was very much “aim, aim, aim and fire” — a slow culture, during a time when companies were moving very fast. In that context, she was what we want our change leaders to be — bold and disruptive. One of her moves was to buy Compaq, which had a fast moving “Internet” culture — “aim, fire, fire, re-aim, fire.”
I assume that approach contributed to the slow, steady decline of the Alta Vista search system.
Who benefited from HP’s handling of Alta Vista? I would suggest the Alphabet Google thing.
Stephen E Arnold, October 1, 2015
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