Inteltrax: Top Stories, January 9 to January 14
January 16, 2012
Inteltrax, the data fusion and business intelligence information service, captured three key stories germane to search this week, specifically, the fluctuating relationship between economics and big data analytics.
Starting off was our story, “Financial Analytics Will Be Big Competition in New Year” which predicts 2012 will be the year that the financial industry straightens itself out via analytics. We can only hope we’re right.
The curious case of “As Italian Economy Flounders Analytics Flourishes” shows how some Italian big data firms are finding a lot of business while its government and economy collapse around it.
In America, we spotted a trend in “Data Scientist Jobs on the Rise” that shows while a lot of industries aren’t hiring, big data is opening its doors to more and more workers.
Economics is a growing, mutating beast, that’s no news. But the impact analytics is having across the globe on the bottom line is helping tame that beast in unsuspecting ways. Keep tuned in to discover all the ways we see these amazing connections happening.
Follow the Inteltrax news stream by visiting www.inteltrax.com
Patrick Roland, Editor, Inteltrax.
January 16, 2012
Quick Fixes for the Daily SharePoint Environment
January 16, 2012
Shortcomings in the SharePoint environment are plentiful, comprising a large portion of the enterprise internet chatter. We are always on the lookout for good tips and tools, hoping that it will improve the quality of life for many a user. CMS Wire devotes some attention to the topic in, “Lowering the Bar: 5 Information Management Quick Fixes to Improve Your SharePoint Environment.”
The author describes how he hopes his simple tips might improve the usability of SharePoint and limit wasted search time:
Let’s dive in to what I’ve found to be the most effective ways to improve a SharePoint environment through changing how end-users work with documents on a daily basis. These are not technically complex, but . . . they require a commitment from end-users to spend an additional 15-30 seconds during the document creation, upload or check-in process. And although we all know that users are notoriously reluctant to spend any extra time at all during these activities, if you frame these in terms of the time folks waste looking for documents they can’t find . . . you stand half a chance of getting folks on board for at least one of these — and doing even just one of these consistently will have a huge impact on the overall quality of your SharePoint environment.
He goes on to advise beginning document names with the file type, organizing top-level folders, and using comment fields for checking in documents, as well as a few others. Let’s bring some attention to the main idea proposed by the author. In order to avoid wasting time in SharePoint, the user must be trained to spend a bit of additional time on the front end. This is understandable, but it comes across as a workaround. We like solutions that are intuitive and timesaving all on their own. One we particularly like for this reason is Fabasoft Mindbreeze.
Read more about their intuitive approach:
Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise finds every scrap of information within a very short time, whether document, contract, note, e-mail or calendar entry, in intranet or internet, person- or text-related. The software solution finds all required information, regardless of source, for its users. Get a comprehensive overview of corporate knowledge in seconds without redundancy or loss of data.
More and more organizations are turning to third-party solutions for a better enterprise experience. Check out Fabasoft Mindbreeze and see if it might meet your organization’s information storage and retrieval needs.
Emily Rae Aldridge, January 16, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
SharePoint Lags in Innovation, Development Cycle
January 13, 2012
In terms of web content management, SharePoint still lags behind despite its 2010 update. While there were notable improvements in many of the large areas of complaint: metadata management, multi-language, taxonomy, and basic web analytics to name a few, many shortcomings are still evident. Darren Guarnaccia tackles the issue for ZDNet in, “SharePoint 2010: a sheep in wolf’s clothing?”
While much of the piece is spent dissecting the major problem areas, here the author gives some grounding or basis for why SharePoint still falls behind:
Microsoft has gained some ground with this release, but it is still some way off the pace being set by the best-of-breed vendors in this market. If you believe the benefit of having a single integrated suite outweighs its various shortcomings, or if your requirements are relatively simple, then SharePoint may be a good fit. Something else to consider is the typical SharePoint development cycle of three years. While three-year product release cycles are normal for large enterprise content management projects, three years is a long time on the web. Entire new markets and trends can arise in the span of six months to a year.
Two concepts in the above statement are worth some attention. First, there is SharePoint’s position as a single integrated solution. It is worth pointing out that there are now outstanding third party solutions that work seamlessly with SharePoint, allowing the user to achieve the feel of a single solution while compensating for all of the shortcomings of SharePoint. We like the Fabasoft Mindbreeze solution and its SharePoint Connector.
Secondly, we agree that SharePoint’s long development cycle is one of its weak points. Again, referring to Fabasoft Mindbreeze, new products releases and updates are made quarterly for on-site installations and monthly for the cloud.
Continuous quality assurance and performance optimization ensure extremely short release cycles. We release a new Mindbreeze Cloud update every month.
Frequent updates (that are easy to install) ensure that usability and functionality remain high for all users. Perhaps SharePoint will start taking queues from some of its successful competitors and shorten its development cycle.
Emily Rae Aldridge, January 13, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
American Exteriors Embraces Visual Mining NetCharts
January 13, 2012
The Information Management.com article “Visual Mining NetCharts Performance Dashboard V2.0” gives readers a look into Visual Mining NetCharts Performance Dashboard (NCPD) through the eyes of Michael C.Hurst, director of IT at American Exteriors, LLC. American Exteriors, LLC is a well -known vinyl replacement window and siding company and they currently run the NCPD on Windows Server 2008. The company was experiencing problems with the accuracy of their report data. American Exteriors wanted a tool that could provide “quick insight into KPIs and the flexibility of assessing current activities against budgets and historical trends. “ They were initially attracted to NCPD “primarily due to its cost and ease of use for the end user.” Hurst comments “A primary strength is the ability to immediately access the most relevant drivers of the business in real time via Web-based reports.” Hurst praised the company’s vendor support especially their responsiveness to customer suggestions and improvements. His one gripe is that programming script knowledge is necessary for dashboard customization. Overall American Exteriors seems to be pleased with the NCPD benefits. Looks like another satisfied customer.
April Holmes, January 13, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Google Plus Desperation Marketing
January 12, 2012
The reaction to Google Plus makes clear the lack of understanding that exists about pervasive online products and services. I am cranking away on my Enterprise Technology Management column, a for fee task, but I had to take a moment to offer some observations on the hurricane of hoo-hah which is raging.
Navigate to “Google Likely to Face FTC Complaint over ‘Search Plus Your World‘”. The story does a good job of explaining the new servicer in a way that appears to make sense to a person who uses online but does not understand its imperatives; to wit:
Google calls the new feature rolling out to users of its English-language search engine “Search Plus Your World.” It blends information such as photos, comments and news posted on its Google+ social network into users’ search results. It mostly affects the one in four people who log into Google or Google+ while searching the Web. Those users will have the option of seeing search results that are customized to their interests and connections, say, a photo of the family dog or a friend’s recommendation for a restaurant. Google has been working for years to create a personal search engine that knows its users so well it delivers results tailored to them. It’s also trying to catch up to social networking giant Facebook, which, with more than 800 million users, knows its users far better than Google does. But critics contend Google, a laggard in social networking, is using its dominance in Internet search to favor its own products and take on its chief competitor.
Like many of the other posts from “experts” and pundits, a number of assumptions operate to characterize Google’s actions are controversial, limiting, or designed to have quite specific consequences for users, competitors, and stakeholders.
My view is based on the research I conducted from 2001 to 2008, the period in which the bulk of my Google work took place. If you are curious about my monographs, there are descriptions of these publications at this Infonortics’ link for the Google Trilogy.
First, once a company captures a “place” in online, the successful service acts like a magnet. An unsuccessful service in the same space pulls marginal users at first and then “pumps” those users into the primary place. Google was an early entrant in social with Orkut. For reasons which I am not at liberty to discuss, that service did not capture a “place”. MySpace did but failed to respond to the Facebook approach. As users flowed to Facebook, the Orkut, MySpace, and other social services began to amplify the Facebook service. The result was the steady expansion of the service despite its flaws. As those who have watched a service benefit from the competitors’ amplification of the dominant service, there is little which can be done to halt the growth. Facebook, like Yahoo in directory services and Google in traditional Web search demonstrated, the new service surges and then has its own life cycle. Not even shooting oneself in the foot or regulation can stop the expanding service from becoming a monopoly. Facebook has achieved that position and it will eventually decline. For now, Facebook, like it or not, is the social focal point. Google has limited choices. One of its options is the walled garden and taking tactical actions that will get Google back into a growth position in the disputed “space.”
Second, when a competitor tries to capture the number one position in a new space, the work we have done over the last 30 years suggests:
- The maximum market share which the tactical actions can yield will be about 60 percent of the leader’s market share. Usually, the share is much less. Facebook, therefore, is not likely to be significantly affected in the short and mid term by Google’s or any other competitors’ action. Facebook is at greater risk of making errors in judgment related to management, money, and technology than what Google or any other competitor does. So Google is under pressure and Facebook is cruising.
- The dominant service benefits from the added visibility to high profile tactical moves create. It would not surprise me if Facebook benefits from Google’s actions related to expanding its walled garden, getting into he said, she said arguments with services like Twitter, and its senior management making statements which throw dry logs on a raging digital marketing fire. In short, Google is helping out Facebook if our research is on the money.
Imagine how difficult it must be for Google to be largely excluded from social services. Now consider that the focus of Google is upon capturing a space which may be unobtainable. Do you expect Google’s thinkers to find a checkmate type of solution from the company’s recent tactical actions? I don’t. I think Google is trying to find a solution, not implementing a solution.
Finally, Google is now in a precarious positions. As I write this, the search services from Yandex.ru and Yandex.com are often more relevant than those delivered by Google’s service. The Yandex technology like Baidu’s and Jike’s shares some characteristics with Google’s. The shift in precision and recall at Google is a direct result of manual and automatic adjustments to the advertising imperative that keeps Google in revenue growth mode. Services which focus on precision and recall deliver results which our research indicates are more relevant when measured by traditional information retrieval yardsticks. Google, therefore, is now at increased risk of a thrust at its core business by capable, technically adept competitors. Little wonder why some have reported that Google is sending mixed signals or that Google’s management is engaged in healthy discussion about what to do a situation which simply did not exist when Google grew due to the inattention of its competitors in 1998 to 2004 and in 2006 to 2007 when there was zero significant awareness of the “legacy” of the Google method. Now the “legacy” is part of Facebook’s and other competitors’ equipment for living. Google is in an unfamiliar position. As I have learned in my own online work, the unfamiliar translates to an increased likelihood for acting with a certain blindness. One can get hit by a very loud, very large, and very slow moving bus when one is blind.
Net net: Google is at a turning point. The evidence is the discussion about Google Plus and its walled garden approach, the spectrum of commentary about what is a quite predictable, if ill considered innovation from Google, and from the comments made by Google’s competitors.
Because online services, if they grow to more than 65 percent of a particular market, naturally become monopolies. Management will take credit for this success, but it is often inevitable, not the result of a brilliant executive decision. Online monopolies chug along and then—boom—arrive and get noticed. A recent example is the Apple iTunes, iPhone, iPad situation.
I want to see how the power flows from centroid to centroid in dataspace. The physics of information permit behaviors which are difficult to predict and have unforeseen consequences. One consequence: desperation marketing. She has swept in with Google Plus I submit.
Stephen E Arnold, January 12, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
When SharePoint Training Falls Short
January 12, 2012
SharePoint is an expansive and time intensive implementation for any organization. Therefore, much attention has been devoted to SharePoint training in enterprise circles. SharePoint Engine offers one viewpoint of SharePoint training in, “How to Cope When SharePoint Training Doesn’t Connect.”
Within the context of the web site’s attention to the issue of training, they state:
We’re [sic] spent plenty of time emphasizing the importance of SharePoint training, even taking plenty of time to tell you about effective SharePoint training techniques. Despite all our advice, though, there’s still a chance that your training just won’t hit home with your audience. What causes this dissonance? What can you do to prevent it? And what can you do to fix it once it’s already happened?
The tips offered include reexamining the training, refocusing the training, reformulating the training, or even reapplying the training to see if it will stick the next time around. We understand that SharePoint is unwieldy, and getting an entire staff to be comfortable working with the application can be tricky. However, we wonder if such extensive training is an effective way to spend an organization’s time and budget. Perhaps a simpler, more intuitive solution could be found to prevent such extensive workshops.
Fabasoft Mindbreeze is a solution that is more easily implemented and more intuitively created. The interface and search features both respond to a more natural approach:
Be well informed – quickly and accurately. The data often lies distributed across numerous sources. Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise gains each employee two weeks per through focused finding of data (IDC Studies). An invaluable competitive advantage in business as well as providing employee satisfaction.
Extensive support and training is also offered by Fabasoft, along with tutorials and online help available 24/7 on the web site. The idea here is that extensive training should not be required for employees to be able to use such software.
Emily Rae Aldridge, January 12, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Prediction Data Joins the Fight
January 12, 2012
It seems that prediction data could be joining the fight against terrorism. According to the Social Graph Paper article “Prediction Data As An API in 2012” some companies are working on developing prediction models that can be applied to terror prevention. The article mentions the company Palantir “they emphasize development of prediction models as applied to terror prevention, and consumed by non-technical field analysts.” Recorded Future is another company but they rely on “creating a ‘temporal index’, a big data/ semantic analysis problem, as a basis to predict future events.” Other companies that have been dabbling in big data/prediction modeling are Sense Networks, Digital Reasoning, BlueKai and Primal. The author theorizes that “There will be data-domain experts spanning the ability to make sense of unstructured data, aggregate from multiple sources, run prediction models on it, and make it available to various “application” providers.” Using data to predict the future seems a little farfetched but the technology is still new and not totally understood. Everyone does need to join the fight against terrorism but exactly how data prediction fits in remains to be seen.
April Holmes, January 12, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
eDiscovery Search May Not Be Worth It
January 12, 2012
According to the eDiscovery Daily blog piece “eDiscovery Case Law: Plaintiff Not Required to Review Millions of Pages of Unallocated Space” eDiscovery search is in big trouble. The case I-Med Pharma, Inc. vs. Biomatrix Inc. shed light on eDiscovery search and how troublesome it can be. This case highlights the dangers of carelessness and inattention in e-discovery,” District Judge Dickinson Debevoise wrote in his ruling. eDiscovery has made its way to Congress. Attorney William Butterfield, a partner at Hausefeld LLP was one of several asked to testify before the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution on the costs and burdens of eDiscovery according to the Clear Well Systems article “Q&A with William P. Butterfield on his Testimony Regarding the Costs and Burdens of eDiscovery Before the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution.” He and others stressed the importance of letting the Judicial Rules Review Committee continue to handle the situation instead of Congress prematurely interfering. Butterfield felt that “Nothing during the hearing led me to believe that Congress would interfere with the Rules Committee’s work and process.” Looks like eDiscovery dodged a bullet.
April Holmes, January 12, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Googzilla Gets Social
January 11, 2012
I scanned the “official” line of Google’s most recent social play. I flipped through the long list of comments, views, opinions, etc. My reaction? What’s the big surprise. Here’s an anchor post: “Antitrust+,” which appeared in Parislemon. The main idea seems to be that pundits recognize Google, an outfit I called Googzilla back in 2005, is doing the beaver thing. (The notion of Googzilla originated from my research which revealed that Google believed that its “system” would provide the underpinnings for most business processes. Therefore, search was the new infrastructure. When I used this reference in a talk in London, the Googler on the panel with me said, “Cool.” Googzilla is just a big beaver, doing its beaver thing.) You may recall the adage, “Beavers do what beavers do.” Put the beaver in the kitchen of the Cast Iron Grill in Harrod’s Creek, Kentucky, and the beaver starts building a dam. Why? That’s what beavers do. Easy to predict because beavers do their thing. Here’s evidence of the Google-beaver similarity:
Google is using Search to propel their social network. They might say it’s “not a social network, it’s a part of Google”, but no one is going to buy that. They were late to the game in social and this is the best catch-up strategy ever. Given that it’s opt-out, I’m just not sure that this is all that different from Microsoft bundling IE with Windows.
Google is doing the social thing, not because Google is social. Google is doing social in order to remain relevant to the Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn users. In these systems, content from humans is perceived to be more accurate, less biased, and generally more useful than a list of results in which ads, content, red herrings, and even malware lurk. Hey, some users seem to think, the social information is just “better.” When the user is looking for a short cut, getting mis- or dis-information from a “friend” is probably a better bet than taking what a non-social system generates.
Beavers do what beavers do. Why does one expect the beaver to build a computer when beavers build dams.
My view is that most of the free content available on the Web is dicey stuff. Most users today—including recent library school graduates—lack the skills to determine accurate content in most topic areas, distorted content with bent or shaped “facts”, content with mixed semantic or sentiment coloring, and the most relevant document for a particular query.
In short, “beavers do what beavers do” applies to Google, but the adage also applies to users who take what systems give them because advertisers and other funding sources foot the bill. Ask yourself these questions:
- When I am looking for information, I consult multiple commercial databases, review a representative selection of the documents, and make judgments about which documents warrant further investigation?
- When consuming results from any free online system, do I routinely verify facts by looking for another source which can verify the data in which I have an interest?
- When accepting “hits” from predictive systems, I run the same query on another predictive system and evaluate the outputs?
I know from information gathered as recently as last week, that even among recent library school graduates that few, if any, perform these actions.
So Google is getting social because:
- Facebook and other “real” competitors are nibbling into Google’s revenue growth system. In 2006, Google had essentially zero competitors. Today, Google is in an uncomfortable position. Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and even the once presumed terminal Microsoft are posing problems, big problems. Google’s management is responding with “me too” solutions in the hopes that sheer imitation will solve the competitive gap problem. The beaver is doing what the beaver does.
- Google’s gravity free run is now carrying the ballast of staff retention. With the big paydays coming to employees of pre-IPO companies, 13 year old outfits don’t have that old hiring magnetism any longer. As a result, Google cannot innovate and disrupt. Google is now in the imitate and disrupt mode in my opinion. Aging beavers do what aging beavers do; that is, look for short cuts.
- Google must push through increasing friction. The resistance is coming from regulators who can be “managed” but that takes time, mental resources, and effort. No problem but with legal hassles on every continent except Antarctica, Google finds the legal tar getting harder. Other factors bumping up the coefficient of friction at Google are the cut backs, the about faces, and the multi-front product and service wars the company is fighting. Even beavers grow careless. I saw a squashed on on the way to the post office yesterday.
Wow, I bet everyone using social media for information wishes that the traditional method of research were back in vogue. Online services reflect the user. In short, beavers do what beavers do, and today beavers don’t do “get your hands dirty” research. How inefficient! Let’s get social to find the “truth”. That works?
I find Google interesting and one can make its public search system deliver high value results. However, most online users just accept what the system outputs. When I was younger, I worried that commercial online services like Dialog and LexisNexis would manipulate results to suit their corporate purposes. As risky as placing trust in a commercial online service may be, Dialog and LexisNexis made no effort to filter the content generated by commercial database producers. In fact, the systems made it possible to run a query across multiple commercial files using the 411 command or to run comprehensive searches across a corpus of third party content. It took time and effort to grind through these outputs, but the effort would yield insights, suggestions for further research, and often make visible unintentional or factual errors. In our Business Dateline database, we went so far as to include post publication corrections to the full text article. The idea was to make it clear that even commercial publishers make mistakes, often really big ones.
Today, the online consumer is getting exactly what the online consumer wants. The content finding systems are not built to deliver accurate, unbiased results. The majority of online users want answers, not the time consuming, intellectually exhausting task of figuring out the provenance and accuracy of information. Who wants to do library research and mind numbing data analysis. I want the equivalent of ESPN Newscenter so I “know” what happened in sports. Who has time to watch the games? Why read “long form” content when one can snag information via Flipbook and Pulse?
So let’s knock off the worry about Google and its incursions into social. Put that effort into performing rigorous searching. When the users shift from taking spoon fed, baby food content to more substantive fare, then Google as well as other online services will adapt.
Perhaps this type of sign should be posted on search result pages from ad supported online research services? Image source: http://www.graphicshunt.com/funny/images/stupidity-13135.htm
Right now, Google is doing what beavers do. Users are doing what users do. Hard work, fact based analysis, and exercising judgment are not driving online. Distraction, ease of use, easy, fast, and fun information access is driving beavers into a frenzy.
Beavers do what beavers do. One can’t change Mother Nature. Complaining about Googzilla is pretty much a waste of energy which can be better spent with more rigorous research. Wow, that will be popular with today’s “average” user looking for pizza in all the wrong places.
Stephen E Arnold, January 11, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com, a Web site run by information professionals
Tools and Tips for Maximizing SharePoint Functionality
January 11, 2012
There is a large chunk of the IT blogosphere devoted to SharePoint and enterprise, and a sizeable percentage of that is carved out for tips and tools to increase functionality. It makes sense. Enterprise is becoming a requirement, not just an option. Enterprise solutions, especially SharePoint, are massive creatures, requiring a lot of time and energy. Therefore, any tip or trick to get the most out of the system is of interest. The SharePoint Engine blog weighs in with, “7 Ways to Use SharePoint 2010 Effectively.”
The author writes:
The immense landscape that is SharePoint functionality is easy to lose track of. As a result, even those who don’t make major mistakes can still fall well short of taking full advantage of the platform. To help you as you try to milk this magnificent Microsoft system for all it’s worth, here are 7 simple ways you can use SharePoint to better your business.
The advice ranges from setting up mobile access to centralizing task locations. All these customization tips are smart, and will likely increase efficiency and retrieval. However, we wonder if a smarter solution exists, one that automatically implements these intuitive customization features, without having to spend the time to do the customization. Fabasoft Mindbreeze offers that type of enterprise solution. Read more about their enterprise solution.
Highly efficient enterprise search and specific connectors link together data sources in companies and organizations. They integrate the knowledge of different sections of a company into a uniform, linked whole . . . But an all-inclusive search is not everything. Creating relevant knowledge means processing data in a comprehensible form and utilizing relations between information objects. Data is sorted according to type and relevance.
SharePoint is created to be an infrastructure, a shell. Powerful, yes, but costly to customize. That’s why many organizations are turning to third party solutions, such as Mindbreeze, to bridge the gap with SharePoint. Mindbreeze in particular will serve as a standalone solution or as an addition to an already existing SharePoint infrastructure.
Emily Rae Aldridge, January 11, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
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